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Lädt ... Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (2021. Auflage)von Benjamin M. Friedman
Werk-InformationenReligion and the Rise of Capitalism von Benjamin M. Friedman
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Melde dich bei LibraryThing an um herauszufinden, ob du dieses Buch mögen würdest. Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch. The first quarter of the book outlines some of the intellectual ideas, largely generated by theologians, arising from moral philosophy (in a distinctly Western and Christian view) that slowly developed to form a foundation for Adam Smith, himself a professor of moral philosophy, to write The Wealth of Nations. Over the next quarter of the book, the author shows the rather rapid move from moral philosophy to political economy and the continuing religious and moral underpinnings in the development of economic thought. Unfortunately, the understanding of theology and the Bible in their influence on the development of capitalism is breezy, sometimes misleading, and too often presents debatable content as facts. The latter half of the books focuses exclusively on the United States and the development of economics as a unique discipline. The first half of this half discusses the contending development of the Gospel of Wealth and the Social Gospel, largely premillennialism versus postmillennialism; but by the advent of World War I, the author's focus blurs and begins to shift from economics (capitalism disappears from the text and largely been accepted as the point of economics, at least in the US and Europe) to religion and politics, with economics serving as a catalyst. This last quarter of the book does not seem to relate much to anything that came before -- it feels tacked on to cater to the politics of the moment -- and focuses almost exclusively on fundamentalist Protestantism and its conservative influence on government economic policy. While I enjoyed portions of the book, and will likely investigate some of the titles included in the bibliography, I was frustrated. There is little about capitalism's spread across other continents as an agent of imperialism and Christianity and the subsequent encounter with other religious and moral foundations that influenced how capitalism was accepted and developed. Or even capitalism's strange success in the controlled economy of authoritarian China (not really a form of communism except in the name of the political party) or religion's inability to address social issues as expected except through government (e.g., the failure of prohibition). And, as is true with most books that try to end with the most recent study or data, a study that came out after this book was published notes "a dramatic rise of various kinds of non-religion in the US." (see David E. Campbell, Geoffrey C. Layman, and John C. Green, Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics, Cambridge University Press, 2021.) ( ) keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
"Where do our ideas about economics and economic policy come from? Critics of contemporary economics complain that belief in free markets, among economists and many ordinary citizens too, is a form of religion. It turns out that there is something to the idea: not in the way the critics mean, but in a deeper, more historically grounded sense. Contrary to the conventional historical view of economics as entirely a secular product of the Enlightenment, religion exerted a powerful influence from the outset. Benjamin M. Friedman demonstrates that the foundational transition in thinking about what we now call economics, beginning in the eighteenth century, was decisively shaped by the hotly contended lines of religious thought within the English-speaking Protestant world. Beliefs about God-given human character, about our destiny after this life, and about the purpose of our existence, were all under challenge in the world in which Adam Smith and his contemporaries lived. Those debates explain the puzzling behavior so many of our fellow citizens whose views about economic policies, and whose voting behavior too, seems sharply at odds with what would be to their own economic benefit. Understanding the origins of the relationship between religious thinking and economic thinking, together with its ongoing consequences, provides insights into our current economic policy debates and ways to shape more functional policies for all citizens"-- Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)330.12Social sciences Economics Economics Theory SystemsKlassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:
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