Book Review ‘A short history of ethics and economics – the Greeks’

Abstract

The book’s cover pictures the sculptures of the four Greek philosophers whose work the book discusses: Socrates, Xenophon, Aristotle and Plato. This picture conveys the main message of the book, namely that economics is not independent from philosophy, including ethics, not today just like it was not in the past. More precisely, the book aims to trace two modern approaches of recognizing economics as a moral science back to ancient Greek thought about the economy and its embeddedness in society. These two modern approaches, referred to as grand narratives, are first the well-known Capability Approach, led by Amartya Sen, and second, much less known, a critical approach not specified but indicated as represented by “Cropsey, Staveley and their Followers” (p. 8). The choice of these two approaches, in particular with this dis-balance in the extent of their development in economics is not convincing to me. The Capability Approach has its own association and conferences, a journal, (even Nobel Prize winner), and a policy dimension through the UN’s annual Human Development Report. I am not aware of such an influence on the discipline of the other approach, but, of course, that may be attributable to my biases or ignorance. More importantly, a selection of a set of modern approaches that recognize economics as a moral science is not necessary for the book’s objective, and neither is the checklist provided at the end of chapter one. Because the book very well succeeds in demonstrating how the Ancient Greeks connected ethics to their economic thinking, and how these connections have been lost in much of today’s economics.