Ethics and Justice
The ethics of economic systems deals with the issues such as how it is right (just, fair) to keep or distribute economic goods. Economic systems as a product of collective activity allow examination of their ethical consequences for all of their participants. Ethics and economics relates ethical studies to welfare economics. It is has been argued that a closer relation between welfare economics and modern ethical studies may enrich both areas, even including predictive and descriptive economics as to rationality of behavior, given social interdependence.
Ethics and justice overlap disciplines in different ways. Approaches are regarded as more philosophical when they study the fundamentals - for example, John Rawls' A Theory of Justice (1971) and Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974). 'Justice' in economics is a subcategory of welfare economics with models frequently representing the ethical-social requirements of a given theory. "Practical" matters include such subjects as law and cost–benefit analysis
Utilitarianism, one of the ethical methodologies, has its origins inextricably interwoven with the emergence of modern economic thought. Today utilitarianism has spread throughout applied ethics as one of a number of approaches. Non-utilitarian approaches in applied ethics are also now used when questioning the ethics of economic systems - e.g. rights-based (deontological) approaches.
Many political ideologies have been an immediate outgrowth of reflection on the ethics of economic systems. Marx, for example, is generally regarded primarily as a philosopher, his most notable work being on the philosophy of economics.
Read more about this topic: Philosophy And Economics, Scope
Famous quotes containing the words ethics and, ethics and/or justice:
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Indeed the involuntary character of psychiatric treatment is at odds with the spirit and ethics of medicine itself.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)
“You cannot do justice to the dead. When we talk about doing justice to the dead we are talking about retribution for the harm done to them. But retribution and justice are two different things.”
—William, Lord Shawcross (b. 1902)