[DOWNLOAD] "Freedom and Equality in Market Exchange: Some Natural Law Reflections." by Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free

eBook details

Title: Freedom and Equality in Market Exchange: Some Natural Law Reflections.
Author : Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy
Release Date : January 22, 2010
Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
Pages : * pages
Size : 256 KB

Description

Sound economic policy, morally upright economic judgment and action, and a stable web of economic institutions and agents are all essential for human well-being. The absence of any of these things creates crucial obstacles to the flourishing of persons, both individually and socially. A natural law theory is, in essence, a critical and reflective account of the constitutive aspects of the well-being and fulfillment of human persons and their communities, and of the requirements that human well-being place on human actions. So the project of bringing natural law theory to bear on questions of economics is entirely to the good. The natural law tradition, manifested in thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquinas and his successors, has typically attended to some of the crucial concerns at the intersection of economic activity and human well-being. Natural law thinkers have addressed the nature of property and of charitable obligations, the role of money and money lending, and the context of moral principles governing relations between states in ways that continue to influence the West's common thinking. Yet insights of the natural law tradition on such matters have also become occluded as new theories, new situations, and new technologies have shaped the context in which economic choice and action take place. The purpose of this Essay is to identify both the natural law justification for a free market--hence the Essay's concern for freedom--and the broad natural law understanding of the primary moral norm governing that market--hence the Essay's concern for equality. Both freedom and equality, properly understood, are essential to the natural law account of the market as presented by its greatest proponent, St. Thomas Aquinas. (1) Separate either from the other and the account will cease to be recognizable as genuinely belonging to the natural law tradition.