Monti di Pietà of 1500 and the Islamic banks as models of common good

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-42
Author(s):  
Stefano Coronella ◽  
Paolo Biancone ◽  
Silvana Secinaro ◽  
Valerio Brescia

Introduction: The study compares two banking systems that have marked and mark the current system in Europe and the Middle East. The Monti di Pietà of 1500 and the Islamic banks which have developed several key features of the past, present the pillars of the Neo-Aristotelian concept of common good. Aim of the work: The study aims to identify the historical, cultural, and accounting factors, similarities, and ethical principles of the two models to identify key ele-ments supporting the common good concept. Methodological approach: This study adopts a historiographical approach that delves into the relationship between narrative, interpretive, and explanatory history, in which it argues that the historical narrative involves elements of interpretation and explanation. Furthermore, a considerable importance is given to the banking environment's political, religious, and regulatory aspects. Main findings: The analysis conducted traces ethical, cultural, and religious components, highlighting many aspects that confirm the starting theory and enrich its conception through financial models that are apparently distant from each other. The study highlights how reciprocity, solidarity, and support for the social fabric of growth have joint agreements and aspects characterizing the two models. Originality: The study provides and integrates significant elements on which the concept of the common good is based.

Africa ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 87 (3) ◽  
pp. 496-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas G. Kirsch

AbstractUsing fieldwork data from South Africa's Eastern Cape Province, this article highlights ambiguities of volunteering as idea and practice by exploring discursive strategies used by volunteers in the field of civic crime prevention when the ethical honesty and selflessness of their commitment to volunteering is questioned by others. These ambiguities relate to asymmetries in the relationship between donors and recipients of volunteering, as well as, most importantly, the challenge to determine what constitutes the ‘common good’. This article demonstrates that these strategies entail the accommodation of contentions about: (1) the social identity of the volunteer by stressing the volunteer's commitment to abstract causes and objectives; (2) powerful asymmetries between donors and recipients of volunteering by invoking an encompassing sociality; and/or (3) the (alleged) self-interest of volunteers by defining the personal benefits achieved by volunteering not as an end in themselves but as ‘private means’ to ‘public ends’. All three strategies have in common that volunteers as ‘ethical subjects’ can here be shown to be co-produced with South African ‘communities of ethics’ on different social scales.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masaya Kobayashi

This manuscript explores the relationship between positive psychology and political philosophy, revealing an inter-disciplinary approach that speaks to the concerns of the common good. Since positive psychology has been expanding its reach into social and political spheres, its relationship to philosophical arguments has been worthy of exploration. Positive psychology is associated with utilitarianism, and aspects of hedonic psychology. However, an alternative concept of eudaimonic well-being has enabled this psychology to have links to other political philosophies. Therefore, this manuscript provides an overview of contemporary political philosophies: first, it discusses the debate between liberalism and communitarianism, and secondly, it summarizes the subsequent developments of liberal perfectionism, capability approach, and deliberative democracy. Then, the configuration of these political philosophies is indicated by the figure of two axes of “individual/collective” and “ethical/non-ethical.” The following section compiles the inter-relationships between the conceptions of citizenship, justice, and well-being, regarding the main political philosophies: egoism, utilitarianism, libertarianism, liberalism, communitarianism, and conservatism. Utilitarianism is associated with happiness, while liberalism and libertarianism rely on the concept of rights, which is almost equal to the idea of justice. Accordingly, utilitarianism is a philosophy of well-being, while liberalism and libertarianism are philosophies of justice. However, there is little connection between well-being and justice in these philosophies because the two kinds of philosophies are incompatible. The latter kind criticizes the former because the maximization of happiness can infringe on people’s rights. Moreover, these philosophies do not particularly value citizenship. In contrast, communitarianism is intrinsically the political philosophy of citizenship most attuned to increasing well-being, and it can connect an idea of justice with well-being. The final part offers a framework to develop an inter-disciplinary collaboration. Positive psychology can provide the empirical basis of the two axes above concerning political philosophies. On the other hand, the correspondence makes the character of political philosophies clearer. While libertarianism and liberalism correspond to psychology as usual, utilitarianism and communitarianism correspond to positive psychology, and the latter can be regarded as positive political philosophies. This recognition leads to the interdisciplinary framework, enabling multi-disciplinary collaboration, including work with the social sciences, which could benefit the common good.


