Summaries & Keywords

Peter A. Redpath, Marvin B. D. Peláez, Jason Morgan, “A Return to Pre-Modern Principles of Economic Science: Editors’ Introduction,” Studia Gilsoniana 8, no. 4 (October–December 2019): 777–787, DOI: 10.26385/SG.080431

SUMMARY: This edition of Studia Gilsoniana inaugurates submission of articles on economic science based upon pre-modern principles of philosophy/science. Today, many journals address the intersection of economics and philosophy. Their contributors include practicing economists, economic historians, economist-philosophers, philosopher-economists, and economic methodologists. Research in this interdisciplinary field began to appear in the 1970s and later took shape in the 1980s with the appearance of its specialized academic journals. Today, the intersection of economics and philosophy is a vibrant area of inquiry and research. Books and journal pages are replete with references to classical philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle and their contributions to economic science. However, stronger connections need to be made related to the application of economic principles from the past to the present based upon enduring pre-modern principles of science. This is precisely what this inaugural issue celebrates.

KEYWORDS: economic science, pre-modernism, principle, philosophy, science, economics.

Patrick S. J. Carmack, “Reforming the Primary Instrumental Cause of Increasing Income Inequality,” Studia Gilsoniana 8, no. 4 (October–December 2019): 789–818, DOI: 10.26385/SG.080432

SUMMARY: It is undisputed that fewer and fewer people own and control more and more of the total material wealth of the world, and conversely, that more and more people—the vast majority of mankind—own and control less and less of it, which situation is rapidly worsening. This paper identifies and examines the primary instrumental cause (i.e., prescinding from human avarice) for that phenomenon, which we argue is the usurpation of the sovereign right of money creation, known as seigniorage (from the Old French seigneuriage, “right of the lord to mint money”). This usurpation has been accomplished by a cunning and complex banking technique known as fractional reserve banking, which enables banks to make loans based on the fraudulent representation that they possess sufficient reserves to back the loans (described in detail in the article). Originally considered criminal, and its practitioners even subject to the death penalty, over the last three centuries by hook or by crook fractional reserve banking has been legalized in nearly all the nations of the world, to the benefit of bankers and the harm of all other economic sectors and the public.
The article then examines the deleterious effects of fractional reserve banking on capitalism, and how its extirpation may be accomplished, thereby reforming capitalism—“which is not of its nature vicious”—into a more just economic system. Finally we note how socialism—in any of its various stripes—is radically contrary to the private ownership of material goods necessary for proper human liberty, and rooted as it is in the purely materialistic notion that man should be subject to the State or society in order to to maximize production, cannot be acceptably reformed. Economics is not necessarily a zero sum game: even when vitiated by fractional reserve banking capitalism will result in greater total wealth, but shared more and more unequally, whereas socialism inevitably results in less total wealth, recalling Winston Churchill’s apt observation that: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of the miseries.”

KEYWORDS: economic inequality, fractional reserve banking, full reserve banking, seignoirage, capitalism, socialism, free market economics, economic reform.

Ricardo F. Crespo, “Aristotle’s Principles for Modern Economic Science,” Studia Gilsoniana 8, no. 4 (October–December 2019): 819–837, DOI: 10.26385/SG.080433

SUMMARY: This paper is an attempt to illuminate today’s economic science with the light of Aristotle’s philosophy of economics. The author first describes Aristotle’s thoughts about the economy. Then, he distinguishes and discusses three Aristotelian principles: (a) economics should be a classical practical or moral science, (b) economics should not look for an unlimited wealth, but for the wealth necessary for the good life, and (c) economics should be aimed at the common good.

KEYWORDS: Aristotle, economics, chrematistics, economic science, wealth, moral science, good life, common good.

