|
|
|
|
|
"ARE ECONOMISTS BASICALLY IMMORAL?": AND OTHER ESSAYS ON ECONOMICS, ETHICS, AND RELIGION BY PAUL HEYNE
| Our Price |
$ 26.40
|
|
| Retail Value |
$ 30.00 |
|
| You Save |
$ 3.60 (12%) |
|
| Item Number |
2186527 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Item Description...
Product Description
A well-trained theologian, a gifted and dedicated teacher of economics for over forty years, and the author of a highly regarded and widely used textbook, "The Economic Way of Thinking", Paul Heyne influenced generations of students of economics. Many of the essays in this volume are published here for the first time. The editors, Geoffrey Brennan and A M C Waterman, have divided Heyne's essays thematically to cover three general areas: the ethical foundations of free markets, the connection between those ethical foundations and Christian thought, and the teaching of economics - both method and substance.Heyne's writings are unique in that he takes the critics of the free market order seriously and addresses their arguments directly, showing how they are defective in their understanding of economics and in their ethical and theological underpinnings. The engaging style of Heyne's essays makes them accessible to students as well as to scholars. Even in discussions of topics well beyond the fundamental level, Heyne still succeeds in providing students with an appreciation of basic economic principles.
|
Item Specifications...
Pages 480
Dimensions: Length: 9.3" Width: 6.3" Height: 1.4"
Weight: 4.3 lbs.
Binding Hardcover
Release Date Nov 30, 2008
ISBN 0865977127
EAN 9780865977129
|
Availability 2 units.
Availability accurate as of May 30, 2012 05:39.
Usually ships within one to two business days from La Vergne, TN.
Orders shipping to an address other than a confirmed Credit Card / Paypal Billing address may incur and additional processing delay.
|
Product Categories
Similar Products
Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | Insights from one of the 20th century's most thoughtful and articulate economists Dec 10, 2009 |
Heyne's perspective is especially important because of his unique background in both ethics and economics. He was an excellent economist, but his Ph.D. was from the University of Chicago Divinity School, and he continued to read widely in ethics, political economy, and theology throughout his lifetime. Thus, his writings are particularly effective in using his understanding to explain economics to ethicists, especially to Christian theologians.
Because Heyne believed that the positive-normative distinction that many economists make is false and that economics is profoundly normative at its very base, his essays can thoughtfully engage those who criticize the ethics of economics on their own grounds. Heyne draws a distinction between personal relationships and the impersonal workings of the market. He argues that most ethicists, with their focus on the actors' intentions, fail to understand the impersonal nature of markets and the positive outcomes that result when people pursue their own objectives with little knowledge of others' goals. The failure to understand the distinction between the personal and the impersonal keeps most ethicists from understanding how markets work and how a social-coordination system based on private-property rights and prices is both morally defensible and socially useful. In fact, in the world of impersonal market relationships, if everyone focused on the needs of others, the results would be disastrous: the system would "come to a halt, at enormous cost to all participants if they were to act consistently on the principle of advancing the welfare of the most needy or most worthy--rather than focusing on the accomplishment of their own personal goals" (p. 33).
Justice is nevertheless important, and Heyne developed a well-articulated standard of justice for the world of impersonal markets. Rule-coordinated behavior enables social cooperation to occur among people who do not know each other well, and the rules that work the best in this situation are "clearly defined and readily exchangeable property rights" (p. 178). Efforts to replace the rule of law with direct government intervention usually produce injustice. "The justice or injustice of a social system will not be found in the pattern of outcomes it yields--its end states--but in the procedures through which those outcomes emerge. This is simply the only kind of justice of which social systems are capable" (p.182)....
Although Heyne concentrated a great deal of his writing and speaking on the interplay of economics and ethics, he also made a substantial contribution to the teaching of economics. His text The Economic Way of Thinking (12th Edition) was first published in 1973 and went through nine editions in his lifetime, and after his death, Peter Boettke and David Prychitko became coauthors. Owing to his textbook, Heyne became internationally famous as an innovative teacher of economics, and several essays in the volume edited by Brennan and Waterman summarize his approach to the pedagogy of economics. He believed that the economic way of thinking is a powerful and useful tool for understanding the world, but that only a limited number of concepts need be communicated to students in an introductory course. Most of these concepts can be articulated and used without the use of formal models, technical proofs, and elaborate graphs, which often cause the trees to hide the forest. His focus on the fundamental social-coordination process of markets and private property rights has influenced many economists, including me, to rethink fundamentally how they teach introductory economics.
I recommend Brennan and Waterman's collection to anyone who is concerned with the ethical implications and the efficacy of different social-coordination mechanisms. Paul Heyne was one of the most thoughtful and articulate thinkers of our time, and we are fortunate to have access to his ideas in this collection of his essays.
--Excerpt from a review by Peter J. Hill (The Independent Review, Winter 2010) | | | | Intriguing and enlightening the whole way through Mar 14, 2009 |
What's the price of a human life? "Are Economists Basically Immoral? and Other Essays on Economics, Ethics, and Religion" is a look economics and the moral and social contract of the world. All too often economists must attach costs to things with high emotional value, such as human and animal life, and there is much scholarly discussion on this topic contained within the pages of this volume. "Are Economists Basically Immoral?" is quite the piece for discussion, as it is intriguing and enlightening the whole way through.
| | | Write your own review about "ARE ECONOMISTS BASICALLY IMMORAL?": AND OTHER ESSAYS ON ECONOMICS, ETHICS, AND RELIGION BY PAUL HEYNE
|
Shopping Cart (0 Items)