Author(s):  
Mary L. Hirschfeld

There are two ways to answer the question, What can Catholic social thought learn from the social sciences about the common good? A more modern form of Catholic social thought, which primarily thinks of the common good in terms of the equitable distribution of goods like health, education, and opportunity, could benefit from the extensive literature in public policy, economics, and political science, which study the role of institutions and policies in generating desirable social outcomes. A second approach, rooted in pre-Machiavellian Catholic thought, would expand on this modern notion to include concerns about the way the culture shapes our understanding of what genuine human flourishing entails. On that account, the social sciences offer a valuable description of human life; but because they underestimate how human behavior is shaped by institutions, policies, and the discourse of social science itself, their insights need to be treated with caution.


2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 49-63
Author(s):  
Bartosz Mika

This text can be defined as an attempt to look at the question of the common good through sociological glasses. The author suggests that many of the issues subsumed under  the term “the common good” have already been elucidated and described in detail on the basis of classical and contemporary sociology. If it is assumed that the common good can be understood triply, as (1) a postulate of the social good, (2) materially, as an object of collective ownership, and (3) as an effect of the individual’s life in society, then it must be admitted that, at least in the third case, reference to the collected achievements of sociology is necessary in order to describe the common good properly.


Author(s):  
José Manuel Saiz-Alvarez

The quadruple helix models are widely used when you want to have an integrating vision of the strategies used to combat poverty in emerging countries, including Mexico. The objective of this chapter is to propose a novel model of quadruple helix based on ethics and CSR 2.0 that can lay the foundations to develop the Industry 4.0 in emerging countries. To achieve this objective, the author distinguishes between CSR 1.0 and 2.0. Second, these concepts are united with the economy of the common good and the economy of solidarity. These conceptual bases will allow us to develop the relationship between business ethics and the Industry 4.0 to reach some conclusions.


1985 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Gail Piwoz ◽  
Fernando E. Viteri

Underlying this article is a recognition of the relationship between poverty and poor health and nutrition and a realization that poverty does not affect al/ the members of a household uniformly. We believe that households as a whole do not operate to promote the common good of all their members. Within conditions of chronic resource scarcity, some family members consistently fare worse than others. It is, therefore, necessary to identify intra-household factors that influence health and nutrition behaviour. Given the fact that household behaviour is determined by a number of factors, several types of intervention are proposed. To improve the chances of lasting success for development programmes, we advocate designing and testing educational messages that address all aspects of household behaviour.


2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-271
Author(s):  
Hugh D. Hudson

For Russian subjects not locked away in their villages and thereby subject almost exclusively to landlord control, administration in the eighteenth century increasingly took the form of the police. And as part of the bureaucracy of governance, the police existed within the constructions of the social order—as part of social relations and their manifestations through political control. This article investigates the social and mental structures—the habitus—in which the actions of policing took place to provide a better appreciation of the difficulties of reform and modernization. Eighteenth-century Russia shared in the European discourse on the common good, the police, and social order. But whereas Michel Foucault and Michael Ignatieff see police development in Europe with its concern to surveil and discipline emerging from incipient capitalism and thus a product of new, post-Enlightenment social forces, the Russian example demonstrates the power of the past, of a habitus rooted in Muscovy. Despite Peter’s and especially Catherine’s well-intended efforts, Russia could not succeed in modernization, for police reforms left the enserfed part of the population subject to the whims of landlord violence, a reflection, in part, of Russia having yet to make the transition from the feudal manorial economy based on extra-economic compulsion to the capitalist hired-labor estate economy. The creation of true centralized political organization—the creation of the modern state as defined by Max Weber—would require the state’s domination over patrimonial jurisdiction and landlord control over the police. That necessitated the reforms of Alexander II.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-93
Author(s):  
Eugeniusz Ruśkowski ◽  
Urszula Zawadzka-Pąk

The main purpose of this article is to analyse the relationship between financial accountability and legally determined expenditure. According to the adopted research hypothesis, increasing the financial accountability requires taking specific actions in the field of the legally determined expenditure. As the article is theoretical, it does not present the results of the empirical research; the formal-dogmatic method was used to interpret the content of legal acts and jurisprudence of the Constitutional Tribunal, as well as the non-obstructive method to analyse the foreign and Polish literature presenting the results of both theoretical and empirical research. In the article, having presented in the introduction the methodological issues, first, the principle of common good, the financial accountability, and the legally determined expenditure will be first explained. Next, the solutions for the rationalization of the legally determined expenditure will be proposed. We conclude that their implementation should increase the financial accountability to strengthen the constitutional principle of the common good.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  

The relationship between the school and the community is the fabric of interaction that the school strives to be accepted in the midst of the community to get aspirations, sympathy from the community. And striving for good cooperation between schools and the community for the common good, or specifically for the relationship building schools, is to make the school programs concerned so that the schools can continue to exist.


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