The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

368 chapter 33Some good scholars in economics and literature and even some philosophersbelieve that the study of ethics is best pursued with a mind unclutteredwith such ethical philosophy and its history in our culture, not tospeak of philosophical psychology or philosophical anthropology. Theyhack the tree of life to pieces, so to speak, and then cheerfully reassemble thedecultured leaves and branches that result into arrangements pleasing tothem, affixing a cardboard label, “A Tree.”As Hobbes, who was a leader in this tree surgery, said in 1640 of “thosemen who have written concerning . ..moral philosophy, ...whereoftherebe infinite volumes,” “[no] man at this day so much as pretend[s] to knowmore than hath been delivered two thousand years ago by Aristotle. And yetevery man thinks that in this subject he knoweth as much as any other; supposingthere needeth thereunto no study but that it accrueth to them bynatural wit.” 16 The thought resembles the evangelical Protestant belief in theefficacy of grace alone. It was no tedious course of study, but “grace thattaught my heart to fear / And grace my fears relieved,” recommending TheGood News Bible.