2002 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
A Research on Modern Economic Philosophy
| Project/Area Number |
13630007
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
経済理論
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| Research Institution | Shiga University |
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Principal Investigator |
MATSUSHIMA Atushige Shiga University, Faculty of Economics, Professor, 経済学部, 教授 (00024935)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
YOSHIKAWA Eiji Shiga University, Faculty of Economics, Associate Professor, 経済学部, 助教授 (80263036)
UMEZAWA Naoki Shiga University, Faculty of Economics, Professor, 経済学部, 教授 (50093563)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2001 – 2002
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| Keywords | contemporary utilitarianism / welfare / reciprocity / morality / rationality / contractualism / environmental ethics / gender |
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| Research Abstract |
The purpose of our research is to reexamine "utilitarianism" and to argue for a new possible tide of economic philosophy. We pay a particular attention to so called "modern version," which includes researches by Harsanyi, Hare, and Parfit. This is because they have tried to reconstruct utilitarianism against important criticisms, for example, by Rawls in terms of priority of liberty and justice and by Hayek in terms of natural law. We are also concerned with their likely responses to difficulties in modern society, which include challenging problems from care for elderly parents with disabilities in our family to serious deterioration in global environment. This task will be useful for us to evaluate to what extent which modern utilitarianism has policy implications.
Prof.Matsushima, in his new book "Economics and Ethics," that will be published near future, and also in his paper "Well-being, reciprocity, and morality," has tried to summarize the whole view of such a new tide of thoughts. He focused on wellbeing and reciprocity in both utilitarianism and contractualism, and reexamined Gauthier's analysis. Then he concluded that the sense of justice as well as rationality must be critical to morality and that utilitarianism could be extended to include contractualism. One of his research implications seems to be closely related to the ethics by Singer, who is very famous for ecocentric arguments on rights of animals and other issues about environment in addition to gender bias. It is with such a theme that Prof.Umezawa and Associate Prof.Yoshikawa has been concerned, as you find some related papers in the following list. Yoshikawa is also preparing another paper, which is directed to the rather theoretical issue on perfectionism implied by Sen and other philosophers.
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