Solidarity Among Strangers During Natural Disasters

How Economic Insights May Improve Our Understanding of Virtues

Bibliographic Data

ID21700974
AuthorsAlexander Reese (0000-0003-3809-6717, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, corresponding author), Ingo Pies (0000-0003-2068-4529, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg)
Year2024
Volume28
Issue2
Pages361-381
Publication date2024-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Ethics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1382-4554 • E-ISSN: 1572-8609
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s10892-023-09460-7
OpenAlexW4387705834
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited39

The renaissance of Aristotelian virtue ethics has produced an extensive philosophical literature that criticizes markets for a lack of virtues. Drawing on Michael Sandel’s virtue-ethical critique of price gouging during natural disasters, we (1) identify and clarify serious misunderstandings in recurring price-gouging debates between virtue-ethical critics and economists. Subsequently, (2) we respond to Sandel’s call for interdisciplinary dialogue. However, instead of solely calling on economics to embrace insights from virtue ethics, we prefer a two-sided version of interdisciplinary dialogue and argue that virtue ethics should embrace economic insights. In particular, we argue that if virtue ethics is to preserve its social relevance under modern conditions, it should re-conceptualize its notion of virtue and re-evaluate the self-interested but effective—and in this sense solidary—help among strangers via markets as virtuous rather than devaluate it as greed, that is, as vicious price gouging

Environmental ethics · Epistemic virtue · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Solidarity · Virtue · Virtue ethics · Free Will and Agency · Law · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment

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Open DOIOpen Access