Koen Byttebier

Al geruime tijd is het duidelijk dat het vigerende systeem van inrichting van de socio-economische ordening, met name het kapitalisme, zijn limieten heeft bereikt. Na ruim vier decennia te zijn blootgesteld aan het economisch neoliberalisme, zijn de geglobaliseerde, kapitalistische samenlevingen verzeild in een veelheid aan fundamentele problemen, waarvoor niet langer evidente oplossingen in het vooruitzicht kunnen worden gesteld, waaronder: (1) een toenemende schuldenberg; (2) blijvende armoede en polarisering tussen rijken en armen, naast (3) een quasi-onoplosbare milieuproblematiek (met inbegrip van de klimaatverandering). In dit boek wordt uiteen gezet dat dit alles geen toeval is, maar het rechtstreekse gevolg van een aantal waardekeuzes sinds de late middeleeuwen. Hierdoor kreeg de ondernemersklasse (in de ruime zin van het woord) een absoluut vrijgeleide om de wereld te hervormen tot een systeem waarin alles en iedereen functie werd van hun egoïstische streven naar almaar meer rijkdom, waaraan alle andere waarden systematisch werden geslachtofferd. Alhoewel er in de loop van de tweede helft van de 20ste eeuw is gepoogd om aan het kapitalisme een iets menselijker gelaat te verlenen, leidend tot de welvaartstaten, heeft het economisch-neoliberale denken, vanaf de jaren 1980, ook aan deze inspanningen grotendeels een halt toegeroepen. In dit boek worden de ethische keuzes die dit alles hebben veroorzaakt niet alleen aan een nauwgezette analyse onderworpen, maar wordt meteen ook gepeild naar mogelijke uitwegen.

The book analyzes socioeconomic through the lens of a lawyer. In the past decade the world has witnessed some severe financial and economic crises, espe­cially the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The author states that the socio-economic order has in the past four to five decades been thoroughly redesigned, generally favouring models that prio­ritize the free market over the public interest or even, more generally, government operation. He works out that during four to five decades, globalized, capitalist societies are facing a multiplicity of fundamental problems, such as: (1) increasing debt that severely burdens both the private and public sectors; (2) persistent poverty and an ever-increasing polarization between rich and poor, in addition to (3) intractable environmental problems that, fifty years after the Club of Rome's report entitled ‘Limits to growth’ (1972), has dragged the world into what in recent years has been referred to as "climate change." The book explains why all this is the direct result of value choices made from the late Middle Ages onwards, when in the Western world the societal models of that time were increasingly abandoned for a societal model that came to rely on the primacy of economic interests. The book not only subjects the ethical choices but also examines various problems it has caused and probes for possible ways out. This is an open access book.

The One Light asks a question that is simple to state and difficult to settle. When the contemplatives of the world’s traditions describe what they have found at the depth of things, are they describing the same reality? The book answers that they probably are and does so in two movements. Part One builds its case on four mutually supporting observations. First, the convergence of the fruits: across traditions with no historical contact and no shared vocabulary, those regarded as having gone furthest are described in strikingly similar terms — a combination of serenity and intensity, of detachment and compassion, of fearlessness before death and tenderness before suffering. Second, the convergence of the methods: the disciplines independently evolved to bring that transformation about are far more alike than the doctrines that surround them. The Christian hesychast repeating a prayer in the rhythm of the breath, the Buddhist following the breath, the Hindu repeating a mantra and the Sufi in dhikr differ in what they believe and barely at all in what they do. Third, the convergence of the apophatic moment: wherever the traditions reach towards the ultimate they reach, at the limit, for negation — neti neti, the Tao that cannot be named, the Godhead beyond God, the emptiness that is also fullness. That traditions with utterly different positive doctrines agree at their deepest point that the positive doctrines fail is among the most remarkable facts in the history of religion. Fourth, a structural expectation: if there is an ultimate reality and human beings can make real but partial contact with it, the pattern the traditions display is precisely the pattern one would predict. Part Two belongs to the old genre of the manual of the devout life. It treats stillness and prayer, detachment, humility, love, attentiveness, discernment, conscience, reading and listening, the body, gratitude, beauty and friendship, and it handles the vexed question of teachers and communities at length and without sentimentality. It then turns to the trials — the withdrawal of consolation, the subtle traps by which the ego appropriates the way, perseverance, surrender — and to the way within an ordinary life of work, money and dependants, closing with a rule of life, the use of suffering and the hour of death.

This book presents a thorough and critical evaluation of the monetary and financial system prevalent in Western economies. Further, it seeks to explain why this system so often leads to financial crises and why they have been dealt with unsatisfactorily in the past. In order to provide answers to these questions, the book investigates the monetary and financial system from a multidisciplinary perspective, with a strong focus on the ethical value choices which throughout history have shaped the monetary and financial legal system. In the closing chapters, the book also advances a detailed proposal for a New Global Monetary Order, one based on altruism, as an alternative to the neoliberal values dominant today.

This book examines how legal systems and mechanisms give shape to the capitalist economic system. In this regard, it focuses on the most important of these systems, such as monetary and financial law, company law, fiscality, contract and labour law. Further, the book provides a thorough analysis of the underlying ethical values of said legal systems and mechanisms. It also gives an overview of several potentially devastating related effects, such as poverty, the increasing polarisation between rich and poor, climate change, and mounting debts at both the public and private level. The book concludes by presenting proposals for change. Given its critical analysis of legal systems and mechanisms in connection with the value choices dictated by economic ideologies, the book will be of particular interest to legal and economic academics, researchers and students, but also to policymakers, and, more generally, to anyone with a genuine concern for how the socio-economic order will evolve.