The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

“This is not to say that legislation 10Cf. Evensky (2005a, 2005b), McCloskey (2006, 2010, 2016), and Carden, Caskey, and Marshall (2020). and institutions can never be designed.”

“…aside from economic historians who emphasize to varying degrees the role of institutions in sustaining increases in living standards (Mokyr 2011; McCloskey 2006; 2010; 2016; North, Wallis and Weingast 2009; Cox et al. 5 Public goods with a zero marginal cost will be cheaper to supply per person…”

“Working in the other direction, widespread acceptance of Enlightenment ideas created the ideological foundation for the Industrial Revolution (McCloskey 2006; Pinker 2018) and more recent public intellectuals have promoted popular support for free markets and limited government (Friedman 1962).”

“…origins of England’s economic rise, a paradigmatic example of economic development that has motivated a voluminous literature (e.g., North and Weingast 1989; Mathias 1969; Floud and McCloskey 1994; McCloskey 2006, 2010, 2016; Mokyr 2009; Allen 2009; Clark 2009; Hayek 1960; Moore 1966; North et al.”

“McCloskey (2010, 2006, 2003, 2002, 1996), Philip Mirowski (Mirowski 2004, 2011; Mirowski and Plehwe 2009), Esther-Mirjam Sent (Sent 1999), George DeMartino (DeMartino 2011a), Sheila Dow (Dow 2013), Riccardo Baldissone (Baldissone 2013), and Megan Bloomfield (Bloomfield 2012), amongst others, have…”

“In the process, Smith evokes an important claim about the virtuousness of markets and the varied nature of virtue and vice founded on his concept of sympathy PR 44.1_01.indd 13 05/02/11 10:30 AM 14 (see McCloskey 2006; 2008).”

“…European city-states (Mielants 2007, Kuran 2012); the spread of an industrial Enlightenment (Mokyr 2010), the rise of ‘bourgeois,’ market-based notions of virtue and success (McCloskey 2007), or even an accumulated genetic advantage in commercial skills among the urban merchant elite (Clark 2008).”

“Modern scholarship (McCloskey, 2006; Mehta, 2006) claims that the emphasised sentences passage in the above-quoted passage refer to specific kinds of transactions.”

“From a governmentality perspective, neoliberalism includes a method, metaphorically based on the market, of governing through inciting various ‘ bourgeois virtues ’ (McCloskey 2006) among individuals to guide them to govern themselves – a process characterised as ‘ governing through freedom ’ .”

“…theoretical framework (particularly Boulding, 1969; Bowles & Gintis, 2011; Brown, 1994; Forman, 2010; Garnett, 2017; Hanley, 2009; Klein, 2012; McCloskey, 2006; Montes, 2004; Muller, 1993; Otteson, 2002; Sen, 2010; Smith, 2013; Wight, 2005; Young, Commerce Care WN TMS self-interest…”

“Even some economists and economic sociologists have joined the discussion of morality and economic behavior (e.g. Frank 2003, Hausman/McPherson 1993; McCloskey 2006; Sen 1987; Swedberg 2005).”

“Smith describes prudence as one of the virtues of “the middling and inferior stations of life,” virtues that flourish whenever “commerce is introduced into any country” (TMS I.iii.3.5, p. 63; LJB 326–328, pp. 538– 539;WN II.iii.28, p. 341; see also McCloskey 2006).”

“…aristocratic virtues of honor and generous largesse were rooted in the classical, public virtues along with courage and justice (Casey 1991; McCloskey 2006a; 2006b) while the laboring poor had to make do with the Christian virtues of submission to their lot via faith, humility, and “ the…”

“Her Bourgeois trilogy is major (McCloskey 2006, 2010, 2016).”

“More recent arguments about the positive moral effects of the market order that focus on virtues and vices associated with that order include Deirdre McCloskey’s three volume defence of capitalism, and an important paper by economists Luigi Bruni and Robert Sugden12.”

“McCloskey (2006) ably documents centuries of bad press relating to the ethics of markets, investment and accumulation.”

“As market economies satisfy the basic needs of their populaces, they offer the ideal conditions for their members to forge a responsible and docile character [Brennan 2016], and encourage ethical virtues including honesty, integrity, and civility [McCloskey 2006].”

“…86–102; 471–475; Smith, 1976a, p. 321), the quest for socio-economic justice to further societal cohesion (Smith, 1976a, p. 329), and beneficence and legal justice, which are necessary to uphold human dignity (McCloskey, 2006; Meek et al., 1978, p. 474; see also Berry, 1974; Smith, 1976a, p. 74).”

