Allan Hazlett challenges the philosophical assumption of the value of true belief. He critiques the view that true belief is better for us than false belief, and the view that truth is "the aim of belief". An alternative picture is provided, on which the fact that some people love truth is all there is to "the value of true belief".

Morality, in the context of luxury counterfeit goods, has been widely discussed in existing literature as having a strong association with decreased purchase intention. However, drawing on moral disengagement theory, we argue that individuals are motivated to justify their immoral behaviors through guilt avoidance, thus increasing counterfeit purchase intention. This research demonstrates that consumers’ desire to purchase counterfeit luxuries hinges on two types of moral reasoning strategies: moral rationalization and moral decoupling. The empirical results show that each strategy increases (...) purchase intention, but respectively through moral judgment and perceived benefit. Implications for researchers and managers are discussed. (shrink)

SummaryThe aim of this article is to shed light on the eighteenth-century Italian reflection on luxury and consumption in a comparative perspective, clarifying, on the one hand, the complex significance that it assumed and, on the other, the specificity of the Italian context, marked by the immense political value of the debate on the subject. In particular this objective will be pursued through the analysis of specific cases among the many offered by the Italian context and through different research (...) strands. These are: the debate on the evaluation of luxury; the transition from the notion of luxury to that of consumption; and the discussion on luxury and consumption in the revolutionary context. This article intends to outline the particular contribution made by Italian thought, which conveyed a multifaceted discourse of social reform, critique and understanding built on more even foundations, and at the same time to clarify what contribution can be made to current historiography by the study of this theme within eighteenth-century Italy. (shrink)

Luxury is one of the main polemic targets of Baron d’Holbach. It brings one to run after imaginary needs they cannot fulfill, dooming them to live an unhappy, grim life. This critical view of luxury is no news and was shared by many others _philosophes_. In this paper, however, I argue that in d’Holbach’s account, luxury is more than an economically and morally disruptive force. It is also a tool to reinforce oppressive power. First, I reconstruct d’Holbach’s (...) well-known account of luxury contained in his _Politique Naturelle_. Secondly, I show that a closer reading of his later work _Morale Universelle_ discloses a new element: according to d’Holbach’s social philosophy, luxury is a mystification strategy used by tyrants to be seen as gods and consequently dominate their subjects. Finally, pivoting on the continuity between human nature and modern society in the _Système de la Nature_, I show that luxury is inscribed into a natural process. It is nothing mysterious nor supernatural. This naturalization of luxury allows people to unmask the god-like tyrant as a common human being, showing that understanding how nature works can set man free not only from religion, but also from oppressive political power. (shrink)

This paper examines whether, and if so when, luxury tax is justifiable. After a characterization of luxury tax, I critically examine several arguments that have been or can be made in defence of luxury tax, including Ng’s diamond good argument and a variation of Frank’s positional good argument. I put forward an alternative, expressive argument, according to which luxury tax can help to create and sustain social norms that discourage conspicuous luxury consumption and display of (...) wealth. I explain several ways in which luxury tax fails to achieve the expressive goal and brings about unintended consequences. (shrink)

Luxury consumption has grown exponentially across the globe. This growth was fuelled more by the emerging non-Western countries such as India. Consumers in this country are more tech savvy and are a new set of individuals who are totally different from the old, conventional consumers of the Western countries. These new individuals consume luxury to develop their digital self. Unfortunately, this area is not researched in the literature. This article fills this lacuna in extant literature. To address this (...) issue, we comprehensively reviewed the current research from the area of luxury consumption, digital usage, digital self and subsequently developed a conceptual framework. This framework has three stages: individual that has interpersonal, power, symbolic and emotional needs; social dimension that is formulated and develops from the reference groups. Further, individuals develop the ‘we approach’ along with social groups. This approach is associated with strong ties, fortified nods, positive interactions and exclusivity. These elements lead to the development of digital self that provides happiness and pleasure to the individuals in terms of luxury consumption. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the continued potency of veillance theories to traverse beyond the taxonomies of surveillance inside liberal democracies. It provides a commentary on the ability of sousveillance to destabilise and disrupt suer/violence by shifting its focus from the centre to the periphery, where Big Data surveillance is tantamount to sur/violence. In these peripheral political spaces, surveillance is not framed by concerns over privacy, democracy and civil society; rather, it is a matter of life and death, a technique of (...) both biopolitical and thanatopolitical power. I argue that the universalist, and universalizing, debates over surveillance cannot be mapped through the anxieties of privileged middle classes as they would neither transcend nor make possible alternative ways of tackling the intersection of surveillance and violence so long as they are couched in the liberal concerns for democracy. I call this phenomenon “liberal luxury,” whereby debates over surveillance have over-emphasised liberal proclivities at the expense of disengaging those peripheral populations most severely affected by sur/violence. (shrink)

