Abstract

This study in social ethics analyzes the writings of the major British and German forebears of contemporary economics and of two prominent figures in Roman Catholic social teaching who explored the relation of theology and economics. By means of a conceptual anatomy of work which is derived from continuities manifested in the literature itself, this inquiry provides the foundation for a normative theory which concentrates on the working person and treats economics as a sociocultural activity for which work is the basic, primary force. This theory of work focuses on persons along four lines: as they confront the limits impinging on them, as they collaborate in society, as they utilize technology and as they come to the service of each other. ;The first three chapters treat the early British and German economists. Chapter one is devoted to Adam Smith and David Ricardo, chapter two to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx. The third chapter examines the work of Alfred Marshall, Gustav V. Schmoller and Heinrich Pesch at the end of the nineteenth century. Chapter four investigates the thought of Oswald V. Nell-Breuning concerning work with particular attention to his arguments in support of Mitbestimmung . The treatment of codetermination, a contemporary structure of workers' participation, indicates how the theory of work activity can specify practical arrangements and must develop in response to social and structural developments. The concluding chapter presents a theory of work activity which benefits from the preceding analysis of the historical figures and makes use of contemporary, philosophical reflection about work, especially that of Paul Schrecker and Emmanuel Levinas. This chapter stresses the ethical significance of work as recognitive and productive activity. In work persons actualize their freedom through the acknowledgement and configuring of their limits, through their participation in social institutions, through their exercise of liberating discovery and through their reflective, more inclusive service of one another