The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

Description

For a century and a half, the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned the bourgeoisie. And for a millennium and a half, the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. The bourgeois life, capitalism, Mencken's "booboisie" and David Brooks's "bobos"--All have been, and still are, framed as being responsible for everything from financial to moral poverty, world wars, and spiritual desuetude. Countering these centuries of assumptions and unexamined thinking is Deirdre McCloskey's The Bourgeois Virtues, a magnum opus that offers a radical view: capitali.;Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Apology: A Brief for the Bourgeois Virtues -- Appeal -- 1. The very word "virtue" -- 2. The very word "bourgeois" -- 3. On not being spooked by the word "bourgeois" -- Part I. The Christian and Feminine Virtues: Love -- 4. The first virtue: love profane and sacred -- 5. Love and the transcendent -- 6. Sweet love vs. interest -- 7. Bourgeois economists against love -- 8. Love and the bourgeoisie -- 9. Solidarity regained -- Part II. The Christian and Feminine Virtues: Faith and Hope -- 10. Faith as identity -- 11. Hope and its banishment.