Christians and the “empirical prison” of economics
Andy Crouch asks a very good question about Christian integration in economics:
David Brooks gets it just right. We are not machines, and neither is our economy. So where, oh where, are the Christian economists whose work is deeply informed by a non-mechanistic view of human nature, and the ‘faith and trust’ that economies require?’
Brooks is writing about the “empirical prison” of economics on both the right and the left. I have some thoughts, but let’s hear yours first. Who are the Christian economists we ought to be listening to? Are Brooks and Crouch on to something, or are they missing an important point?
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When Andy Crouch writes about “a mechanical, dehumanized view of the economy,” he commits the fallacy of composition. The actions that express the choices of human beings make up the economy but no economy is a human being. Thus, epithets such as “dehumanized” or “humane” do not apply to an economy — at least not as Crouch and Brooks use the term ‘economy.’
Lend an ear to the Scholastics; they were Christians who took the ideas Brooks touches upon seriously and after careful examination of such ideas, debunked them.
[Reply]
Micha Elyi
18 Jan 09 at 12:21 am