Ken Stikkers

For over 2000 years, economics was studied in the West as a branch of ethics, or moral philosophy. Presently, though, few economists and no textbook in economic orthodoxy claim any close connection between economic science and philosophy. However, might the current 'crises' in economics, and in the economics profession have their deep roots in the separation of economics from philosophy and ethics? American pragmatism, among the various contemporary philosophic traditions, lends itself specially to dialogue with economics because of its view of philosophy as an instrument for solving the real, concrete problems of human life, both personal and social. The essays in this volume, drawing heavily on the tradition of pragmatism, suggest that the economic crises of our time might not be merely technical in nature - that is, the result of faulty applications of economic tools by politicians and policy makers, based up conventional economic models - but also due to the faulty philosophical assumptions underlying those models. These essays suggest that the overcoming of our current economic crises requires that economists once again become moral philosophers, or that philosophers once again engage themselves in economic matters. In either case, this volume aims to foster dialogue between the two disciplines and in that way, contribute to the improvement of contemporary economic life. This book is suitable for those who study political economy, economic theory and economic philosophy.

from my first courses as an undergraduate in African American studies, I have been concerned about the dynamics by which white and Black1 people discuss race. For one, I was troubled in my undergraduate African American studies courses by the ease with which white students would insert themselves into conversations where, it seemed to me, they simply did not belong, for example, conversations concerning visions for the future of the Black community and strategies for achieving such visions. Shannon Sullivan speaks of this phenomenon, accurately I believe, as “ontological expansiveness”: one central feature of privilege is a sense of entitlement to enter every room without first considering whether or not one is ..

capitalist proponents and orthodox Marxists alike tend to agree that capitalism entails a significant break from systems of chattel slavery: both claim that there is a significant, substantive difference between a system that commands and oppresses labor directly and one that commands labor indirectly through the private ownership of capital, although Marxists would deny that the latter is any less oppressive that the former. Apologists for capitalism commonly claim that the rise of that system ended slavery and that the overthrow of slavery by “free labor” is the clearest evidence of capitalism’s moral superiority over other economic systems. Orthodox Marxists, such as Eugene Genovese, concur that slavery in the Americas was “precapitalist,”(45) and that capitalism brought it to an end, although they would maintain more continuities between the two systems than capitalism’s defenders would admit, and deny any moral advantage to “wage slavery” over chattel slavery. Defenders of capitalism are wrong on this matter for several reasons, but what I wish to focus upon in this paper is how a Weberian understanding of capitalism as a “spirit” or ethos, rather than in terms of a set of economic institutions and practices, demonstrates how the Caribbean slave trade was an early manifestation of capitalism rather than its antithesis.

despite the fact that pragmatism spawned a whole school of economics, namely, Institutionalism, relatively little work has been done by pragmatists in philosophy to apply pragmatism to contemporary economic issues or to the rethinking of economic theory, which seems to be unraveling in the current state of economic crisis. There are notable exceptions, of course, and I mention here especially the work of Judith Green, in applying pragmatism in the furtherance of economic democracy; Larry Hickman’s fine essays in deepening our understanding of the pragmatist sources of Institutionalist thinkers such as Thorstein Veblen ; and Ron Nahser, a marketing executive who also wrote and published..

Let me begin by repeating my remarks at the close of the annual Business Meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, March 17, 2012 :"We call ourselves the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, but one of the hopes of at least Josiah Royce and John Dewey was that great societies might eventually grow into great communities. So I am deeply honored today to assume the position of SAAP's new President because it is an honor that comes not merely from a society of professional colleagues but from a community of friends who have nurtured and supported me for thirty-seven years, both professionally and personally. Initially I came to SAAP in order to share common philosophical ..

Max Scheler seems to present two distinct approaches to philosophy of culture. In the early period of his Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik and “Ordo Amoris,” he describes cultures as being defined by their distinct order of value preferencings. In his later period of his “Probleme einer Soziologie des Wissens,” however, Scheler explains the dynamics of culture in terms of the interaction of what he calls “real” and “ideal sociological factors,” rooted in various drives and spirit, respectively. These approaches are fully compatible and complementary, the former describing culture’s vertical structure and the latter, its horizontal structure. Together these two approaches offer a comprehensive philosophy of culture, deserving greater attention.

While the idea of worker-owned cooperatives is centuries-old, the network of over 300 such enterprises in the Basque region of Spain and founded upon Catholic social justice teachings, is the most successful and impressive in history. The central claim of this paper is that the worker-owned, Mondragon cooperatives demonstrate not only how economic institutions can be structured so as to promote the common good but also how participation in them can engender a concern for the common good among individual participants in those institutions, which spills over into their broader participation as citizens in the larger community. The paper advances this thesis by, first, providing a brief history of the Mondragon cooperatives, from their founding in the 1950s by Father Jose Arizmendiarrieta, the parish priest in the village of Mondragon, trained in economics. Second, it outlines the central principles of Catholic social justice teachings regarding economy that form the foundation for the Mondragon cooperatives and how those teachings have been institutionalized in the cooperatives’ democratic managerial practices and their creative financial structures. While Father Arizmendiarrieta drew mainly from Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, this paper shows how Mondragon’s policies and practices are also in keeping with later Church teachings, as put forward especially by Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis I. Third, the paper contrasts the understanding of the common good in Catholic social teachings and the Mondragon cooperatives, on the one hand, to the notion of the common good found in mainstream classical and neoclassical economics. The latter sees society as merely the sum of its individual members and hence the common good as but the sum of individual goods, or aggregate utility. The former, by contrast, sees society as a living organism, the whole of which is greater than the sum of its parts, and hence it understands the common good as greater than the sum of individual goods, but also including the organic relationships among individuals. Fourth, the paper describes how participation in the cooperatives engenders, cultivates, and deepens worker-members’ sense and understanding of the common good and their commitment to it.

