moral deliberation crisis of capitalism and / Santiago Eguidazu * All claims a face fault. And also an atonement. In these pages, Antón Costas said in a superb article, moral bankruptcy of the market economy (El País, 18 April), which until that society does not express outrage against financial capitalism, and politics does not regain its autonomy address this, it may not be a solution to the crisis, which has come from a moral reestablishment of market economy.
The following comments are intended to show that the moral bankruptcy that very reason is predicated on our society and economic system that sustains it, and the consequent destruction of values \u200b\u200bthat feedback, have necessarily had to come from a collapse of our deliberative capacity and quality.
In old moral deliberation was considered essential to guide action, and the lack of it was described as reckless. The wise man was, indeed, able to discuss the trial with righteousness, equity, critical intelligence and practical knowledge. Prudence well understood is inseparable from action.
values \u200b\u200bare not born or die, they are not objective realities or exist solely in our minds, values \u200b\u200bare built through individual deliberative processes (that is, with oneself) or groups (one with other or even all all). The man, through the interaction of deliberation and action, carried values. This is how moral progress materially and ultimately society.
The crisis has exposed our inability to make values \u200b\u200band our commitment to produce a negative value. And it comes shaping, long in the West, at least three factors that have erupted in the waterline our moral principles. The first is the confusion of wisdom and science.
academic economists, bankers, rating agencies, the governments themselves and consumers in general have accepted more or less interested, as knowledge "scientific" that guides and determines its behavior, decision models and economic-financial performance that were brewing since the middle of last century, and whose nucleus can be summarized by simplifying a lot, on the assumption of maximizing rationality of agents, perfect efficiency in the allocation of resources markets, the technical feasibility of uncorrelated returns and risk, and financial superiority of debt to create wealth.
was Aristotle, the first great advocate of prudence as an instrument of deliberation for action, which categorically rejected the pairing with own apodictic knowledge of wisdom and science. The latter deal is necessary, whereas prudence, deliberation, deal with the contingent. By elevating the status of science models that work in the world of the contingent, the man of today has shed deliberate and has been left comfortably driven by what the models predicted.
And escape from a basic principle of critical discussion, namely, to assume ultimate responsibility for the actions, putting it in the hands of artificial models, little has had to get rid of the ever lasting obligation to oppose or exclude those practices or actions conflict with our values. Thus, we have caused to all a huge ball of fire that has swept away much of what has been built for decades.
because I say to all, albeit in very different degrees-is irresponsible and reckless which turns a claim with the sole purpose of profit, but also accepts it knowing that it may not return. And here I disagree with those who point solely responsible for the morass as the representatives of the financial arrangements reviled.
The financial world is certainly a decisive moral responsibility, absolute end to what has happened, but that does not mean that many who have been driven by the mirage of easy money, who have agreed to ride the wave and looking away without saying a peep, not have to take yours.
In a truly ethical atonement about not exempt from responsibility to the rest, but rather the contrary, claims that vise offer the perfect alibi for the man away to disengage from their own moral responsibility.
A second reason that has overshadowed the practice of critical discussion in recent years has been the moral conformity or comfort. In any process of deliberation, there are two parts, one another emotionally and intellectually. John Dewey called the first "value" and the second "valuation." Rate is what we intuitively perceive a state of things urges us to action. Emotions, habits, customs generate a first reaction, an immediate proposal for our action.
But if do not involve the rational part of our brain, the process remains incomplete, there is no proper valuation and, consequently, no action is prudent. Thinking has become painful, possibly dangerous, in the days we live, ponder, imagine courses of action, evaluate alternatives, anticipate consequences and to take initiatives is to match the times, is less expensive and risky to keep wheel.
usual attitude Man today is that of a stowaway (free-rider) trying to appropriate the benefits of deliberative effort and actions of others without incurring any costs required to generate them. Thus, fewer voters go to the polls, fewer shareholders raise their voices on boards and readers increasingly demanding independence and objectivity to their means. A system that aspires to moral regeneration, requires its members to assume the cost of short-term signified, saying no when appropriate and to propose alternative strategies.
Good deliberation not only to choose the means suitable for the desired purposes, but also especially in critically analyze and decide what should be for that purpose. And nobody but ourselves we can or should do. The man fought for centuries to come off the yoke of religion and morality would be pointless now delivered by indifference or inaction.
The third obstacle to our ability to react is precisely our inability to accept the moral failure, learn from it and take steps to overcome it. It is quite common to recognize that one learns from mistakes rather than successes. But something else is failure. We assume costs because we believe that this is an irreversible stain, the principle the end of our untouchable self.
But as individuals, societies and also to make it morally regenerate need to digest and grasp the collective failures. Also here the critical deliberation plays a role. In the same way that all periods of intellectual, moral and material final stages have been preceded by intense individual and collective deliberation, also the moral rebirth of society has required, as, for example, in postwar Germany - a return of people to critical reflection and deliberation.
The result of these three limitations are well known. The structure of our market has changed dramatically. Instrumental values, namely those that are exchanged and measured by monetary units, have overshadowed the intrinsic values, those that are valuable in themselves regardless of their support. A purely instrumental value system impoverishes the individual and society, its ability to churn truncated and to fight the crisis, on and off the critical deliberation process.
It's like a vicious circle: a smaller capacity and quality of deliberation, the greater the weight of the instrumental values in our lives on the edge, in a world of purely instrumental, moral deliberation would lose much of its meaning, is transformed into a mere technical discussion on finding optimal ways to produce pure instrumental value. This society would be inhumane; efficient but unfair. If you do not want to get there, start to assume failure.
the politicians regain their financial independence and expiate the guilt, as claimed by Professor Costas, and that anger and passive resistance play their supportive role and revolutionary. But if the values \u200b\u200bare constructed and performed with base processes of moral deliberation, that everyone in his circle, organization or area of \u200b\u200binfluence is applied to it. The moral reestablishment of a dynamic and multi-person multi-relations, which is what capitalism has become, demand a widespread change in attitudes, and this necessarily involves a recovery of critical deliberative faculty of the individual.
(*) Eguidazu Santiago is a student at the School of Philosophy.
