An exciting new book for anyone interested in the intersection of morality/theology and economics is John Mueller’s Redeeming Economics. I haven’t yet seen the book myself, but Acton Senior Fellow Jennifer Morse reviews it here. Drawing on Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas, Mueller argues for recovering a fourth element of economics (besides consumption, production, and exchange): gift. He calls his approach neo-scholastic economics.
Here’s Morse:
The enemies of the state who ought to resist state encroachment of the family’s domain have been reduced to treating the family as a special case of the market. This rhetorical strategy has made it difficult to do justice to the deep human need for personal connections, a need that cannot be satisfied by commercial relationships. At the same time, the enemies of the market who ought to defend the family against commercialization have typically offered the government as the only alternative. These critics have been blind to the state’s encroachment on the proper domain of the family and the accompanying replacement of family bonds with impersonal government transfers and bureaucratic control. Mueller’s synthesis allows us to see the genuinely social arena of human life, where people are more than autonomous individuals, and where actions nevertheless remain none of the government’s business.