Building on a model of the biological, socio-psychological, and structural drivers of luxury consumption, this article explores when and why luxury consumers consider ethics in their luxury consumption practices, to identify differences in their ethical and ethical luxury consumption. The variables proposed to explain these differences derive from biological, socio-psychological, and structural drivers, namely, consumers’ (1) age, (2) ethicality, (3) human values, (4) motivations, and (5) assumptive world. A cluster analysis of a sample of 706 U.S. (...) adult luxury consumers reveals five segments of luxury consumers, each reflecting a specific persona, that engage in both ethical and ethical luxury consumption to varying extents. The five segments differ in the extent to which they exhibit features related to four discriminant functions (immorality, ego-orientation, and strain; altruistic-orientation; conservation, in control, and positivity; and youth and luxury savvy), which vary across the biological, socio-psychological, and structural drivers. The findings thus indicate which segments of luxury consumers are most relevant for luxury firms pursuing a long-term sustainability agenda and suggest practical actions to reach those goals. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical analysis of the use of the idea of distance in philosophical anthropology. Distance is generally presented in works of philosophical anthropology as the ideal coping strategy, which rests in turn on the thesis of the instinct deficiency of the human species. Some of the features of species life, such as its sophisticated use of symbolic forms, come to be seen as necessary parts of this general coping strategy, rather than a merely expressive outlet, incidental to (...) the ultimate goal of life preservation. The paper analyses the arguments used in support of the thesis of instinct deficiency in Hans Blumenberg and considers their implications for the status of symbolic expression in species life. It contrasts the approach this thesis involves with one that proceeds by presenting and arguing from biological evolutionary evidence. The contrast is used to examine the questions: in what sense instinct deficiency is specifically anthropological, and in what precise sense philosophical anthropology is ‘philosophical’. (shrink)

A major resource expanding the study of early Chinese philosophy, religion, literature, and politics, this book features the first complete English-language translation of the_ Luxuriant Gems of the "Spring and Autumn"_,_ _one of the key texts of early Confucianism. The work is often ascribed to the Han scholar and court official Dong Zhongshu, but, as this study reveals, the text is in fact a compendium of writings by a variety of authors working within an interpretive tradition that spanned several generations, (...) depicting a utopian vision of a flourishing humanity that they believed to be Confucius's legacy to the world. The Spring and Autumn is a chronicle kept by the dukes of the state of Lu from 722 to 481 B.C.E. _The Luxuriant Gems_ follows the interpretations of the _Gongyang Commentary_, whose transmitters belonged to a tradition that sought to explicate the special language of the _Spring and Autumn_. The Gongyang masters believed that the_ Spring and Autumn_ had been written by Confucius himself, employing subtle and esoteric phrasing to indicate approval or disapproval of important events and personages. The _Luxuriant Gems_ augments Confucian ethical and philosophical teachings with chapters on cosmology, statecraft, and other topics drawn from contemporary non-Confucian traditions, reflecting the brilliance of intellectual life in the Han dynasty during the formative decades of the Chinese imperial state. To elucidate the text, Sarah A. Queen and John S. Major divide their translation into eight thematic sections with extensive introductions that address dating, authorship, authenticity, and the relationship between the original text and the evolving _Gongyang_ approach. (shrink)

Through an analysis of the eighteenth-century debate about luxury, Wahnbaeck traces the shaping of a new language of political economy. By charting not only the development of political economy in Italy, but the methods of transmission of the ideas at the heart of this debate, the author argues that the focus on economic thought is characteristic of the Italian enlightenment at large. Ultimately, these methods were responsible for the development of very distinct 'cultures of enlightenment' across the Italian peninsula.

