Ethics and Markets

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course is designed to offer students an opportunity to carefully consider the roots,both historical and philosophical,of political economy, as it has been thought about in the West. After considering a brief essay by a contemporary thinker assessing the case for economic and political liberalism at century’s end, we will begin in earnest by studying a several seminal arguments by authors who, in the eighteenth century, lay the foundation for optimism about the promise of commerce in the modern world. While other authors of this genre could be included, we will attend to the works of Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant. As we will discover, their optimism, however sober it may have been, was subsequently met by a series of powerful critiques that, some argue, have yet to be adequately answered. In the readings for the next portion of the course, we will consider several authors who reject conceptual apparatus that Smith and Kant provide, and offer different categories for thinking through the issue of political economy, broadly understood. The authors we will read here include Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx. Finally, we will read Alexis de Tocqueville. There we will discover that many of the critiques are answered, and many of the initial defenses of commerce are put on a more solid foundation. Depending on how far we get into these texts, additional and supplemental material may also be assigned, which I will either photocopy or make available in PDF form.