The Ethics of Economic Responsibility Economics and Humanities Series

The Ethics of Economic Responsibility raises fundamental ethical questions related to the conceptualization of economic responsibility, that is: the imperative to fulfil certain economic obligations. It builds on a basic characterization of the question of ethics in order to introduce responsibility as a constitutive element for a new determination of economic knowledge.

Drawing on the metaphysical tradition of philosophy, the book explores the distinction between "operability-based-responsibility" and "end-in-itself-based responsibility" and also considers what is tentatively called "being-related responsibility". By presenting these arguments about the notion of economic responsibility, the book contributes to the growing calls for ethical questions to not be merely complementary to the ongoing discourse of economic sciences, but rather to sit at its core, in such a way as to restore the intrinsic ethical dimension of economics itself.

The book marks a significant contribution to the literature on the philosophy of economics, applied ethics more broadly, and the critical discourse concerning mainstream economics.

Preliminary Remarks. 1. The Rise of Responsibility to Become a Key Concept of Our Time. 2. Two Kinds of Responsibility. 2.1. The Guiding Question of Modern Ethics. 2.2. Operability-Based and End-in-Itself-Based Responsibility. 2.3. Operative Concepts and Ontological Concepts of Responsibility. 3. Reduction to the Necessary. 3.1. Constraints of Being. 3.2. One Foot in the Air. 3.3. The Premise of Reason. 3.4. Contingent Ground and Entruing Element. 4. The Conceptualization of Economic Responsibility. 4.1. Contextual Economic Responsibility. 4.2. No-Man’s-Land of Ethical Theory. 4.3. John Maurice Clarke’s Changing Basis of Economic Responsibility. 4.4. The Friedman Doctrine. 4.5. Economic Responsibility and Truth. 5. Outlook. Bibliography.

Ralf Lüfter is Assistant Professor of Moral Philosophy at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Innsbruck. Major areas of interest are Ethics, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Economics, and Poetical Sources of Economic Knowledge. His research focuses on the fundamental structures of sense that inform key concepts of economics