Wealth of Persons

by John McNerney, David Walsh (Foreword by)

Overview

Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century initiated a great debate not just about inequality but also regarding the failures found in the economic models used by theoreticians and practitioners alike. Wealth of Persons offers a totally different perspective that challenges the very terms of the debate. The Great Recession reveals a great existential rift at the core of certain economic reflections, thereby showing the real crisis of the crisis of economics. In the human sciences we have created a kind of ""Tower of Babel"" where we cannot understand each other any longer. The ""breakdowns"" occur equally on the personal, social, political, and economic levels. There is a need for an ""about-face"" in method to restore harmony among dissociated disciplines. Wealth of Persons offers a key to such a restoration, applying insights and analysis taken from different economic scholars, schools of thought, philosophical traditions, various disciplines, and charismatic entrepreneurs. Wealth of Persons aims at recapturing an adequate understanding of the acting human person in the economic drama, one that measures up to the reality. The investigation is a passport allowing entry into the land of economic knowledge, properly unfolding the anthropological meaning of the free economy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498229937
Publisher:	Cascade Books
Publication date:	08/31/2016
Series:	Veritas , #21
Pages:	380
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

John McNerney is head chaplain at University College Dublin. Author of John Paul II: Poet and Philosopher (2004), he is also an occasional lecturer to undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of business ethics and philosophy. He has given talks at various international conferences in North America, Europe, and Asia, and is a member of the national Economy of Communion commission in Ireland.

Table of Contents

Foreword David Walsh xi

Preface xv

Acknowledgments xix

1 The Great Recession Points Us to the Crisis of Economics 1

I Introduction 1

II An Exploration: Toward Recovering the Truth and Wealth of a "Person centric" Economy 7

2 The Free Economy at the Crossroads: Still Fit for Purpose? 23

I Introduction: Clarifying Our Economic "Vision" 23

II The Free Economy and Its Discontents 30

III The Austrian Schools Approach to Economics 41

IV An "Anthropological Surd" Giving Rise to Discontent within the Free Market Process 44

V A Legitimation-Clarification Question 49

VI Conclusion 53

3 Toward a Philosophy of Economic Order: Retrieving the Human Meaning of the Free Economy 59

I Introduction 59

II The Meaning of Meaning and the Free Market Process 65

III Toward a Differentiation of "Good of Order" 80

IV Economic Narratives: Why Do Economic Lives Differ? 86

V Conclusion 92

4 Entrepreneurial Perspectives I: The Primacy of Person-Centered Economic Creativity in the Free Market Process 95

I A Fractured Relationship: Toward Recapturing the Human Creative Aspect 95

II Joseph Schumpeter, Prophet of a "Creative Anthropology": A Life 102

III The Context of the Eclipse of Economic Reality: A Contribution toward an Anthropological Revival 104

IV Dynamic Economic Creativity: A Schumpeterian Vision 112

V The Millennium Bridge Analogy 122

VI Conclusion 125

5 Entrepreneurial Perspectives II: A Philosophical Reflection on the Role of the Entrepreneur 129

I The Entrepreneur: Who, Which, What? 129

II Overshadowing and Retrieval of the Human Dimension in the Free Economy 131

III Various Perspectives on the Entrepreneur in Economic Thought 136

IV Schumpeter's Entrepreneur: An Emergent Anthropology 137

V A Rediscovery of the Meaning of Economic Action 144

VI Motivational Considerations of the Economic Act 152

VII Plato's Republic and the Need for "Anthropological Balance" 155

VIII Conclusion 159

6 Entrepreneurial Perspectives III: A Movement toward a Higher Anthropological Viewpoint 162

I The Great Recession in Light of Praxeological and Anthropological Considerations 162

II Narratives of Anthropological Economic Disintegration 168

III Self-Determination: The Reality of "Bias" in Human Action 170

IV Misesian Entrepreneurial Action and Expansions 175

V Mises on Human Action 176

VI The "Human Creativity" of the Entrepreneur 178

VII The Threat of Anthropological Anorexia: A Never-Ending Story 181

VIII The Fragility of the Human Person in the Free Economy Process: Gnostic Themes 185

7 Entrepreneurial Perspectives IV: Eastern Awakenings and Western Alertness 193

I Outside the Window: János Kornai's Discovery of the "Human-centered-ness" of Economic Life 193

II Kornai's Barometer of Anthropological Reality: A Person-Centered Perspective 196

