Abstract
Pope Benedict XVI’s 2009 Encyclical-Letter “Caritas in Veritate,” (CV) breaks some new ground in the tradition of Catholic social teaching. I argue that explicitly this document makes a call for a new theory of economic exchange. Whereas, the traditional scholastic theory of the “just price” was focused on “the principle of the equivalence in value of exchanged goods” (CV 35), a new theory of exchange must focus instead on “a metaphysical understanding of the relations between persons” (CV 53). True, Thomas Aquinas pioneered this new approach to the morality of exchange when he argued that the Golden Rule must take precedence over the logic of the just price: the relation between persons must trump the relation between the goods exchanged. Caritas in Veritate argues further for a new theory of exchange that combines elements of mutual gain with elements of gift-giving. Here again we see a revision of traditional scholastic theory in which every transaction was defined exclusively either as a unilateral gift (subject to norms of distributive justice and charity) or as a bilateral exchange (subject to norms of commutative justice). Benedict, by contrast, calls for a vision of economic life in which gift-giving and exchange are mixed, so that bargains are “redolent with the spirit of gift” (CV 37) in a new “economy of gratuitousness” (CV 38). I propose to outline a new theory of exchange in which the elements of mutual gain and gift-giving are combined. To do so, I shall have to revise the traditional scholastic analysis of the just price, which was focused on the equality of the goods exchanged and instead focus on the moral equality of the parties to an exchange.
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Notes
Available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html. Accessed 14 July 2011.
Although many scholastics admitted the possibility of mixed contracts, the dominant scholastic analysis insisted that every transaction have only one purpose, either liberality or exchange. As Gordley says of the late scholastics: “The concept of final cause allowed them to define these transactions in terms of a single purpose or end: in a gratuitous transaction, to perform an act of liberality; in an exchange, to receive an equivalent for what one gave” (Gordley 1991, p. 166).
The doctrine of “substantive unconscionability” focuses on disparities in the value of the objects exchanged while “procedural unconscionability” focuses on disparities in the power of the parties to an exchange.
Hobbes (1994, pp. xv, 14).
St. Aquinas (1964, II-II, 77,1c).
Aristotle says of these cases: “These sorts of actions, then, are mixed. But they would seem to be more like voluntary actions” (Aristotle 1999, 1110a 12).
Aristotle says “everything caused by ignorance is non-voluntary” at Aristotle (1999, 1110b 18).
See Nozick’s account of voluntary exchange in Nozick (1974, pp. 262–265).
For an analysis and defense of the just price tradition from Aristotle through the late-scholastics, see Gordley (1991).
In focusing on the equality of the parties to an exchange, I am following Ernest J. Weinrib’s discussion of corrective justice in his. Weinrib (1995, pp. 76–83). Cf. Comte-Sponville (2001, pp. 68–69): “…the equality essential to justice is an equality not so much between the objects exchanged…as between the subjects involved in the exchange….”
In Latin, munus means both gift and bribe; in Attic Greek, dorodokeo means to receive gifts or bribes and dorophoreo means to present gifts or bribes.
Abraham bargains with God over the “cost” of destroying Sodom at Genesis 18:22–32.
“To give is to show one’s superiority, to show that one is something more and higher, that one is magister. To accept without returning or repaying more is to face subordination, to become a client and subservient, to become minister” (Mauss 1967, p. 72).
See Emerson and Dillon cited in Baron (1988–1989, at p. 195n.).
“The gift not yet repaid debases the man who accepted it, particularly if he did so without thought of return…charity wounds him who receives, and our whole moral effort is directed towards suppressing the unconscious harmful patronage of the rich almoner” (Mauss 1967, p. 63).
Codex 4.44.2. See next footnote.
For the sources of my discussion of laesio enormis, see Murphy (2002).
Fuller (1981, p. 180).
References
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Baron, J. B. (1988–1989). Gifts, bargains, and form. Indiana Law Journal, 64, 155–203, at p. 195n.
Comte-Sponville, A. (2001). A small treatise on the great virtues (pp. 68–69). New York: Henry Holt.
Fuller, L. L. (1981). The principles of social order. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Gordley, J. (1991). The philosophical origins of modern contract doctrine. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hobbes, T. (1994). Leviathan (E. Curley, Ed.). Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis, IN.
Mauss, M. (1967). The gift (p. 72) (I. Cunnison, Trans.). New York: W.W. Norton.
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Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, state, and utopia (pp. 262–265). New York: Basic Books.
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Murphy, J.B. The Morality of Bargaining: Insights from “Caritas in Veritate”. J Bus Ethics 100 (Suppl 1), 79–88 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-012-1229-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-012-1229-2