180135 SE Ethics and Profit: A History of Ideas (2021S)

Traders make profit by buying products cheaply and selling them more expensively. Capitalists make profit by employing labourers and selling the fruit of their labour for more than the wages paid to the worker. Workers try to get the most money for their work, and consumers go bargain-hunting to spend as little as possible for the goods they buy.

But when, if at all, is it appropriate to thus profit from, or even on the back of, our fellow human beings? When does someone profit unfairly, or just plain too much? Are some forms of profit perhaps to be shunned altogether, or should profit-seeking be encouraged, so as to generate a societal benefit?

In this seminar, we approach these very much contemporary ethical questions about profit-seeking by studying their history in Western philosophical and theological thought. The aim of this seminar is to understand the philosophical issues at stake in these questions, to understand and critically appraise a range of different ethical positions that may be partly alien to us, and to lay the foundations for formulating and defending our own answers to ethical questions about profit-seeking that we encounter today.

List of topics:
- Plato Against the Merchant
- Aristotle on types of exchange and profit
- Jerome against wealth, Cicero on profit and fellow-feeling
- Augustine and Aquinas on justified profits from trade
- Wesley and Butler: A protestant twist on the profit motive
- Mandeville and Smith: Private profit, social benefit
- Rousseau and Fourier: Early socialist criticism of the profit motive
- Marx: The capitalist's profit
- Kropotkin: Altruistic motivation as part of evolved human nature
- Ayn Rand: In defense of egoism
- Cohen: The hypocrisy of making profit for the common good

After successful completion of the seminar, you will be able to
- explain key historical positions in the morality of profit in your own words in speaking and writing,
- contextualise contemporary ethical questions in the context of the history of ideas, identifying relevant historical texts and using these to increase your understanding of the contemporary questions,
- reconstruct and critically evaluate arguments from historical and contemporary texts, in speaking and writing,
- position yourself with regard to selected questions about the ethics of profit-seeking.

The seminar is taught and assessed in English, and will feature extensive small group discussions which require everyone's preparation and contribution to succeed. In preparation of each seminar, you will read the assigned core text and complete some short preparatory reading tasks and other research exercises on Moodle. A willingness to engage with concepts and ideas from contemporary economics is required. Prior knowledge of economics is an asset, but not required. Relevant economic concepts and ideas will be explained in class where needed.