312. The law, the market, and honour
The law is imposed, regardless of one’s inclination,
interest or morality. The market is self-regulating, in theory, based only on
self-interest.
Imperfections and limits of laws and markets raise the
need for morality, based on some form of ethics. Best known, perhaps, is
Kantian duty ethics. In this blog I have argued for a broader virtue ethics,
with, among others, the ‘pivotal’ virtues of reason, courage, moderation and
justice.
The problem with duty ethics and also, though perhaps
to a lesser extent, with virtue ethics, is that they are largely driven by
reason and may therefore lack motivating force, particularly in the present, which
seems increasingly driven by emotions.
How can morality, in benevolence towards others, and
virtues, as instruments of ‘the good life’, gain emotional commitment? In other
words, how can they become more self-driven, self-motivating, like markets,
while maintaining the orientation towards the well-being of others, unlike
markets?
The desirability of this is two-fold. First, it adds
intrinsic value of self-motivation, making one feel good. Second, there is an
economic argument. The law, duties, and other regulation require expensive
monitoring and control.
In my attempt to bring in virtues, beyond
self-interest, into economics and politics, in this blog, I have tried to
maintain personal freedom of the choice of the good life. For that, I made a
distinction between public virtues, to be shared, and personal virtues, left to
individual choice.
Public virtues are virtues of allowing for, indeed
appreciating, variety of choice of the good life, ability and commitment to
listen, and to voice as well as accept constructive criticism, in dialogues and
debates on truth and morality, empathy in understanding the motives and
positions of others. One would like to have not only personal commitment to the
common good of such public virtues, but also commitment to uphold it in public.
How can this goal be loaded with emotional commitment?
Kwame Anthony Appiah offered a solution in the form of
a restoration of honour, under the condition that it is morally right.[i] The latter condition is
crucial, since honour in the past has strongly tended to be amoral, yielding
exclusion, subjugation, violence and terror. Appiah discusses the cases of
duelling, footbinding in China, slave trade, and honour killings of women.
Appiah clarifies honour as follows. People have a
deeply rooted thirst for respect, and following an honour code yields that, either
publicly or privately, in self-respect, or both. As Appiah put it: honour makes
a private impulse public.
For positive examples, think of professional honour
codes of soldiers, policemen, doctors, scientists, journalists, and, one would
hope, managers and politicians.
With the encroachment of neo-liberal market ideology,
such hour codes have eroded, replaced by material incentives, and a shift from
professional honour to a substitute in the form of power and wealth. That has
yielded a mushrooming of costs of monitoring and control.
Elsewhere in this blog (item 75) I argued for a the
notion of ‘horizontal control’, where the ones to be controlled are involved in
the determination of the instruments of control. There were two arguments for
this. One is the satisfaction of more autonomy, with more room for choice,
action and improvisation, for its intrinsic worth and its economic worth of
motivation, quality, and innovation. The second is the reduced economic cost of
monitoring and control.
However, here also, to strengthen motivation, one may
need to re-instate professional or organizational honour.
For example, consider the experience with perverse
conduct in financial markets that precipitated the crises starting in 2008. To
remedy this, I proposed the introduction of other virtues than only utility.
And institutional reform to reduce the incentives for bankers and banks to act
against public interest. And to reduce the short-termism of financial markets,
Only then, I argued, would some ethical education of
bankers make sense. One needs to create the conditions for ethical conduct to
be viable. Now I add that this may, in addition, require a re-instatement, or a
novel formation, of professional honour, to make virtuous conduct more
self-regulating.
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