The renaissance of Aristotelian virtue ethics has produced an extensive philosophical literature that criticizes markets for a lack of virtues. Drawing on Michael Sandel’s virtue-ethical critique of price gouging during natural disasters, we (1) identify and clarify serious misunderstandings in recurring price-gouging debates between virtue-ethical critics and economists. Subsequently, (2) we respond to Sandel’s call for interdisciplinary dialogue. However, instead of solely calling on economics to embrace insights from virtue ethics, we prefer a two-sided version of interdisciplinary dialogue and argue (...) that virtue ethics should embrace economic insights. In particular, we argue that if virtue ethics is to preserve its social relevance under modern conditions, it should re-conceptualize its notion of virtue and re-evaluate the self-interested but effective—and in this sense solidary—help among strangers via markets as virtuous rather than devaluate it as greed, that is, as vicious price gouging. (shrink)

I argue that wrong of plagiarism does not primarily stem from the plagiarist’s illicit misappropriation of academic credit from the person she plagiarized. Instead, plagiarism is wrongful to the degree to which it runs counter to the purpose of academic work. Given that this is to increase knowledge and further understanding plagiarism will be wrongful to the extent that it impedes the achievement of these ends. This account of the wrong of plagiarism has two surprising (and related) implications. First, it (...) follows from this account of the wrong of plagiarism that replication plagiarism might not be an academic wrong at all. (Replication plagiarism consists of the direct quotation or paraphrase of another’s work without attribution. The replication plagiarist thus plagiarizes primary sources, purloining for her own benefit the ideas of their authors). Second, even if replication plagiarism is still held to be an academic wrong, it will be a lesser wrong than bypass plagiarism. (Bypass plagiarism occurs when one quotes from, or provides a paraphrase of, a primary source, but although one cites the primary source one did not identify the quotation or provide the initial paraphrase oneself. Instead, one took the quotation, or drew upon an existing paraphrase, from a secondary source—and one did so without citing the secondary source to credit it as the source of one’s information about the primary source). Holding that bypass plagiarism is worse than replication plagiarizes reverses the usual assessment of the relative wrong of these two types of plagiarism. (shrink)

In the literature on the Moral Limits of the Markets, Kant’s moral philosophy is often employed to assess the amoral or immoral nature of the commercial sphere. Markets and morality are antipodes since the instrumentality of market transactions excludes or undermines moral values. The kingdom of ends, where everything has either a price or a dignity, closes the door to market logic. The present paper challenges this view, which is also endorsed by business ethics authors advocating for Moral Purism. I (...) will show that Kant imagined a market within the Kingdom of Ends where everyone pursues their own aims while assisting others in pursuing theirs. This model, built on the universalization of the maxim of mutual assistance and the duty of honoring the spirit of mutually beneficial contracts, can be employed to judge the morality of real (empirical) market transactions. (shrink)