This work charts the development of political economy in eighteenth-century Italy, and it argues that the focus on economic thought is characteristic of the Italian enlightenment at large. Through an analysis of the debate about luxury, it traces the shaping of a new language of political economy which was inspired by, and contributed to, European debate, but which offered solutions that were as much shaped by intellectual traditions and socio-economic circumstances as by French or Scottish precedent. Ultimately, those traditions (...) were responsible for the development of very distinct 'cultures of enlightenment' across the peninsula -from the insertion of the economy into the edifice of enlightened Catholicism, to the development of physiocracy in Tuscany, to a new analytical approach to economics in the Milanese enlightenment.Wahnbaeck draws on treatises, academic debates, university lectures, sermons, letters, dictionaries and personal sketches to trace the development of a public culture in Italy in the middle of the century, to establish the channels for the transmission of ideas between Italy, France and Scotland, and the development of an analytical language of economy in Milan in the second half of the century. This work relates those developments to the socio-economic and political contexts in which they occurred and argues that the focus on the economy can be explained by a triple reason: against the background of a declining economy and a shift towards agriculture in a competitive European environment, economic thought addressed the region's most pressing needs; secondly, subjection to Habsburg rule meant that political reform was monopolized in Vienna, whereas economic policy was an area of developed government and hence offered a safe route to influence without infringing on Hapsburg prerogatives; and finally, advances in economic thinking in Milan in particular provided a claim to power against the previous generation which had dominated the field of jurisprudence. (shrink)

In Ethics of Luxury renowned Canadian thinker and artist Jeanne Randolph gives us a magnum opus focusing on one of the most pressing issues facing us today – how we act morally and ethically while participating in a culture of abundance, opulence and consumerism. Randolph argues that when we use our imagination, as we do when we create, appreciate and live with art, we are acting ethically, expressing our sense of morality in a practical, material way.

The eighteenth-century moral philosopher Archibald Campbell is now largely forgotten, even to specialists in the Scottish Enlightenment. Yet his work is worth recovering both as part of the immediate reception of Bernard Mandeville and Francis Hutcheson's rival moral philosophies, and for better understanding the state of Scottish moral philosophy a decade before David Hume published his Treatise of Human Nature. This paper offers a reading of Campbell as deploying a specifically Epicurean philosophy that resists both the Augustinianism of Mandeville, and (...) the Stoicism of Hutcheson. This leads him onto ground later claimed more conclusively by Hume, whilst helping us to better conceptualise the deployment and recovery of Hellenistic thought in the early modern period. (shrink)

In this assessment of the intersection of trade, picturing collections and knowledge?making in Early Modern Antwerp, the focus is on the role of luxury glass, mirror and lens technology and the science of optics. Emphasizing the social ties that facilitated these intersections, it is argued that newly invented luxury goods such as the pictures of collections and the art cabinets allowed Antwerp craftsmen, artists and art dealers to export the message that the material objects in which they traded (...) were objects of knowledge: not to everyone, however, but to those who desired membership of a select community. (shrink)

Economists generally associate the redistribution of resources with the apparatus of taxes and transfer payments. Such redistributions are done by the power of the authorities. However, resources are redistributed by other means as well. People give away income in a variety of ways, deliberate and unintentional. In this paper, agents transfer consumption goods in return for a good which lacks material qualities and affects their preferences because it has “value”. An example of a real life commodity without intrinsic value is (...) diamonds. The standard consumption value of a diamond is low, especially as artificial diamonds look the same as real ones to the naked eye. Many luxury goods such as art pieces have similar characteristics. Owning a house in a “rich” area could have extra benefits in consumption and, yet, one important motivation is simply to live in an expensive neighborhood. By holding such a good an agent refrains from acquiring resources that he could consume and, thus, frees resources for other agents. Our thinking on this issue originates from a naive question. Why are wealthy people striving to be wealthier? It is quite absurd to think that rich people wish to increase the consumption of standard goods as assumed in the classical consumer model. Indeed, by acquiring an expensive diamond or an original piece of art, a consumer demonstrates his avoidance of consumption. We construct and analyse an elementary competitive equilibrium model in which the value of “useless” jewels enter the preferences of consumers. We show that if jewels are scarce, they can trade at a positive price despite having no intrinsic utility. Under fairly natural assumptions, a positive price equilibrium redistributes consumption from the rich to the poor. Thus, the model demonstrates the common wisdom that the existence of luxury goods can have a positive effect on income distribution. This paper is mainly expository. The idea of consumption goods lacking intrinsic value and of prices entering directly the utility functions is not original.. (shrink)