The aim of this paper is to trace how a perverted understanding of the human – of human nature, growth, and well-being – came to form the foundation for classical liberal economic thought and to identify some of the negative consequences of this development. My suggestion is that, in response to the social upheaval of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries that would lead to the rise of capitalism and make possible the industrial revolution, moral philosophers applied to humans and to human society mechanistic principles from the highly successful natural sciences in an effort to make sense of a social world that had ceased to make sense. Thus emerged the impoverished view of the human that lies at the foundation of mainstream economic thinking: homo economicus – the human as a rational, utility-optimizing machine, driven by unlimited desires.

Economist Amartya Sen’s and philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach to economic development enjoys global attention, and there has been considerable interest in connections between it and pragmatism. 1 This paper argues, first, that there are indeed strong, productive affinities between Sen’s and Nussbaum’s understanding of ‘capabilities’ in rethinking how economies are to be developed and measured, on the one hand, and John Dewey’s notion of ‘growth’ and applications of pragmatism to economics, by economists such as Thorstein Veblen, John Commons, and, more recently, Daniel Bromley, to rethink and to reconstruct their discipline, on the other. Second, the paper suggests that Dewey’s notion of ‘growth’ can do much to strengthen and to deepen Sen’s and Nussbaum’s “capabilities approaches” to economics. Third, it suggests that Dewey enriches notions of ‘science’ and ‘democracy’, which are largely underdeveloped in capabilities approaches.

In volumes two and three of The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault recovers an ancient ethical tradition of “aesthetics of existence,” or “art of living”—the “elaboration of one’s own life as a personal work of art”—centered on the notion of “care of the self.” This ethic invites one to think of one’s life as one’s primarywork of art, and hence is a matter strictly of personal choice and freedom, while the codified ethics characterizing Christianity and modernity are matters of universal obligation. The paper demonstrates 1) that the “art of living” has been a central theme in the American philosophical tradition at least since Thoreau, 2)that many of the positive features of Foucault’s presentation of such an ethic are found throughout that tradition, and 3) that the American tradition, especially Dewey, resolved more successfully than Foucault some of the problems in aesthetics of existence.

The purpose of this dissertation is twofold: first, to set forth a social theory of space based upon, but not restricted to, the philosophy of Max Scheler, and second, to apply such a theory to the contemporary experience of space in technological society. Such an experience, I suggest, is marked by a tension between 'societal space' and 'communal place'. Societal space affords one privacy, autonomy, and individual freedom, but it also is fragmented and alienating. Communal place, on the other hand, affords one a sense of integrity, intimacy, and belongingness, but it also seems rigid and stifling. ;The central theses is that, viewed sociologially, space is a value horizon against which, or a value context within which, all experience occurs. That is, the experience of space is largely sociologically conditioned by the ethos, or value comportment, of the group to which one belongs. Consequently there is a correlation between what Scheler terms the 'industrial ethos' and the modern experience of space as 'empty.' ;The experience of space is closely connected with what numerous intellectuals of the twentieth century have described as the 'crisis' of Western man's self-understanding. For if modern man has forgotten who he is and the meaning of his existence, then this is also to say that he has lost his sense of place in the cosmos. ;Our manner of investigating the experience of space is a type of phenomenology that Scheler described as a 'psychic technique of non-resistance.' This technique is applied to interpersonal relations and combined with Scheler's theory of values and sociology of knowledge. Social groups are organic wholes, and their essential cores are their ethoses, or value comportmens, which generate all social relations. Thus all perceptions of space are parts of the organic, comprehensive world-views in and out of which they have grown

What is a “public intellectual”? And, what is the public responsibility of intellectuals? I wish to place these issues at the intersection of John Dewey’s notion of “publics” and his call for a recovery of philosophy, which I take to be a broader call for a recovery of intellectual life generally. My analysis from such a perspective will suggest the public responsibility of intellectuals to be at least three-fold: 1) to identify and maintain citizens’ focus on the concrete problems that define publics, thereby facilitating the bringing of publics into being and maintaining them as long as they continue to be useful for solving such problems; 2) to aid in the creation of experimental methods whereby social intelligence and resources might be better directed to those problems’ resolutions; and 3) to bring publics to self awareness through the redirection of traditional symbols and the forging of new ones so as to create shared meanings and feelings of common interest, i.e., to aid in the transformation of the Great Society into the Great Community

This article argues that the Mondragon cooperatives, a network of worker-owned businesses in the Basque region of Spain, offers a concrete example of Deweyan economy, wherein democracy is part of everyday work-life. It first identifies three central features of Deweyan economy: a) its notion of economic growth is rooted in human growth; b) it is organic and evolutionary, not ideological or utopian; and c) it is empirical and experimental. Second, the article sketches some of the important historical and phi-losophical influences upon and distinct features of the Mondragon cooperatives, and, third, it indicates how the Mondragon cooperatives manifest each of the three central fea-tures of Deweyan economy. The article concludes by suggesting that the Mondragon co-operatives have achieved a previously unknown level of economic democracy and that its recent modifications in response to changing economic conditions, far from being retreats from fundamental principles, as some critics maintain, are evidence of Mondragon’s ex-perimental, non-ideological character. Furthermore, it is an economic model that tran-scends the stale, false capitalist-socialist dichotomy and thereby helps us to imagine crea-tive solutions to current economic problems