III Kornai's Entrepreneur as "System-Specific" 201

IV Israel Kirzner: On Human Alertness in the Free Economy 203

V Toward a More Comprehensive Vision of the Acting Human Person 210

VI Economics' Need for a Higher Anthropological Viewpoint 217

8 The Real Wellspring of Human Wealth Revealed: An Example from the Foxford Mills Entrepreneurial Project 221

I Introduction: An Illuminating Visit to Foxford 221

II The Story of an Irish Industry: A Case in History 224

III Agnes Morrogh-Bernard: A Charismatic Entrepreneur of the Human Person 231

9 Toward a Philosophical Anthropology of the Free Market Economy: Recapturing the Human Wealth of its Person-Centered Roots 244

I A Reorientation of Economics: The Turn toward the "Human Subject" 244

II The "Subjective-Objective" Dimension in Economics 248

III An Enhanced Understanding of "Human Intentionality" 251

IV The British Economist Philip Wicksteed's Emphasis: The "Economic Relationship" 256

V A Polish-American Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Turns the Spotlight on the Human Dimension 262

VI Human Action: Toward an Anthropological Enhancement 266

10 Being More: A Trinitarian Model Applied to Economic and Social Life 270

I The Trinitarian Model as a Paradigm for the Intrinsic Integration of Economic Life 270

II The Radical Solution: The Priority of the Other as Me 282

III The "Person-Centered" Shift in Economic Reflections: The Bologna School of Thought 288

IV The Human Person Guarded by Transcendence and Mystery 294

Bibliography 297

Index 317

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"John McNerney's Wealth of Persons is an amazing tour de force—his focus on the human person in economics not only opens up economics for the nonprofessional economist, it's a bracing exposition of the philosophy of the human person, all the more impressive when seen immersed in economic action. By focusing on the Austrian and the later Bologna schools' insistence on the role of the entrepreneur he critiques, on the one hand, an economy overfocused on profit and, on the other, Marx's (and later Piketty's) misreading of economics as a struggle between capital and labor. It should be required reading for all students (and teachers) of economics as well as of applied philosophical anthropology."
—Brendan Purcell, Adjunct Professor at the School of Philosophy and Theology, University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney

"This book is a welcome addition to the field of Catholic social teachings and more generally to the debate over the use of economics and its limits . . . The author aims to explain the 'crisis' in economics and in the economy without blaming the usual suspects, especially human greed. This research program is sorely needed, especially coming from someone outside of the field of economics."
—Frederic Sautet, Associate Professor of Economics at the Catholic University of America

"McNerney . . . is not afraid to suggest that theological and metaphysical issues are needed to put the right limits on economics. And he shows how this might be done without undermining the integrity of the discipline itself—indeed, how such issues flow out of the discipline and its activities among real [persons] acting together . . . What McNerney is really getting at is a placing of economics in its true place, with the realization that the acting person also has a transcendent destiny that is really why he is doing anything at all in the first place, as Augustine said."
—Professor James V. Schall, Retired Professor of Political Philosophy in the Department of Government at Georgetown University

Editorial Reviews

"John McNerney's Wealth of Persons is an amazing tour de force—his focus on the human person in economics not only opens up economics for the nonprofessional economist, it's a bracing exposition of the philosophy of the human person, all the more impressive when seen immersed in economic action. By focusing on the Austrian and the later Bologna schools' insistence on the role of the entrepreneur he critiques, on the one hand, an economy overfocused on profit and, on the other, Marx's (and later Piketty's) misreading of economics as a struggle between capital and labor. It should be required reading for all students (and teachers) of economics as well as of applied philosophical anthropology."
—Brendan Purcell, Adjunct Professor at the School of Philosophy and Theology, University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney

"This book is a welcome addition to the field of Catholic social teachings and more generally to the debate over the use of economics and its limits . . . The author aims to explain the 'crisis' in economics and in the economy without blaming the usual suspects, especially human greed. This research program is sorely needed, especially coming from someone outside of the field of economics."
—Frederic Sautet, Associate Professor of Economics at the Catholic University of America

"McNerney . . . is not afraid to suggest that theological and metaphysical issues are needed to put the right limits on economics. And he shows how this might be done without undermining the integrity of the discipline itself—indeed, how such issues flow out of the discipline and its activities among real [persons] acting together . . . What McNerney is really getting at is a placing of economics in its true place, with the realization that the acting person also has a transcendent destiny that is really why he is doing anything at all in the first place, as Augustine said."
—Professor James V. Schall, Retired Professor of Political Philosophy in the Department of Government at Georgetown University

From the Publisher