Table Of ContentVirtue and economy
Rethinking Political
and International Theory
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Virtue and Economy
Essays on Morality and Markets
edited by
andriuS BieLSKiS
Mykolas Romeris University, Lithuania
KeLVin KniGHt
London Metropolitan University, UK
First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
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711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © Andrius Bielskis and Kelvin Knight 2015
Andrius Bielskis and Kelvin Knight have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
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Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Bielskis, Andrius, 1973–
Virtue and economy : essays on morality and markets / by Andrius Bielskis and Kelvin Knight.
pages cm. – (Rethinking political and international theory)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4724-1256-0 (hardback)
1. Economics–Moral and ethical aspects. 2.
Economics–Philosophy. I. Knight, Kelvin. II. Title.
HB72.B53 2015
174’.4–dc23
2014041309
ISBN: 9781472412560 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781315548067 (ebk)
In memory of truly virtuous men:
Antanas Andrius Bielskis, an excellent scientist and opera singer,
and
Vincent Stanley Nickels Knight, an excellent electronic engineer
and beekeeper.
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Contents
List of Contributors ix
Introduction 1
Andrius Bielskis and Kelvin Knight
PART I The VIRTue CRITIque of CAPITAlIsT eConomy
1 The Irrelevance of Ethics 7
Alasdair MacIntyre
2 Neoliberalism and its Threat to Moral Agency 23
Bob Brecher
3 Economics as Ethical Pre-condition of the Credit Crunch 33
William Dixon and David Wilson
4 Is Aristotelian Capitalism Possible? 55
Rajeev Sehgal
PART II PolemICIsIng The CRITIque
5 Equality, Vulnerability and Independence 75
John O’Neill
6 No Place to Hide for the Moral Self: Bureaucratic
Individualism and the Fate of Ethics in Modernity 95
Peter McMylor
7 Reappraising Neoliberalism: Homo Economicus,
Practitioners and Practices 109
Mustafa Ongun
8 The Great Perverting Transformation 135
Niko Noponen
Virtue and eConomy
PART III AlTeRnATIVes To CAPITAlIsT eConomy
9 Goods, Interests and the Language of Morals 155
Piotr Machura
10 Formalising Functions: The History of a Passing
Challenge to Capitalist Economy 171
Kelvin Knight
11 Towards a Critical Ethical Economy 191
Russell Keat
12 How Is Ethical Revolution Possible? 213
Buket Korkut Raptis
13 Anti-Capitalist Politics and Labour for the Twenty-first
Century: History and Future Challenges 229
Andrius Bielskis
Index 249
viii
List of Contributors
Andrius Bielskis is Professor of Political Theory at Mykolas Romeris
University and one of the leading public intellectuals in Lithuania. Previously,
he was Professor at ISM University of Management and Economics. Professor
Bielskis is also the Director of DEMOS Institute of Critical Thought. He
is the author of many scholarly articles, of the books The Unholy Sacrament.
Ideology, Faith, and the Politics of Emancipation (Demos, 2014), Towards a Post-Modern
Understanding of the Political (Palgrave, 2005), and is the editor of Democracy
Without Labour Movement? (Kitos knygos, 2009). His research focuses on the
utilisation of virtue ethics in constructing an alternative political, economic and
institutional order in the post-modern world. Currently, he is also an adviser to
the Prime Minister of Lithuania, Algirdas Butkevičius.
Bob Brecher is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Brighton,
Director of its Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics & Ethics and Co-Director
of the Understanding Violent Conflict Research Cluster. He has published
over sixty articles in moral theory, applied ethics and politics, healthcare and
medical ethics, sexual politics, terrorism and the politics of higher education.
His latest book, Torture and the Ticking Bomb (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007) is the first
book-length rebuttal of calls to legalise interrogational torture. Currently he
is working on a theory of morality as practical reason, building on his earlier
Getting What You Want? A Critique of Liberal Morality (Routledge, 1997). A past
president of the Association for Legal and Social Philosophy, he is also on
the Board of a number of academic journals and Co-Editor of Rowman and
Littlefield International’s Off The Fence series.
William Dixon is currently a lecturer in the Guildhall Faculty of Business and
Law, London Metropolitan University. He researches economic theory especially
as its assumptions and methods relate to political, social, ethical and business
issues. He is currently researching with David Wilson the importance of moral
competence in relation to the emergence of money, economics, the corporation
and the conduct of banking, especially relating to the banking crisis. The core
ideas of this work have appeared in A History of Homo Economicus; the Nature of
the Moral in Economic Theory (Routledge, 2012).
