Moral actors on the financial market. Conditions for the emergence, maintenance and dissemination of moral norms in the economic sector

Project management: Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. mult. Axel Honneth

The project “Moral actors on the financial market” used economic sociological analyses to investigate the emergence, dissemination and effectiveness of normative principles and actions on the financial market.
Markets were not merely viewed as functional, norm-free subsystems that function solely in accordance with the rules of competition and profit maximization. Instead, market activity also proves to be an order of action structured by ethical norms for the players, in which they (can) consequently also orient themselves by normative reasons.
The project topic was pursued in two research strands: On the one hand, a normative understanding of the relationship between individual moral action and organizational structures was developed. The second strand of research concerned the question of what ethics can mean in the financial market. This question was examined in connection with the more general question of the normative structures of markets in general.

The manuscript “Reclaiming the System. Transformational Agency in Organizations” was submitted by project member Lisa Herzog as a habilitation thesis to the Faculty of Philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt. It examines the specific challenges for moral actors arising from their role in organizations, using an innovative methodology that combines empirical material with normative questions. Topics discussed include the handling of morally relevant knowledge in complex organizations, the relationship of moral actors to their professional role and the responsibility for maintaining an organizational culture in which moral questions can be asked and moral problems addressed.
With regard to the investigation of the significance of ethics in the financial market and markets in general, an overview article was written in the English-language “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy”. An anthology, which has since been published and was jointly edited by the PI and the project team, brings together various perspectives on the normative value of markets. In addition to the selection of texts, introductory notes were also written.

The most important publications in this project:

Herzog, Lisa: Reclaiming the System. Transformational Agency in Organizations (Habilitation), i.E.

Herzog, Lisa (ed.): Just Financial Markets? Finance in a Just Society Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Herzog, Lisa and Axel Honneth (eds.): The value of the market. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2014.

*Herzog, Lisa: “Property rights in the financial system. Rechtfertigungen und Reformimpulse”, in: German Journal of Philosophy 62(3), 2014, pp. 415-442.

*Herzog, Lisa: “Markets”, in: Edward N. Zalta (ed.): The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2013, [online] http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/markets/ [05.10.2017].

people in this project:

Project Management / Contact

Honneth, Axel, Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. mult.

Project staff

Herzog, Lisa, Dipl.-Vw., M.St. (Oxon), D.Phil. (Oxon)

Röß, Johannes