Word: posner
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ETIQUETTE of moral judgments has traditionally given a backseat to economists. Leaving them the technical questions of production and distribution, philosophers have looked beyond the transactions and haggling of everyday life for answers to the heavy problems of morality and ethics. Richard A. Posner, a former law professor at the University of Chicago recently appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals, has written The Economics of Justice to steer economic moral reasoning into the straits that govern human behavior...
Divided into four long essays, the book searches for a new understanding of justice in modern society, especially in the context of economic life. Posner begins by discrediting the legacy of classical utilitarianism has bequethed philosophers. Posner believes that Bentham's call for the greatest happiness for the greatest number, a fashionably modern concept, actually opens the way for "moral monstrousness." Citing "the utilitarian's readiness to sacrifice the innocent individual on the altar of social need," Posner presents examples to illustrate the deficiency of any conception of happiness as the ultimate measure of right. Instead, the author suggests economic...
This idea is the key to accepting Posner's definition of justice--a belief that the market economy is the best producer and distributor of wealth. The author buttresses this assertion with compelling, but confusing evidence; his textbook-style charts and statistical comparisons enhance the appeal of the reasoning he presents in clear hypothetical cases...
...Posner moves from his re-definition of an ethical system, one based on economic prosperity, into an intriguing examination of justice, wealth, and government in primitive societies. Posner asserts that the common law evolved in Western societies in the way that it did because judges were trying in accordance with the ethic of efficiency, to maximize the wealth of society though their decisions. This is a natural impulse, Posner says, because economic theory can explain the legal institutions of pre-literate cultures. Beginning with an imaginative look at the social institutions found in Homeric epics, Posner incorporates modern anthropological studies...