Question

Evaluate Thomas Aquinas analysis of economic issues (in reading)? How is it different from how we analyze the same issues today?

Answer 1

In the middle Ages, scholasticists such as Thomas Aquinas argued that it was a moral obligation of businesses to sell good at a just price. He taught in both cologne and puris and was part of a group of catholic scholars known as the schoolmen, who moved their enquires beyoned theology to philosophical and scientific debates. Modern concept of long run equilibrium, a just price was just sufficient to cover the costs of production, including the maintenance of a worker and his family. Aquinas argued it was immoral for sellers to raise their prices simply because buyers had a pressing need for product.

Mary L Hirschfeld, an economist, in her book Aquinas and the market: Toward a Hunane Economy (2018), describes reservations which she has long entertained about modern economics. Economic language, Hirschfeld maintains, "masks ethical differenceട in the goods individuals choose to pursure". and obscures " the features of life that give it its richness, meaning and moral weight". In many wayട, Hirschfeld 'ട book reflects her wrestIing through these quandaries. Her way to try to address the issues is to seek to ground economics. most notably his metaphysis and understanding of happiness. This is new insofar as natural law scholarട have generally studied economic issues and methodology from the standpoint of justice and liberties and responsibilities associated with property. Hirschfeld doesn't neglect these dimensions. Her focur, however, is on some of the summa Theologiae's more expansive vistas. Positive economics insistence upon paying attention to the workings of factors like self - interest and incentives mirrors, she argues, Aquina's interest in " realistic descriptions of human beings as they are". The economic technique needs to integrated into a wider account of human choice and political action, offers some potential for a reordering of economics that would address Hirschfeld 'ട questions, but in ways that would preserve the greatest achievements of Adam Smith's intellectual revolution.