Economics of good and evil: the quest for economic meaning .../​ Tomas Sedlacek.

Title

• Economics of good and evil : the quest for economic meaning from Gilgamesh to Wall Street / Tomas Sedlacek.

Uniform Title

• Ekonomie dobra a zla. English

Author

• Sedláček, Tomáš, 1977-

Published

• New York ; Oxford : Oxford University Press, c2011.

Content Types

• text

Carrier Types

• volume

Physical Description

• xii, 352 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.

Subjects

• Economics -- Philosophy.
• Economics -- Moral and ethical aspects.
• Good and evil.
• Civilization -- History.
• Literature and morals.

Summary

• In The Economics of Good and Evil, Sedlacek radically rethinks his field, challenging our assumptions about the world. Economics is touted as a science, a value-free mathematical inquiry, he writes, but it's actually a cultural phenomenon, a product of our civilization. It began within philosophy--Adam Smith himself not only wrote The Wealth of Nations, but also The Theory of Moral Sentiments--and economics, as Sedlacek shows, is woven out of history, myth, religion, and ethics. "Even the most sophisticated mathematical model," Sedlacek writes, "is, de facto, a story, a parable, our effort to (rationally) grasp the world around us." Economics not only describes the world, but establishes normative standards, identifying ideal conditions. Science, he claims, is a system of beliefs to which we are committed. To grasp the beliefs underlying economics, he breaks out of the field's confines with a tour de force exploration of economic thinking, broadly defined, over the millennia. He ranges from the epic of Gilgamesh and the Old Testament to the emergence of Christianity, from Descartes and Adam Smith to the consumerism in Fight Club. Throughout, he asks searching meta-economic questions: What is the meaning and the point of economics? Can we do ethically all that we can do technically? Does it pay to be good?

Contents

• Pt. I: Ancient economics and beyond
• 1. The epic of Gilgamesh : on effectiveness, immortality, and the economics of friendship
• 2. The Old Testament : earthliness and goodness
• 3. Ancient Greece
• 4. Christianity : spirituality in the material world
• 5. Descartes the mechanic
• 6. Bernard Mandeville's beehive of vice
• 7. Adam Smith, blacksmith of economics
• pt. II : Blasphemous thoughts
• 8. Need for greed : the history of want
• Progress, new Adam, and Sabbath economics
• 10. The axis of good and evil and the Bibles of economics
• 11. The history of the invisible hand of the market and homo economicus
• 12. The history of animal spirits : the dream never sleeps
• 13. Metamathematics
• 2 More...

Notes

• Formerly CIP.
• Includes bibliographical references (p.325-340) and index.

Language

• English