“…if self-contradictory 18 th -century formulas such as the categorical imperative or the greatest happiness or the greatest number, but rather, as the ancients in Greece and China and everywhere else said, by forming ones character well, and then acting in accordance with it (McCloskey, 2006).”

“And a series of books (McCloskey, 2006, 2010, 2016) have made the case for a change in value systems, associated with a change in rhetoric, as the driving force of modern economic growth.”

“They can weigh the merchant’s studied indifference to politics against the material—and also moral (McCloskey, 2006)—benefits that a well-crafted market can generate.”

“Can the presence of a trade agreement encourage moral behavior, reward virtues, and make us ethically better people, as Langrill and Storr (2012) and McCloskey (2006) contend?”

“Religious beliefs have been shown to affect individuals’ values (Iannaccone, 1998 ; McCloskey, 2006), which shapes their choices (Hilary & Hui, 2009).”

“The second group includes studies by Sen (1987), Deirdre McCloskey (2006), and George DeMartino (2011); this group defends the introduction of ethics and history into economics, as well as ethics as part of the economics profession.”

“The evaporation of moral disgust as a rationale for interest over the early modern period reflects the rise of the commercial virtues (McCloskey, 2006, 2011).”

“Second, if, as the Stoics and Aristotelians argue, virtue can be learned and acquired through practice, then the set of institutions that rewards people for behaving morally will encourage them to practice virtuous behavior and become more virtuous as a result (McCloskey, 2006).”

“It is probably no accident that empirical approaches to moral inquiry tend to be pluralist (e.g., Smith [1759] 1982; McCloskey 2006; Haidt 2012).”

“…as each individual institutional experiment is driven by ideas, but it does undermine the concept of a broad and uniform climate of ideas preceding and determining the institutional and economic outcomes, as it is often assumed (e.g. see Bailyn 1967; Appleby 1976, 1978, 1984; McCloskey 2006, 2010).”

“The cultural benefits of trade have been emphasized more recently by Cowen (2002), Friedman (2005), and McCloskey (2006).”

“…trajectory also is shaped by ethical considerations, which framed his later political-economic analysis and generally played a profound role across all his writings (Evensky, 2005 ; Gris - wold, 1999 ; Heath, 1995 ; McCloskey, 2006 ; Muller, 1993 ; Phillipson, 1983 ; Shaver, 2006 ; Watson, 2005).”

“…property rights and facilitated long-term investment (Acemoglu et al., 2001, 2006; North et al., 2004), technological innovation (Allen, 2011; Howes, 2016; Mokyr, 2005), and the development of generalized social trust that facilitated the growth of a commercial society (McCloskey, 2006, 2016).”

“…Inglehart (2018) on cultural evolution, Libman and Obydenkova (2021) on the legacies of Communism, Mazzucato (2021) on changing capitalism, McCloskey (2006, 2010, 2016) on the role of bourgeois ethics, Pinker (2021) on the role of rationality, Redding (2023) on societal process analysis,…”

“Why, McCloskey (2006) asks, is not the discovery and development of a people’s virtue relevant to an economist’s narrative just as the discovery of the steam engine is?”

“(Calkins and Werhane 1998; McCloskey 2006; Weinstein 2017) The central idea of this approach is that the sort of mutual trust and long-term pursuit of self-interest that is endemic to marketplace activity is best sustained, and partly constituted, by the exercise of virtues such as self-control, a…”

“Like McCloskey (2006), they see markets as moralizing spaces in which actors “learn to be virtuous” (226) and where the fruits of exchange include not just prices, quantities, and private net gains but moral capabilities (e.g., virtues of generosity and trustworthiness) and interpersonal bonds…”

“Indeed, civil society’s signature ‘commercial’ ethos corresponds quite closely to Kant’s Kingdom of Ethics, in which each person’s ends is realized by becoming a means to someone else’s ends (McCloskey 2006).”

“Eine aktuelle Stellungnahme, die auf der Linie von Matthäus 16:26 liegen soll, gibt Deirdre N. McCloskey (2006), S. 22 ab: „If we had gained a better material world, two cars in the garage and Chicago-style, deep-dish, stuffed-spinach pizza on the table, but had thereby lost our souls, I personally…”

“…and welfare economics—White (2009) and Etzioni (1987), for example, offer Kantian ethical interpretations, whereas Van Staveren (2001, 2007) and McCloskey (2006) side with virtue ethicists—their efforts have a foreseeable limitation: They speak mostly to those already convinced of the…”

“…is then undergirded by a wide variety of arguments derived from the Bible, positive psychology (Peterson & Seligman, 2004), behavioral economics (McCloskey, 2006), insights on religious behavior based on evolutionary theory (Wildman, 2009), neuroscientific insights into the neuroendocrine…”