Over the last few decades, there have been intense debates concerning the effects of markets on the morality of individuals’ behaviour. On the one hand, several authors argue that markets’ ongoing expansion tends to undermine individuals’ intentions for mutual benefit and virtuous character traits and actions. On the other hand, leading economists and philosophers characterize markets as a domain of intentional cooperation for mutual benefit that promotes many of the character traits and actions that traditional virtue ethics accounts classify as (...) virtuous. In this paper, I join this debate and argue for three claims of general interest to philosophers, economists and policy makers. First, market transactions do not reliably promote individuals’ intentions for mutual benefit, and often select against such intentions. Second, the set of so-called market virtues lacks a substantial overlap with the set of character traits that traditional virtue ethics accounts classify as virtuous. And third, many seemingly virtuous actions observed in market contexts are merely actions in accordance with virtue rather than genuine actions from virtue. These three claims do not license opposition to markets, but challenge the main empirical and theoretical presuppositions of leading virtue ethics defences of markets. (shrink)

The capability approach was developed as a response to the ‘equality of what?’ question, which asks what the metric of equality should be. The alternative answers are, broadly, welfare, resources or capabilities. G.A. Cohen has raised influential criticisms of this last response. He suggests that the capability approach’s focus on individuals’ freedom – their capability to control their own lives – renders its view of well-being excessively ‘athletic’, ignoring benefits achieved passively, without the active involvement of the benefitted individual. However, (...) positing ‘capabilities’ as the appropriate metric of distributive justice need not commit capability theorists to a comprehensive account of well-being, and so not to the athletic conception Cohen ascribes to them. Their aim can, instead, be to delineate legitimate government action and guide egalitarian public policy. Capabilities, in this context, are not just components of individual well-being; they must also be the appropriate goal of just distributive policies. When understood in this way, as a guide to policy, I will argue that the capability approach’s focus on ‘athletic’ individual freedom and control is justified: in the public domain, it is important not just that individuals receive ‘benefits’, but that they participate in their achievement. (shrink)