GRATEFUL TO ECONOMY
Editorial
As a real process, economy is among the most meaningful forms of worldlization of human beings. To have a world always means also to work. Hence, the attitude toward economy can never be separated from the attitude toward the world in general. As there can be a Weltverneinung, a denial of the world, likewise there can be a denial of the economic forms that, time after time, worldlization assumes. Leggi tutto »
This essay reflects on the radical change in the meaning and role of economy in relation to processes of subjectification and to the social and political bond. The genealogy of the theological-economic paradigm, which accompanies the theological-political one, highlights how economy cannot be exhausted in economy strictly defined but rather fulfills the role of logic of government. On this path, the turn toward the bio-economic production of lives is marked by the marginalizing perspective that replaces the centrality of needs with desire (a mark of subjectivity) only so as then to rule desire through rational choice.
“Economics” and “ecology” are disciplines that share the same etymological root. Despite this fact, however, they have followed very different lines of development. Economics has focused on human beings, and has ended up ignoring nature. Contrariwise, ecology has concentrated on the study of nature, ignoring human beings and society. This is clearly an unsatisfactory situation. Disciplines such as environmental economics or ecological economics have been introduced so as to remedy the situation. This essay explores the philosophical presuppositions of such endeavors. In particular, through the debate on the limits of development, it explores the various value presuppositions that have rendered the emergence of consensus difficult.
Moving from a critique of capitalism as a model of global civilization that needs to be overcome, the essay delineates the turns necessary for the construction of an alternative. The first turn is of a spiritual-anthropological kind; the second is of an ethical type; and the third is of a technical-economic nature. The leading thread in these correlative turns is a criterion of justice according to human dignity and the common good.
The essay begins with an analysis of Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population, in which one can retrace a physicalism of space: the want of room implies the failure of all politics of distribution that are not first concerned with a decrease in the birth rate. Following up on this, Aristotle’s principle of non-contradiction (that is, philosophy itself) is interpreted as an economic device that creates room where there is none—something like a space generator. Whereas in the traditional static interpretation of it the principle of non-contradiction does not leave the realm of distribution, in a dynamic interpretation it actualizes an addition (it generates space). On its turn, economy does not simply distribute the already existing space but rather generates added space. Economics is therefore a philosophical science.
In the last decades, the market has occupied an increasingly greater space within our society—many goods that once were free now require a charge. Yet, in the current situation, one must rethink both the fundamental economic categories (beginning with exchange and property) and
Economy and ecology are both derived from oikos, which is the Greek word for “home” or “household.” Ecology is the science of the household, both local and at the level of Gaia, our planetary home. Economy is supposed to be the management of the household. Aristotle referred to oikonomia as the art of living. He differentiated it from Chrematistics, the art of money making. Leggi tutto »