META-ETHICAL REASONING - APPLIED TO ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS PRINCIPLES

Ethics and ethical thinking involve two primary and interdependent ele ments of analysis: the individual and the society. Economic thought di chotomized these two elements into the individual (competitive capital ism) or the society (Marxist socialism), with one element being the ca use, and the other the effect. Views of economic reality were develope d not on the basis of the interdependence of the individual and the so ciety but their mutual antagonism. Economic thought is based on the sc ientific reasoning of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its ab stract definition of reality narrowed the significance of the concrete appearances of things in favor of the rules (science) that define thi ngs. Science requires both an objective causal order (independent of h uman definitions and beliefs) and the development of laws (independent of the human observer or participant) that explain the nature of the objective world. Ethical reasoning requires that economic causality be defined to include both the individual and the society. Ethical reaso ning is needed to bring together both the scientific and the metaphysi cal for human meaning. The science of means must be joined to the huma n purposes of ends.