Piet Naudé | Michael Welker | John Witte, Jr. (Eds.): The Impact of Political Economy (Leseprobe)

Introduction 17
contribution by Roshan Allpress. Instead of discussing the formative role of different
social systems in general, Allpress uses salient bibliographical and biographical
information about Henry Thorton, an eighteenth-century English merchant,
to describe how moral formation actually occured in different social
settings. His intention is to identify—via historical analysis—“potentials for the
formation of character and vocation in the late modern context.”
Allpress tells the story ofhow two institutional contexts provide definitive
formative experiences. He focuses on the particular mercantile context of the
Russia Company, where—unlikeinother companies—collective decision-making,
voluntary work, and building networks of interpersonaltrust were strengthened
by aculture ofassociational honor and formation in commercial habitus. The
rise of the evangelical movement from 1730 onward also created an overlaying
institutional context marked by personal commitment and “the cultivation of the
inner life,” character formation, creation of new charitable organizations, and
engaging in philanthropic activism.
Thornton’smost influentialintellectualcontribution was his Enquiry into the
Paper Credit of Great Britain (1802). His original insight “was to recognize that
the speed of circulation of paper credit reflected not the wealth of the nation, but
the net trust of the commercial community. ...Thornton argued that moral duty
and, therefore, moral formation require the cultivation of trust and trustworthiness—and
that the basis of the good society and wealthy economy was the cultural
accumulation and maintenance of reciprocal trust.”
Allpress then infers that the formative experiences on apersonal level, in
the intergenerational Thornton family context, as well as mercantile and religious
neworks all provided multilayered experiences which formed habits and
perspectives that resulted in both financial innovation and philanthropy for the
common good. The interactions between these layers are often constructed in
contemporay societies as oppositional or reactive, but this biography—though
from adifferent time and context—provides clues to the potential synergies of
moral formation that are “constructive of new identities.”
Part Two: Integrating Social Systems
“Economics, Law, Education, and Religion—Contributions to the Composition of
aGood Society,” by Nicholas Aroney, acknowledges that late modern liberal societies
rely on economics, law, and education to imagine and build a “good society.”
He demonstrates that each of these social systems may be understood in a
positivist (value-neutral) way or as being informed by values with adistinct effect
on the common good. Economics is often defined inpositive, “value-free”
terms, but is also conceived ofasdirected at moral ends. Law may be defined
in positive terms “by reference to the will and power of the lawmaker,” while