Intellectual property law plays a pivotal role in ensuring that luxury goods companies can recoup their investments in the creation and dissemination of their copyrighted works, trademarked logos, and patented designs. In 2011, global sales for luxury goods reached about $250 billion, and consumers in East and Southeast Asia accounted for more than 50 percent of that figure. The rapid expansion of the market has prompted some retailers to wield intellectual property against the influx of imitators and counterfeiters. (...) The Luxury Economy and Intellectual Property comprehensively explores the rise of the luxury goods economy and the growing role of intellectual property in creating, sustaining, and regulating this economy. Leading scholars across various disciplines critically consider the industry, its foundational intellectual property laws, and the public interest and social concerns arising from the intersection of economics and law. Topics covered include defining the concept of luxury, the social life of luxury goods, concerns about distributive justice in a world flooded by luxury goods and knockoffs, the globalization of luxury goods, and the economic, social, and political ramifications of the meteoric rise of the Asian luxury goods market. (shrink)

Offering an original contribution to the field of luxury and fashion studies, this edited collection takes a philosophical perspective, addressing the idea that humans need luxury. From this framework it delves deep into two particular dimensions of luxury, emotions and society, and concludes with cases of brand building in order to illustrate the two dimensions at work. Comparative analysis between countries is brought together with an emphasis on China. Chapters address the ongoing growth in the market, as (...) well as the significant changes in the sector brought about by fast international expansion and an increased focus on ethical supply and sustainability, making the book an insightful read for scholars of fashion business, luxury and branding. (shrink)

SummaryThis article has two aims. In the first part I will present some methodological considerations on intellectual history, particularly in relation to other disciplines considered similar yet different, such as the history of ideas, the history of concepts and the history of discourse. I will then seek to clarify what it means, in terms of research practice, to write intellectual history, taking as a starting point the subject of my own research, namely the political implications of economic thinking on (...) class='Hi'>luxury and consumption in Italy during the second half of the eighteenth century. More specifically, I intend to highlight the unique characteristics of intellectual history, understood as global history, which requires the reconstruction of the different contexts in which its underlying ideas and objectives developed, concentrating on its highly interdisciplinary nature. In particular, I will focus on a specific type of interdisciplinarity that characterised the methodology of my research, namely the attempt to hold together political thought and economic analysis. Eighteenth-century Italy was in fact marked by a strong, multifaceted political evaluation of economic thinking on luxury and consumption, which led me to examine the discussion of the subject through two lenses, those of economic analysis and political thinking. This specificity shows how the reconstruction of economic thought constitutes a fertile course for the investigation of the political culture and social projects of Italian authors in the eighteenth century, at a time when economic science was taking shape as a separate discipline. (shrink)

This paper builds on existing research investigating CSR and ethical consumption within luxury contexts, and makes several contributions to the literature. First, it addresses existing knowledge gaps by exploring the ways in which consumers perform ethical luxury purchases of fine jewellery through interpretive research. Second, the paper is the first to examine such issues of consumer ethics by extending the application of theories of practice to a luxury product context, and by building on Magaudda’s :15–36, 2011) circuit (...) of practice framework. This is significant in that, to date, consumer research using practice theories has focused mainly on routine and habitual practices. Our findings and discussion provide an analysis of intentional and less intentional ethical consumer performances within the interconnected nexus of activities of consumers’ fine jewellery consumption practice, where meanings, understandings and intelligibility of social phenomena are worked through the various activities that shape such a practice. Finally, the paper concludes with significant managerial and policy-related implications, as our extended circuit of practice analysis conveys that if ethics and sustainability dimensions are to be embedded in fine jewellery consumption practice, they must first be made an intrinsic part of the nexus of the social and material environment of trading and consumption places. (shrink)

