Inequality, Sociology, and Moral Philosophy

Abstract

The theoretical enterprise of moral philosophy has deep roots in both Continental and British philosophy. In Germany Hegel and Kant; in France Rousseau and Les Philosophes; in Scotland the moral philosophers, Frances Hutcheson, Adam Ferguson, and Adam Smith; and in England Locke and Mill, aspired to express normative principles for the organization of society.1 Sociology began much later, with aspirations to be a positive science of society, and, befitting such goals, the discipline started as not only a theoretical enterprise but also an empirical one. Despite the differences in their aspirations and modus operandi, moral philosophy and sociology have shared a subject matter, the functioning of society, and the relation of the individual to society. Consequently, it is surprising that except for readings in moral philosophy assigned to students in courses on the historical background of social theory, and for casual reading of modern sociological theory by moral philosophers, sociology and moral philosophy have remained wholly apart, with no interchange of ideas. The same cannot be said of the relation between economics and moral philosophy, for the origins of economic theory may be found in one branch of moral philosophy: classical utilitarianism, as expressed by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Along with its aspirations as a positive science economics as a discipline has maintained a parallel set of aspirations as a normative science, principally in the branch of economics known as welfare economics, which continues to hold, perhaps in a narrower context than does moral philosophy, the aim of expressing normative principles for the organization of society.2 In turn, moral philosophy as a theoretical