In this paper, the notion of sustainability as a general regulative idea is distinguished from sustainable development as a more concrete concept leading to practical actions. After that, different economic meanings of sustainable development are discussed, and a concept of critical sustainability is proposed especially with respect to the problem of climate change. Maintaining critical crash barriers and bottlenecks presupposes, however, demanding, continuous improvements in energy efficiency. After discussing problems of decision theory in cases of uncertainty, which is constitutive for (...) climate change, the links between intragenerational and intergenerational justice are analyzed, and by using Barry's notion of justice and Goodin's concept of vulnerability, two possible positions of the general idea of fairness inherent in sustainable development are presented. We conclude by shortly sketching the notion of sufficiency as an additional supplementary sustainability strategy in cases where efficiency improvements based on innovation are less than sufficient for securing the (energetic) fundaments of economic activity and human life. (shrink)

Hans Nutzinger describes the current complex of problems of the eastern european countries on their transition to market economy and points out, how far socio-cultural problems determine the conditions of transformation. The appropriate economic system seems to appear as a responsibility of organization, where as interdependence has tobe seen in a double sense: as an interdependence of all economic decisions, valuations and actions and, on the other hand, as an interdependence of economic systems as a whole. He deals with the (...) topic how far a free-enterprise development depends on specific religious preconditions, but leaves the question - respecting the Iimits of the economic discipline - undecided. (shrink)

Is it imaginable and convenient to apply the economic pattern of the so called »homo oeconomicus« on extraeconomical spheres? The author examines the question. The attraction of the pattern »homo oeconomicus« is the question of the logic of decision in situations of defiency. The author follows the key of the question at the reach and radius in differt spheres of application, for example the analysis of criminality and delinquency. Only in the extension of the social frame situation is an economic (...) reductionism of the social reality and the mutiple ways of human acting avoidable. (shrink)

After more than a decade of intensive discussion, the concept of »sustainable development still remains rather vague. However, a broad consent exists that sustainability implies intragenerational as well as intergenerational equity. Therefore, a policy for sustainability has to go beyond pareto-superiority and to face both queastions of distribution and of scale. This reveals that at the core of sustainability ethical problems are involved. Although the notion of sustainability cannot be used as a concrete recipe, as Karl Homann correctly observes, it (...) has tobe clarified in ordertobe a useful regulative idea. (shrink)