درباره این کتاب:

Th e central theme of Economic Morality and Jewish Law is a consideration of the criterion used to evaluate the worthiness of an economic action or initiative, whether by a private citizen or the government. In this regard, we compare the relevant criterion for standard welfare economics and Jewish law. Espousing what philosophers would call a consequentialist ethical system, welfare economics evaluates the worthiness of an economic action based on whether the action would increase the wealth of society in the long run. This criterion is also called the Kaldor-Hicks criterion. Provided the law does not prohibit the action, consideration of the ethics of the action never enters the picture. What counts are outcomes, not means or intentions. Moreover, the criterion for deciding whether the law should prohibit a particular action in the first place is whether the prohibition would increase society’s wealth in the long run. Consideration of the worthiness of an action based on Kaldor-Hicks holds even if the matter at issue is enacting a law that would save human lives. Th is is so because proponents of Kaldor-Hicks are quite willing to assign an economic value to human life. Once a value for human life is set, cost–benefi t analysis takes over to decide whether the economic benefi ts of saving human lives outweigh the economic benefi ts society would be required to forgo if the legislation were enacted. In sharp contrast to the consequentialist philosophy of standard welfare economics, Jewish law espouses a deontological system of ethics. Within this ethical system, the worthiness of an action is evaluated based not only on its impact on one’s opposite number and third parties, but also on the character of the initiator of the action. Specifi cally, if an action is deemed to debilitate the character of the initiator, the action might be prohibited, despite its neutral eff ect on others. For Jewish law, the determination of the worthiness of an action is all a matter of discovering the applicable rule in Judaism’s code of ethics. Th e concept of economic morality as used in welfare economics and in Jewish law serves as the analytic framework for introducing the various chapters of this book.