Competition and Cooperation in Economic and Christian Thought: Towards a Better Understanding
Date
2016
Authors
White, Christopher John
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Abstract
Economists and Christian theologians/ethicists (hereafter
“Christians”) have not typically communicated well, partly
due to different orientations of their disciplines: economists
generally regard their discipline as positive (explaining why
things are as they are), whereas Christians see their discipline
as normative (describing how things should be). I discuss one
example of this distinction: the focus of economists on agents’
actions (assuming motives are given), contrasted with the focus
of Christians on motives (though for whom actions are by no means
a matter of indifference). Economists and Christians also use
certain terms in different senses, having the effect of
compounding these communication difficulties.
Primarily, this thesis examines one such communication difficulty
– the understandings of competition and cooperation (and
related terms such as rivalry and altruism respectively). My
argument is that economists generally use the terms in a
structural sense: in particular that competition in its
“perfect” form is the economic structure by which efficient
exchange is best facilitated, and that cooperation results from
that structural state. However, Christians generally use the
terms in a psychological sense: competition is viewed primarily
as rivalry, and cooperation as a deliberate act of the will to
love one’s neighbour as oneself, or to go beyond self-love to
altruistic self-sacrificial love of the other. I also examine how
the terms are used in a number of other disciplines, particularly
evolutionary biology, as a means of nuancing the understanding of
this distinction.
I explore the concept of cooperation in economics by examining
how it is treated in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. In the
case of the Christian concept of cooperation, I argue for the
inclusion of acts which are mutually beneficial to both donor and
recipient, as well as acts of self-sacrificial altruism (which
latter is often argued to be the Christian ethical norm).
I discuss rivalness (the property of many goods that makes them
available to only one person), competition and rivalry in both
economic and Christian contexts. In the economic case, the
discussion illustrates the structural understanding, and the
important point that economic thought looks for structures that
enable positive-sum rather than just zero-sum economic
engagements. However an examination of these concepts in the
biblical record, and in writers from the Reformation to the
present, indicates an overwhelmingly psychological understanding
in the Christian case.
Finally, I examine two twentieth century thinkers who wrote at
length on competition. Economist Frank Knight specified the
conditions for the structural form of (perfect) competition, but
then inter alia critiqued those conditions, giving them an
apparently psychological aspect: however I argue Knight is really
critiquing the competitive economic model itself rather than
competition as such. Christian William Temple seldom gets past
seeing competition in its psychological form of (largely
destructive) rivalry.
I thus conclude that the overwhelming views of competition and
cooperation in economic thought are structural, contrasted with
those in Christian thought which are psychological, and that a
better appreciation by members of each disciplinary community of
understandings by members of the other community would help
improve inter-disciplinary communication.
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Competition, cooperation, altruism, rivalry, rivalness, structural, psychological, Adam Smith, Frank Knight, William Temple
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