Ethics and Economics Education
Moral foundations, economic principles, & critical thinking
We ask students to write response paragraphs after our weekly discussions. Here are some selections from those comments on the readings for this year, organized by thinker. The text has not been changed in any way from the originals except for formatting. On Frederic Bastiat’s “Parable of the Broken Window” “In this week’s discussion we built upon the concept of […]
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Last month, Ethics & Economics Challenge started again at The Founders Academy in Manchester, N.H. and Merrimack Valley H.S. in Penacook, N.H. We are trying out an entirely new format this year. Students will focus on reading three works of major historical or contemporary importance in the fields of economics and moral philosophy, and we discuss a chapter or two […]
Read moreLast week, I met with the MVHS students to discuss Section 2 of The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. We looked at the way Kant derived a “categorical imperative” from the idea that morality commands us categorically rather than hypothetically. For instance, morality says “do not murder,” not “if you don’t want to go to jail, do not murder.” […]
Read moreOne of the new readings we are doing for this year’s Ethics and Economics Challenge course is Immanuel Kant’s Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Last week, I spoke with the students about the first part of this essay, and we discussed Kant’s conception of morality based on the good will. Kant says a good will is the only unconditionally […]
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