Of what may we
be sure?
Possible
foundations for an understanding of economic behavior (and human behavior in
general)
I.
Original
Sin
By yielding to
the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal
sin, but this sin affected the human
nature that they would then transmit in
a fallen state. It is a sin which
will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission
of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is call “sin”
only in an analogical sense: it is a sin “contracted” and not “committed” – a
state and not an act.
Although it is
proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a
personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants.
It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature
has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to
it; subject to ignorance, suffering, and the dominion of death; and inclined to
sin – an inclination to evil that is call “concupiscence.”[1]
II.
Bernard
Lonergan’s Desire to Know
Deep within us
all, emergent when the noise of other appetites is stilled, there is a drive to
know, to understand, to see why, to discover the reason, to find the cause, to
explain. Just what is wanted, has many
names. In what precisely it consists, is
a matter of dispute. But the fact of
inquiry is beyond all doubt. It can
absorb a man. It can keep him for hours,
day after day, year after year, in the narrow prison of his study or his
laboratory. It can send him on dangerous
voyages of exploration. It can withdraw
him from other interests, other pursuits, other pleasures, other
achievements. It can fill his waking
thoughts, hide from him the world of ordinary affairs, invade the very fabric
of his dreams. It can demand endless
sacrifices that are made without regret though there is only the hope, never a
certain promise, of success. What better
symbol could one find for this obscure, exigent, imperious drive, than a man,
naked, running excitedly crying, “I’ve got it”?[2]
III.
Saint
John Paul II’s Work as Vocation
Through work man
must earn his daily bread and contribute to the continual advance of science
and technology and, above all, to elevating unceasingly the cultural and moral
level of the society within which he lives in community with those who belong
to the same family. And work means any activity by man, whether manual or
intellectual, whatever its nature or circumstances; it means any human activity
that can and must be recognized as work, in the midst of all the many
activities of which man is capable and to which he is predisposed by his very
nature, by virtue of humanity itself. Man is made to be in the visible universe
an image and likeness of God himself, and he is placed in it in order to subdue
the earth. From the beginning therefore he is called to work. Work is one of
the characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of creatures, whose
activity for sustaining their lives cannot be called work. Only man is capable
of work, and only man works, at the same time by work occupying his existence
on earth. Thus work bears a particular mark of man and of humanity, the mark of
a person operating within a community of persons. And this mark decides its
interior characteristics; in a sense it constitutes its very nature.[3]
IV.
Thorstein
Veblen’s Instinct
Like other
animals, man is an agent that acts in response to stimuli afforded by the
environment in which he lives. Like other species, he is a creature of habit
and propensity. But in a higher degree than other species, man mentally digests
the content of the habits under whose guidance he acts, and appreciates the
trend of these habits and propensities. He is in an eminent sense an
intelligent agent. By selective necessity he is endowed with a proclivity for
purposeful action. He is possessed of a discriminating sense of purpose, by
force of which all futility of life or
of action is distasteful to him.[4]
V.
Adam
Smith’s Propensity
This division of
labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect
of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which
it gives occasion. It is the necessary,
though very slow and gradual, consequence of a certain propensity in human
nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck,
barter, and exchange one thing for another.
Whether this
propensity be one of those original principles in human nature, of which no
further account can be given; or whether, as seems more probable, it be the
necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and speech, it belongs not to
our present subject to enquire. It is
common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals, which seem to
know neither this nor any species of contracts.[5]
VI.
Abram
Maslow’s Hierarchy
These basic goals are related to
each other, being arranged in a hierarchy of prepotency. This means that the
most prepotent goal will monopolize consciousness and will tend of itself to
organize the recruitment of the various capacities of the organism. The less
prepotent needs are minimized, even forgotten or denied. But when a need is
fairly well satisfied, the next prepotent ('higher') need emerges, in turn to
dominate the conscious life and to serve as the center of organization of
behavior, since gratified needs are not active motivators.
Thus man is a
perpetually wanting animal.[6] (Maslow, 1943 394-5)
VII.
St.
Augustine of Hippo
Our hearts are
restless until they rest in you.
[1] Catechism of the Catholic Church,
Libreria Editrice Vaticana ed. (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1994), 404-5.
[2] Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, Bernard
Lonergan, (New York: Longmans, 1957), p. 4.
[3] John Paul II,
"Laborenm Exercens: On Human Work," in Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage, ed. David J.
O'Brien and Thomas A. Shannon (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992), 352,
Apostolic Blessing.
[4] Thorstein
Veblen, "The Instinct of Workmanship and the Irksomeness of Labor," American Journal of Sociology 4, no. 2
(1898): 188-9.
[5] Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations, Cannan ed. (New York: The Modern Library, 1937), 13.
[6] Abram Maslow,
“A Theory of Human Motivation”, Psychological Review, 50, no. 4, (1943). pp. 394-5.
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