Smart Consequentialism: Kantian Moral Theory and the (Qualified) Defense of Capitalism
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Description
The purpose of this chapter is to offer a defense of what is broadly understood to be a capitalist economy, which for these purposes is well enough defined as “an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.” The grounds of this defense shall be overtly consequentialist, but with this twist: I shall insist that, even though many writers purport to find ways to evaluate these systems in deontological terms, these so-called backward justifications ultimately resolve themselves into consequentialist arguments. The simple starting point for all analysis is that market capitalism cannot survive if force and fraud are allowed free sway, and that they must be controlled to make long-term investment possible. No standard deontological theory—especially Kantian theory—can justify this simple proposition in an acceptable way; rather, deontology can only succeed if it is reinterpreted, against the wishes of Kant, its leading expositor, in an explicitly consequentialist fashion. The stakes here are enormous: if notions of obligation are con-strued too narrowly, all sorts of dangerous behaviors can go without sanction. If they are construed too broadly, all sorts of legitimate competitive behaviors can be destroyed by a set of restrictive practices, in both domestic and foreign markets. The efforts to intuit the right institutional arrangements by deontic strategies, most notably by those in the Kantian tradition (which need not and do not embrace all elements of Kant’s thought), often lead to just these conceptual breakdowns.
Source Publication
Are Markets Moral?
Source Editors/Authors
Arthur M. Melzer, Steven J. Kautz
Publication Date
2018
Recommended Citation
Epstein, Richard A., "Smart Consequentialism: Kantian Moral Theory and the (Qualified) Defense of Capitalism" (2018). Faculty Chapters. 361.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/361
