The Honorable Merchant – Between Modesty and Risk-Taking (eBook)

Christoph Luetge holds the Peter Löscher Chair of Business Ethics at Technische Universität München. He has written and edited a number of books including Order Ethics or Moral Surplus: What Holds a Society Together? (Lexington, 2015), Experimental Ethics (co-editor, Palgrave, 2014), Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics (editor, Springer, 2013). He has published numerous articles on various aspects of business ethics, general ethics, political philosophy and philosophy of economics. He has a particular interest both in experimental studies as well as in the role of competition for ethics. He founded the Munich Lecture in Business Ethics series and serves as a member of the Ethics Advisory Board of the European Medical Information Framework and of the Advisory Council of the Bavarian School of Public Policy. 

Introduction 6
Contents 8
Contributors 10
Part I: The Image of the Merchant Contemplated Across Times 11
Chapter 1: The Merchant from Patristics to the Honnête Homme in the Writings of Savary 12
1.1 The Negative Image of the Merchant 12
1.2 The Change in the Evaluation of the Merchant 15
1.2.1 Plato and the Patristics 16
1.2.2 Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle 17
1.2.3 The Merchant and Trade in the Works of Aristotle 18
1.3 The Appraisal of the Merchant: Nanteser und Savary 20
Works Cited 25
Chapter 2: The Honorable Merchant and the Corporate Social Responsibility Movement 27
2.1 Introduction 27
2.2 Order Ethics: Pre-modern and Modern 28
2.3 Ethics in Competition 30
2.4 Morality in a Company: Corporate Social Responsibility 33
2.5 Corporate Social Responsibility and the Honorable Merchant 33
2.6 Conclusion 34
Literature 35
Chapter 3: The Legend of Excellent Businessman. A Neuroethical Perspective 37
3.1 The Business Entrepreneurial Spirit 37
3.2 Telling Stories and Not Just Giving Accounts 39
3.3 We Live from Stories and in Stories 40
3.4 In Spain the Businessman Is Not a Moral Ideal 42
3.5 The Meaning of Business Activity 44
3.6 From Statements to Actions. True Stories 46
Chapter 4: The Honest Businessperson: Cosmopolitan Theory and Cultural Praxis (The Example of Denmark and Scandinavia) 48
4.1 Cosmopolitan Theory of the Honest Businessperson 48
4.2 Cultural Practice of the Honorable Businessperson: Perspectives from Scandinavia 55
References 59
Chapter 5: Voluntary Business Regulation for Sustainability: Intends, Norms and Motivations of Building Public Trust of Corporate Managers 61
5.1 From Stockholm to Paris: Failures of International Environmental Treaty-Making 61
5.2 Voluntary Business Regulation for Sustainability: Objections and Approvals 67
References 75
Part II: The Image of the Merchant in Europe from Late Middle Ages Until Early Modern Times 80
Chapter 6: The Honest Merchant Before Adam Smith: The Genesis and Rise of a Literary Prototype in Britain 81
6.1 Adam Smith’s Homo Oeconomicus as Point of Reference 81
6.2 Rejection of Commercial Life in the Middle Ages 84
6.3 The Merchant in the Elizabethan Age (c. 1600): Elevating a Still Ambivalent Character 86
6.4 Individualism vs. the Common Good in Elizabethan Drama 88
6.5 Different Perspectives of the Seventeenth Century 90
6.6 The Paradoxical Nature of Puritanism as a Driving Force Behind Commercial Life 92
6.7 The Rise of the Merchant after the Glorious Revolution 92
Primary Literature 94
Secondary Literature 95
Part III: The Image of the Merchant in Europe from Early Modern Times Until Nineteenth Century 97
Chapter 7: The Long Journey from “Deceiver and Conman” to “Honorable Merchant.” The Image of the Merchant in Spanish Literature and Its Contexts from the Sixteenth to the End of the Eighteenth Century 98
7.1 Preliminary Thoughts on the Negative Image of the Merchant in the Spanish Literature and the Mindset of El Siglo de Oro 99
7.2 The Historical Dignification and Theological Legitimation of the Merchant in the Reality of the Spanish Sixteenth Century 103
7.3 The Long Journey to the Secularization of the Image of the Honorable Merchant from the Seventeenth to the Eighteenth Century 109
7.4 Case Studies on External and Self-Portrayals of the Merchant in the Age of Spanish Enlightenment: From the Theoretician Valentín de Foronda and the Practitioners Juan de Eguino and Isidoro de la Fuente Pérez 111
References 117
Chapter 8: The Figures of the Honorable Merchant and the Philanthropic Entrepreneur-Paternalist in Eighteenth Century Spanish Sentimental Comedies 121
8.1 The Merchant and the Sentimental Comedy: Reception Processes from England to France, and Then to Spain 122
8.2 El hombre agradecido (1796) by Luciano Comella: The Merchant, the Time Lag, and the Trusted Chain of Correspondents 126
8.3 The Blurring of Lines Between Gift and Investment in El hombre agradecido 133
8.3.1 The Role of Friendship as an Allegory for Spanish Economic Reform Discourse 136
8.4 Durán’s La industriosa madrileña, y El fabricante de Olot: The Character of Esteban as a Philanthropic Entrepreneur-Paternalist and the Value of Work 137
8.5 Conclusion 140
References 142
Chapter 9: The Homo Oeonomicus, Merchant Ethos, and Liberalism in Spain Under Enlightened Absolutism 145
9.1 Introduction 145
9.2 Economic Reforms Based on Christian Anthropology 148
9.3 The Honorable Merchant in Juan Enrique Graef 152
9.4 Regulation of Emotions and Interests Under the Banner of “Policey”: Campillo y Cossío 155
9.5 Exponents of Early Liberalism in Spain: Valentín de Foronda, Jovellanos and the “Holy Interest” 158
9.6 Conclusion and Outlook 161
9.6.1 Common Good 161
9.6.2 Natural Law 162
9.6.3 Merchant’s Honor 162
Bibliography 163
Chapter 10: “A Traveling Salesman from Hades”. On the Critique of the Acquisitive Mindset in Nikolai V. Gogol’s Novel Dead Souls (1842) 165
10.1 The Honorable Merchant in Russian Literature 165
10.2 Gogol’s Dead Souls: The Planned Credit Fraud 167
10.3 Dead Souls in Historical Context 170
10.4 Anthropology and Utopia of Dead Souls 172
10.5 Gogol’s Dead Souls and the Financial Crises of the Present 173
Bibliography 175
Part IV: The Image of the Merchant in Non-European Contexts 176
Chapter 11: The Ethics of the Merchant in the Islamic Faith: From Ibn Khaldoun to Islamic Finance 177
11.1 Introduction 177
11.2 The Three Monotheistic World Religions, Wealth, and Money 178
11.3 Ibn Khaldoun (1331/732–1406/808), Theorist of Commercial Activities 180
11.4 The Islamic Economy: Some Effects of the Ban on Credit for Commercial Activities 186
Literature 190
Chapter 12: The Most Successful and Moralistic Merchant at the Dawn of Japanese Capitalism. Shibusawa and His Confucianism 191
12.1 Brief Career 191
12.2 Confucian Background 193
12.3 Some Theoretical Considerations 195
12.3.1 Consequentialism? 195
12.3.2 Profit and Social Contribution 196
12.3.3 Confucian Twist 197