Part of the Renaissance genius was to look at familiar things in unfamiliar ways.1 Although a variety of approaches to the study of leadership are becoming familiar, it still helps to consider new ones. Of use in such moments are the works of unfamiliar writers who have spent considerable energy thinking from an alien perspective. One does not have to accept their assertions uncritically in order to profit from reading them, yet it does take courage sometimes to start down a (...) strange path. In the spirit of applying new ideas to familiar themes, this article interprets volume one of Georges Bataille’s The Accursed Share2 in the light of the phenomenon we refer to as leadership. Bataille, who was born in 1897 and died in 1962, certainly qualifies as a writer with an alien perspective. He has the potential to offend. At times, he becomes positively cryptic, as in asserting ‘that the sexual act is in time what the tiger is in space’. Nonetheless, the book itself develops a plausible line of reasoning. Society, it argues, is determined by how it disposes of energy. And since energy that cannot be used will be squandered, it matters how a society chooses to do this. Bataille argues further that moments of true ‘sovereignty’ occur when we squander what would otherwise have been useful. This paper summarizes the argument of The Accursed Share and applies it to the outpourings that followers make to leaders. Rather than regard these uneven relationships as examples of utilitarian reciprocity, perhaps we can tap into the idea that attentiveness to leadership is more in the form of an offering or sacrifice to something that expresses us, as an excuse to display exuberance. This approach promises insight into issues of charisma, followership as self-denial, and mass psychology. It also pertains to the tendency of followers to turn against leaders in ritual sacrifice as meaningful superfluity.3. (shrink)

Personal health technologies such as apps and wearables that generate health and behavior data close to the individual patient are envisioned to enable personalized healthcare - and self-care. And yet, they are consumer devices. Proponents of these devices presuppose that measuring will be helpful, and that data will be meaningful. However, a growing body of research suggests that self-tracking data does not necessarily make sense to users. Drawing together data studies and digital health research, we aim to further research on (...) data ambivalence, a term we use to refer to the ambiguities and uncertainties people experience when interpreting their own data, as well as the critical obligation towards cultivating ethically sound uses and responses to such data in context. We develop the relationship between data, interpretation, and context as a central theoretical and practical problem in the datafication of healthcare. We then show how interpretation and context matter for data ambivalence through an empirical study of heart patients with an implanted advanced pacemaker who were offered a Fitbit wristband for self-tracking as part of a research project. We argue that the hope, anxiety, and doubt connected to the promise and accuracy of data are tempered by the context and purpose of self-tracking, and by individual circumstances. Finally, we link the findings on context-sensitivity in data interpretation to questions about response-ability in cloud-based care infrastructures. We discuss the ethical dilemmas associated with the use of commercial wellness-technologies in healthcare, and with researching such emerging practices. (shrink)

From his close analysis of the works of the era's great philosophers, Dykstal argues that the dialogue as a literary form helped to develop, and subsequently transform, the public sphere in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England."--BOOK JACKET.

This article explores the debate about the virtues and otherwise of luxury in French eighteenth- and nineteenth political thought. I begin by contrasting the views of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Jean-Francois Melon. In view of the manner in which this argument was developed by Montesquieu, Diderot, Saint-Lambert, and others, I argue that debates about luxury continued into and beyond the French Revolution of 1789. Then, by looking at the writings of Jean-Baptiste Say and Destutt de Tracy the article demonstrates (...) the coninued prominence of debates about luxury in the early years of the nineteenth century and the enduring nature of the arguments posed by Rousseau against immoderate wealth amongst republicans. It concludes by referring to discussions of luxury in the Second Empire. (shrink)

