SOWING HOPE FOR THE COMMON GOOD:

MONEY, LOVE & VIRTUE*

FATIMA, OCT. 23, 2014

MARIA JOSÉ PEREIRA MELO ANTUNES

* The talk is based on a book-in-progress

WUCWO WUCWO Panel at General AssemblyPanel at General Assembly

Challenges

• Economic• Ecological• Social• Political

• We live in difficult times!

• Crisis?• Or opportunity for reform?

Interconnecting Levels of Perception

Ideology behind Financial Crisis

Wealth maximization Purpose

For self (self-interest)

leads to

Benefits for all (invisible hand) Result

Government’s role: to keep the economic wheel turning

Aristotle

• Oiko-nomus: home management - economy• Market: place of exchange – money

• Harmony in the city state• A life well lived > eudaimonia or happiness

• Required• Philia: friendship, a form of love• Virtue

• Justice, the virtue that permits all other virtues• Proportionality or balance

Economy & Money

• Economy• Management of material needs in society

• Focus cannot be just on money, but also on the person at the centre of the economy

• Money• Life-blood of society

• Franciscan monks• Quesnay: economist and physician to Louis XV• Brings nutrients, but can also carry toxins

Civil Economy

• Civil economy in society: the common good• Reciprocal relations

• 2 foundations for economic markets as expressions of virtue• Justice• Humanity

• Essential preconditions • Reciprocal confidence in the other• Public trust in the system• Mutual assistance

• Friendship or fraternity

Virtue in Markets?

• Prevailing theory: setting of prices• Self-interest alone required• Choice and preference will set the price• Contract w/o moral content: no virtue necessary• Private incentive, not mutual assistance - no sacrifice needed

• Virtue in markets (Bruni & Sugden)• Trust and reciprocity (no sacrifice implied)• Market allows for dignity (humanity)

• No need to beg• Fairness in exchange (justice)

• Each party must reap benefit

The Person in Society

• Who is the person?• Material: the ego (primal needs)• Spiritual/cultural: capable of generosity

• The person in society• Each person as part of the whole (contributes & receives)• Interdependent (impacting on each other and the whole)

• The common good• Not just collection of public goods (commodities and

services)• But also the sum of the civic conscience

• Liberty as a mirror image of the other• Sense of what is right

Money, Love &Virtue

Competition vs. Cooperation

• Darwin’s survival of the fittest: competition

• Later Darwin: cooperation

• Humans possess “social instinct...becoming more tender and more widely diffused until they are extended to all sentient beings.”

• “[as] soon as this virtue is honored and practiced by some few of us it spreads through instruction and example to the young and eventually becomes incorporated in public opinion”

Survival is as much about cooperation, symbiosis (living together) and reciprocity

Ontology of Love

• Empathy• “Entering the private world of the other and...moving in

it delicately without making judgments” (Carl Rogers)• “The glue that makes social life possible” (Martin Hofmann)

• Compassion• Sharing in another’s suffering

• Love• Not simply emotion • Moving power of life

• Drive towards unity > harmony/happiness• Christian commandment of love

Financial Stewardship

• Government• Safeguard financial system and control risk

• Financial legislation• Supervision

• Institution• Solvency • Risk management

• Human • Proper understanding of risks: bank and consumer (not buyer

beware)• Does it not involve more than this?

Finance & the Good Society

• Finance • Permits constructive investment: Long Term focus

• Better future• Involves stewardship of assets

• Security

Finance is fides or trust and a means (life-blood) to an end (the common good)

• Love and virtue required to work alongside money

Building the future

• Education

• Reflection

• Virtue derived from within• From love• Not simply from rules

• Human Community

Money, Love & Virtue

• Love Money Virtue (or lack thereof)

Money, Love & Virtue

• Love Money Virtue Love Money Virtue

• “Goodness tends to spread.” (Pope Francis)

SOWING HOPE FOR THE COMMON GOOD:

MONEY, LOVE & VIRTUE*

FATIMA, OCT. 23, 2014

MARIA JOSÉ PEREIRA MELO ANTUNES

* The talk is based on a book-in-progress

WUCWO WUCWO Panel at General AssemblyPanel at General Assembly