Autor: Lawrence, G. Frederick

Buch: The Ethics of Authenticity and the Human Good: Beyond Left and Richt in Politics

Titel: The Ethics of Authenticity and the Human Good: Beyond Left and Richt in Politics

Stichwort: Enstsprechung: Struktur des Guten - Zivilisation; Jane Jacobs: Ethik des Jägers, Geschäftsmanns

Kurzinhalt: We can use Lonergan's structure of the human good to interpret civilizational and cultural development in history ... Raider ethics ... Trader ethics ...: shun force, come to voluntary agreements, be honest ...

Textausschnitt: 22b We can use Lonergan's structure of the human good to interpret civilizational and cultural development in history. In the most primitive stage of civilizational development--hunters and gatherers in a nomadic state--intersubjective community predominates over civil community, and technology, economy, and polity exist in the most rudimentary state. Here what Jane Jacobs calls the ethics of raiding dominates the modes of making a living. Raider ethics inculcates a guardian moral syndrome with its corresponding catalogue of virtues: shun trading, exert prowess, be obedient and disciplined, adhere to tradition, respect hierarchy, be loyal, take vengeance, deceive for the sake of the task, make rich use of leisure, be ostentatious, dispense largess, be exclusive, show fortitude, be fatalistic, treasure honor.1 (Fs) (notabene)

23a With the agrarian revolution goods of order required for the cultivation of land supplant the skills, roles, and tasks of hunting and gathering nomads. Technology gets more sophisticated with the development of tools, the domestication and training of animals, and the development of newly specialized skills, roles, and tasks; economy tries to attain a steady standard of living, so that although surpluses bring about great population growth, they are used chiefly for barter and for making the next round of harvesting and planting possible. Far less frequently are surpluses used for capital formation in the sense of "things produced and arranged not because they themselves are desired but because they expedite and accelerate the process of supplying the goods and services that are wanted by consumers."2 At this stage of civilizational development polity is organized as centralized government dominated by upper classes.

23b With the commercial revolution, however, the technology of commerce shifts to money as ameans of exchange, thus making possible new uses of economic surplus in relation to capital formation, along with a new and legitimately productive purpose for lending at interest. Besides inevitably disrupting agrarian autarky, the newly emergent commerce promotes the proliferation of artisans, professions, guilds, and other services--in short, urban life in Aristotle's sense of 'city.' Under the auspices of mercantilism the good of order as political shifts. Civil community begins to hold more sway over intersubjective communities of pre-urban villages. According to Jane Jacobs, the ethics of trading starts to become the prevalent mode of making a living. Trader ethics inculcates the commercial moral syndrome with its set of typical virtues: shun force, come to voluntary agreements, be honest, collaborate easily with strangers and aliens, compete, respect contracts, use initiative and enterprise, be open to inventiveness and novelty, be efficient, promote comfort and convenience, dissent for the sake of the task, invest for productive purposes, be industrious, be thrifty, be opfmistic.3 Thus, the building of the cathedrals and universities signals the presence of a cultural surplus and the prospering of a cultural community in which it is also legitimate for the commercial guilds of artisans, professionals, and university personnel to influence the freedom of markets in the name of the common good, which goes beyond mere public order (in the sense of technology and economy) to include cultural, personal, and religious values.