In the context of the current heated debate surrounding the pervasive influence of the English language and Anglo-American culture on other languages, as well as the widespread purist attitude towards some contact-induced language change phenomena, both abroad and in Romania, our article discusses the situation of English lexical borrowings in present-day Romanian, focusing on the perception and processing of the so-calledluxury Anglicisms(Sections 2and3) by young Romanian native speakers, in an attempt to see whether such an analysis can help clarify their (...) acceptability and diffusion across our target population. We propose an alternative cognitive, psycholinguistic approach to the study of contact-induced lexical borrowings, aiming to show that there is no difference in the young Romanian native speakers’ processing of sentences containing luxury Anglicisms and their established Romanian counterparts. Such findings may support our claim that the acceptability and diffusion of such Anglicisms are pervasive across our target population, even if the official position generally condemns such uses, considering them gratuitous and a burden in communication, even making it unintelligible sometimes.Our analysis starts from the observation that most (but not all) Romanian academics, whether linguists or not, tend to embrace a purist attitude, while on the other hand young Romanians accept such Anglicisms and tend to use them extensively. In fact, such uses are not limited to young people, who have been the subjects of our research, but are the ‘norm’ in daily conversations and elsewhere across the general population (Stoichițoiu Ichim 2006). Thus, there seems to be a gap between the actual acceptability and diffusion of luxury Anglicisms among Romanians and the ‘official’ recommendations. Based on the results of a sensicality task, meant to show how 188 Romanians, aged 18–22, process and perceive sentences with or without luxury Anglicisms (seeSection 6), we will try to show that luxury Anglicisms are accepted and, by recurrent use, diffused among the Romanian community. For a more accurate picture of their diffusion, the findings will be further correlated with data fromCoRoLa, the only official corpus ofpresent-day Romanian (beginning 1989) made available under the auspices of the Romanian Academy, as well as a corpus currently in the making, and the Internet (seeSection 7).Besides showing that luxury Anglicisms cannot really be blamed for burdening or impairing processing, and thus communication, and explaining why such uses should not be censured or disapproved, we hope that our study of acceptability and diffusion will demonstrate that we are dealing with a complex, multi-layered phenomenon that can be better understood by going beyond a diachronic and synchronic analysis of particular words and a frequency count, and should incorporate more experimental data.Last but not least, we suggest that, on the practical side, such experimental studies as the one described here could be used as an additional criterion for the lexicographic inclusion of lexical borrowings. (shrink)

In order to decide whether a comprehensive treaty covering all greenhouse gases is the best next step after UNCED, one needs to distinguish among the four questions about the international justice of such international arrangements: (1) What is a fair allocation of the costs of preventing the global warming that is still avoidable?; (2) What is a fair allocation of the costs of coping with the social consequences of the global warming that will not in fact be avoided?; (3) What (...) background allocation of wealth would allow international bargaining (about issues like 1 and 2) to be a fair process?; and (4) What is a fair allocation of emissions of greenhouse gases (over the long-term and during the transition to the long-term allocation)? In answering each question we must specify from whom any transfers should come and to whom any transfers should go. As the grounds for the answers we usually face a choice between fault-based principles and no-fault principles. (shrink)

Coinciding with the rising development of emerging markets, sustainable consumption practices in these markets are increasingly under scrutiny. In this context, we compare empirical results from consumers in four countries (three emerging markets and one developed market) in an experimental study to uncover patterns of preferences for sustainable luxury products (i.e., products that combine sustainability and luxury characteristics). Our findings illustrate that consumers’ quality, emotional, price, and social value perceptions, as well as purchase and electronic word-of-mouth intentions, are (...) consistently higher in all three emerging markets compared to the developed market. We find that sustainability (vs. conventional) product features increase consumers’ product value perceptions and behavioral intentions, although this effect is partially stronger for the developed compared to the emerging market(s). We further show a positive sustainability effect for luxury products, this effect is stronger for mass-market products. Combining sustainability and luxury signals leads to similar effects in emerging and developed markets. Thus, emerging markets have promise in terms of scope for incorporating sustainability characteristics into luxury products. Sustainable luxury consumption can therefore be understood as a manifestation of global consumer culture. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2018 Heft: 221 Seiten: 53-69.