Thomas A. Michaud, “Blasts from the Preclassical Past: Why Contemporary Economics Education Should Listen to Preclassical Thought,” Studia Gilsoniana 8, no. 4 (October–December 2019): 839–855, DOI: 10.26385/SG.080434

SUMMARY: Contemporary economics is dominated by logical positivism, a methodology that emphasizes empirical validation of theories but excludes normative evaluation. Preclassical economics was premised on normative analysis. With the growing socialist movement in the USA, especially among the millennials, who are fixated on moral issues of justice and equality, positive economics is alienated from addressing the normative challenges of socialism. There are, however, basic normative principles from Preclassical thought which can be used to contest socialist moral claims, particularly in economics education.

KEYWORDS: economics, millennials, economics education, business ethics, private property, just price, Michael Novak, preclassical economics, business corporation, entrepreneurship, wealth creation.

Jason Morgan, “Is the ‘Human Action’ in Human Action Human Action? Mises, Hayek, and Aristotle on ‘Capitalism’ and Human Flourishing,” Studia Gilsoniana 8, no. 4 (October–December 2019): 857–884, DOI: 10.26385/SG.080435

SUMMARY: Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action is a seminal work of Austrian economics. It sets forth Mises’s theory of the acting person and lays the groundwork for a liberal economic order. But is the “human action” which Mises describes in Human Action really human action? Mises, as well as his colleague Friedrich von Hayek, posits a liberal society in which telos and metaphysics can be elided from human interactions, but such conceptions of the human person are greatly different from the more robust, and humane, anthropologies of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. In this paper, I compare and contrast the visions of the human person found in Mises, Hayek, Aristotle, and St. Thomas, arguing that the truly human vision of human action found in the latter two thinkers’ works provides a much sounder basis for human material flourishing (“capitalism”).

KEYWORDS: Mises, Hayek, Aristotle, Aquinas, Human Action, praxeology, Constitution of Liberty, virtue, economics.

Peter A. Redpath, “Aristotle and Aquinas on the Virtue of Money as a Preservative of Justice in Business Affairs and States,” Studia Gilsoniana 8, no. 4 (October–December 2019): 885–890, DOI: 10.26385/SG.080436

SUMMARY: While Aristotle’s and St. Thomas’s teachings about economics are often ridiculed today, this article argues that actually what they had to say about this issue, especially about the nature of sound currency, backed up by force of law, is quite profound. According to both of them, sound money plays an essential role in the preserving commutative justice within States. By so doing, it preserves communication between talented people who make qualitatively unequal contributions to a State’s continued existence and welfare.

KEYWORDS: communication, commutative, contribution, convention, currency, demand, equality, exchange, hierarchy, human, inequality, just, justice, law, life, measure, natural, nomos, numerical, preservation, proportionate, proportionality, use, value, virtue.

Jude P. Dougherty, “The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities by John J. Mearsheimer,” Studia Gilsoniana 8, no. 4 (October–December 2019): 893–899, DOI: 10.26385/SG.080437

SUMMARY: This paper is a review of the book: John J. Mearsheimer, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2018). Mearsheimer observes that in the aftermath of the Cold War, the U.S. adopted a profoundly liberal foreign policy dedicated to turning as many countries as possible into liberal democracies. Mearsheimer concludes that the liberal hegemony of the past twenty-five years does not work: it has left a legacy of futile wars, failed diplomacy, and diminished prestige for the United States.

KEYWORDS: John J. Mearsheimer, The Great Delusion, Cold War, USA, liberalism, liberal democracy, liberal hegemony.

Jason Morgan, “Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy by Kōjin Karatani,” Studia Gilsoniana 8, no. 4 (October–December 2019): 901–914, DOI: 10.26385/SG.080438

SUMMARY: This paper is a review of the book: Kōjin Karatani, Isonomia and the Origins of Philosophy, trans. Joseph A. Murphy (Durham, N.C., and London: Duke University Press, 2017). According to the author, Karatani’s book is an attempt to refound the West in a Marxist version of ancient Greek history and philosophy.

KEYWORDS: Kōjin Karatani, isonomia, philosophy, Marxism.