https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/1s3l18/suggestions_for_undergrad_readings_regarding/
created by drinka40tonight on 04/12/2013 at 19:31 UTC
15 upvotes, 7 top-level comments (showing 7)
So, I'm thinking of doing a unit in a class I'm teaching on issues in economics and ethics. Any suggestions for readings that students might like?
Right now I'm looking at Sandel's *What Money Can't Buy*, some work by Debra Satz, Liz Anderson. I'm open to pretty much anything though.
Any good selections from Aristotle? Great defenses of the market from a philosophical perspective? Definitive critique of utilitarianism that students could understand? Popular examples of economic thinking that could be useful for good discussion (e.g. Freakanomics)? Papal encyclicals? Pieces of Marx that can be read and discussed without spending too much time on them?
So, pretty much anything would be useful to me at this point. From chapters, to articles, to popular books.
Comment by Son_of_Sophroniscus at 04/12/2013 at 20:03 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Great defenses of the market from a philosophical perspective?
The most concise, easy to read, yet still persuasive defense/exposition of free market ideas is *Economics in One Lesson*, by Henry Hazlitt. In the short book he address what he sees as "fallacies" in the arguments put forth by various other schools of economic thought the most notable of which is Keynesian theory.
Edit: Also, a work entitle *Economics* was once ascribed to Aristotle but that is no longer the consensus.
Comment by blckn at 04/12/2013 at 20:50 UTC
2 upvotes, 4 direct replies
I took a similar class and we read (excerpts of):
Capitalism and Freedom (Friedman) The Communist Manifesto (Marx) The New Politics of Consumption (Juliet Schor) Economic Justice (Stephen Nathanson) Outliers (Malcolm Gladwell) Famine, Affluence, and Morality (Peter Singer)
We also studied some arguements from Rawls (veil of ignorance), and Nozick (mostly from Anarchy, State, and Utopia).
The class was focused on what makes a just government and what the proper functions of that government would be. With Singer we explored the idea of partiality and its justifications a bit.
Comment by irontide at 05/12/2013 at 02:35 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
You certainly need some Amartya Sen in that class. There's an embarrassment of riches to choose from, but I'd include the articles 'The Impossibility of the Pareto Liberal' and 'Rational Fools' for sure. Maybe some readings from the book *Development as Freedom*, to show the role Sen thinks economics can play for us in arranging just and beneficial outcomes? For a critique of utilitarianism, his and Bernard Williams's introduction to *Utilitarianism and Beyond* should do very nicely.
A very good article to give to undergraduates is Marc Sagoff, 'At the Shrine of Our Lady Fatima: or why political questions are not all economic', which is what it says on the tin. Jon Elster's 'The Market and the Forum' would be a more economics-friendly take on the same question. Gauthier's *Morals by Agreement* probably is the best attempt to have economics-driven ethics (given he defines the domain of ethics as responding to market failures), but that book is so large, weird and unified that taking out a reading may be hard. Maybe the first chapter? If you want to give them a solid-gold example of someone biting a bullet, give them Gauthier's argument that the native Americans were benefited by the replacement of their traditional ways of life by Western lifestyles, though of course not by the manner of the introduction (in Chapter 9).
I'd introduce the students to Kenneth Arrow's demonstration that the market fails to give good guidance for distributing resources in healthcare (because of structural features that make perfect information impossible to even approximate), but this may only be because I'm sick of people acting as if using the market to regulate healthcare is sound economic thinking. I would be a useful demonstration of the limits of what markets can do for us, though, and a very interesting example of a market failure, different from the ones which have to do with the delivery of necessary but unprofitable services.
On Marx, I recommend readings from Robert Paul Wolff's *Understanding Marx*, in particular Wolff's version of the Marxist argument that workers are exploited by capitalist labour (at the end of the book), also included in his article 'A Critique and Reinterpretation of Marx's Theory of Value'.
Comment by [deleted] at 04/12/2013 at 21:28 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Not sure if undergrads would really like it, but Aristotle's *Politics* deals with the concept of *oikonomia*...Adam Smith's *Theory of Moral Sentiments* is also very interesting (it contains the first reference to an 'invisible hand'), but also somewhat dry.
Comment by Monsieur_Valentine at 04/12/2013 at 21:32 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I took a seminar that featured Satz book. It was a bit underwhelming.
Comment by carbonetc at 05/12/2013 at 00:45 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Garrett Hardin's "Living on a Lifeboat" is always a fun way to shake things up.
Comment by Moontouch at 08/12/2013 at 09:43 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This is a good sampling of Marx[1] where he discusses the concept of "alienation" in relation to economics. It's a prime fusion of economics and philosophy.
1: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm