If economic systems must be moral in their operations and effects to possess legitimacy, then ad hoc goals that reflect mere political expediency or eclectic ideology will not suffice as the underlayment of market design.

Reckoning with Markets: 

Moral Reflection in Economics

by Timothy J. Barnett

Review of Reckoning with Markets: The Role of Moral Reflection in Economics

by James Halteman and Edd Noell. (Oxford University Press, 2012) 

Sometimes a book has considerable value for readers beyond its primary audience. Such is the case for a slender hardback written by two professors teaching business and economics at two Christian colleges (Wheaton in Illinois and Westmont in California). Not surprisingly, Reckoning with Markets seems aimed for Christian college students. Nonetheless, readers need not hail from collegiate environments to gain from moral reflections on economic justice and an exploration of developments in economic thought today.

Chapter one begins with a hypothetical conversation between various thinkers such as Aristotle, Aquinas, Adam Smith, Mill, Marx and Keynes. The dialogue is parceled out in snippets of thought somewhat less than synergistic. Fortunately, the educative value of the book grows as one moves along. Chapter two offers an assortment of moral reflections drawn from biblical literature and the ancient Mediterranean world. Chapter three leads the conversation into the scholastic period, with considerable attention given Thomas Aquinas. Unfocused readers will probably finish the first three chapters without a clear sense of the book's purpose.

Fortunately, chapter four sheds light on the preparatory nature of the preceding work. The authors explain: "In much of the discussion so far, moral reflection has been related to a sense of telos or the purpose to which human action is directed. Only when there is a goal can there be meaningful discussion about what is right and wrong or good and bad." If the reader returns to the first three chapters with this notion in mind, the rationale of what has gone before becomes evident. How can a society judge the merits of one economic pathway or another until there is a collective understanding about the purposes of life? There must be an organizing schema and a belief system. A sustainable public interest must be identified and agreed upon—democratically or by other legitimate means—before the merits of various acts can be asserted. It is only when merit is judged that we have a means by which to evaluate the prudence of economic rewards.

If economic systems must be moral in their operations and effects to possess legitimacy, then ad hoc goals that reflect mere political expediency or eclectic ideology will not suffice as the underlayment of market design.
As Halteman and Noell suggest, societal goals cannot have moral import unless they have consequence and stability.
Additionally, societal goals cannot exist in merely general terms.


It is insufficient in evaluating economic morality to say that utility, happiness and the good life represent the national mission or ethos, as each of these goals potentially incorporates so many conflicting agendas that coordinated societal initiatives are possible only at the cost of sacrificing any real meaning in the goals.

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