Carbon offsetting remains contentious within, at least, philosophy. By posing and then answering a general question about an aspect of the morality of carbon offsetting—Does carbon offsetting make luxury emissions morally permissible?—this essay helps to lessen some of the topic’s contentiousness. Its central question is answered by arguing and defending the view that carbon offsetting makes luxury emissions morally permissible by counteracting potential harm. This essay then shows how this argument links to and offers a common starting point (...) for further examination of offsetting across various disciplines and domains, such as policy and other branches of philosophy like the ethics of risk. (shrink)

This article explores the extent to which consumers consider ethics in luxury goods consumption. In particular, it explores whether there is a significant difference between consumers’ propensity to consider ethics in luxury versus commodity purchase and whether consumers are ready to purchase ethical-luxury. Prior research in ethical consumption focuses on low value, commoditized product categories such as food, cosmetics and high street apparel. It is debatable if consumers follow similar ethical consumption patterns in luxury purchases. Findings (...) indicate that consumers’ propensity to consider ethics is significantly lower in luxury purchases when compared to commoditized purchases and explores some of the potential reasons for this reduced propensity to identify or act upon ethical issues in luxury consumption. (shrink)

This paper looks at two figures in the modern, European, eighteenth-century debate on luxury. It claims to better understand the differences between Francis Hutcheson and Bernard Mandeville by exploring how Hutcheson treated the topic of luxury as a distinction between two desires, thus differing from Mandeville's concept of luxury, and a concept of temperance based on moral sense. It explores why Hutcheson believed that luxury was a moral, social and political issue and particularly why he considered (...) Mandeville the embodiment of a threat that went beyond simple considerations of the content of The Fable of the Bees to touch on reflections on the equilibrium of a social and political system. It aims to show how the psychological and the moral dimension were connected to Hutcheson's political theory and how luxury was one of the key points of this connection. (shrink)

Communities of Style: Portable Luxury Arts, Identity, and Collective Memory in the Iron Age Levant. By Marian H. Feldman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Pp. xvii + 250, illus. $70.

Summary In his novel The Adventures of Telemachus, François de la Mothe-Fénelon (1651–1715) presents a utopian society, Boetica, in which the role of luxury, war and trade is extremely limited. In unreformed Salentum, on the other hand, Fénelon shows the opposite image, one in which the three elements reinforce each other in a fatal feedback-loop. I analyse the relationship between luxury, war and trade in the Telemachus and I sketch the background to Fénelon's views, with special attention to (...) the military expansion and the mercantilism of Louis XIV, Fénelon's quietist spirituality, and the development of the concept of self-interest in seventeenth-century philosophy by mechanicist philosophers and economic thinkers. (shrink)

Hume's essay ‘Of Luxury’ criticizes two extreme and contrasting doctrines: that luxury is always beneficial to society and that it is always baneful. Hume identifies the exponent of the first proposition as Bernard Mandeville in his book The Fable of the Bees, but does not name the second target of his essay. It is most probably John Dennis, one of Mandeville's contemporary critics. The evidence for this is that Hume challenges and contradicts three clearly defined theses advanced in (...) Dennis's book Vice and Luxury Publick Mischiefs. (shrink)

The notion of “responsible luxury” may appear as a contradiction in terms. This article investigates the influence of two defining characteristics of luxury products—scarcity and ephemerality—on consumers’ perception of the fit between luxury and corporate social responsibility (CSR), as well as how this perceived fit affects consumers’ attitudes toward luxury products. A field experiment reveals that ephemerality moderates the positive impact of scarcity on consumers’ perception of fit between luxury and CSR. When luxury products (...) are enduring (e.g., jewelry), a scarce product is perceived as more socially responsible than a more widely available one and provokes positive attitudes. However, this effect does not appear for ephemeral luxury products (e.g., clothing). The perceived fit between luxury and CSR mediates the combined effects of scarcity and ephemerality on consumers’ attitudes toward luxury products. This study provides valuable insights that luxury brand managers can use to design their CSR and marketing strategies. (shrink)