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Re-thinking Capitalism: What We can Learn from Scholasticism?

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Abstract

The macro-level business ethics in Scholasticism contrasts with modern Anglo-Saxon Capitalism, which is very influential worldwide. Scholasticism, developed between the thirteenth and the mid-seventeenth centuries, deals with key elements of free market morality, including private property, contracts, profits, prices, and free competition. For over 500 years Scholasticism tried to understand economic phenomena and business activities and reflected on them from an ethical perspective. Scholasticism offered the crucial lesson of the centrality of justice and the role of practical wisdom in considering market morality. Justice is seen as both a virtue and a principle, and commutative justice (justice in exchanges) with the common good of society as the reference for the Scholastics, is regarded as being especially important.

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Notes

  1. In Des Kapital, Marx analyzed the “capitalist mode of production”. However, Marx himself rarely used the term ‘capitalism’, although it was used twice in the more political interpretations of his work, primarily authored by his collaborator Friedrich Engels. (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#cite_note-3. Retrieved on August 13, 2014).

  2. http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=Capitalism&searchmode=none.

  3. http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=capital&allowed_in_frame=0.

  4. http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=Capitalism&searchmode=none.

  5. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capitalism.

  6. Laissez faire are the first two words of the French expression: Laissez faire et laissez passer, le monde lui même. ("Let do, let pass, the world goes alone”).

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  1. IESE Business School, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain

    Domènec Melé

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Melé, D. Re-thinking Capitalism: What We can Learn from Scholasticism?. J Bus Ethics 133, 293–304 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2368-4

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