Thursday, November 8, 2018

5:15pm /Location: UVA Minor Hall

Missed the lecture?: Watch it now.

 

Christians are called to love one’s neighbor as oneself, but how are we to think about and act with others in a complex, impersonal modern economy? John McNerney, an Irish scholar in residence at The Catholic University of America, offers a powerful and accessible philosophical critique of modern economic thought that refocuses our attention upon the human person. Beyond the hidden hand of Adam Smith, the alienation from our work identified by Marx, and conceptions of utility maximization that dominate present discourses, McNerney demonstrates why economics as the science of human action and exchange requires a new foundation that recognizes the unique intentional and relational capacities of the human person. From this new reference point, profit and production are by no means banished, but they instead are balanced by a fuller appreciation of the creative qualities of work and entrepreneurial action, the deep purposes of human freedom, and the real possibility that the transcendent, Trinitarian logic of gift frees human persons to interact with others in ways that allow us and others to become far more than we presently are.