Human Capabilities and the Ethics of Debt
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Human Capabilities and the Ethics of Debt Kate Padgett Walsh1 · Justin Lewiston2 Accepted: 12 September 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Anthropologists have documented the diverse forms, practices, institutions, and relationships of debt in which human beings throughout the world are enmeshed.1 To live in human community is, in part, to owe debts to others and to be owed in return. How should we evaluate, normatively, the varied forms, practices, institutions, and relationships of debt? Which should be constrained and which accepted or encouraged? These questions have far-reaching implications given the pervasiveness of debt within human experience. The ethics of debt has, however, been neglected by many philosophers. Those who do address it focus primarily on the ethics of lending. Aristotle and Aquinas, for instance, argue that lending money at interest is fundamentally exploitative. Jeremy Bentham and Adam Smith, in contrast, argue that it should be encouraged so as to create economic opportunity and growth. Such thinkers identify some of the important normative questions raised by debt. Yet, they also fail to capture much of the ethical complexity of the myriad forms, practices, institutions, and relationships of debt. It is true, for example, that lending can be exploitative, but it is also true that access to credit can create opportunity and enhance well-being. How can these considerations be incorporated into a more comprehensive approach to evaluating a wide variety of actual debts? This paper brings the resources of the capabilities approach developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum to bear on normative assessments of debt. Our thesis is that the theoretical resources provided by this approach can help philosophers to examine debt in a more holistic and nuanced manner. More specifically, we argue that the approach’s emphasis on improving human lives by expanding and enhancing capabilities allows us to assess the wide range of costs and benefits provided by actual debts. Our discussion focuses on examples of financial debt, but we conclude 1
See especially Graeber 2011 and Mauss 1990.
* Kate Padgett Walsh [email protected] Justin Lewiston [email protected] 1
Iowa State University, Ames, USA
2
Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA
13
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K. Padgett Walsh, J. Lewiston
by suggesting that the capabilities approach might also be fruitfully be applied to illuminate the ethical dimensions of additional forms, practices, institutions, and relationships of debt.
1 Two Approaches to Lending Philosophers have traditionally approached the topic of debt in two ways, both of which focus on the ethics of lending money at interest.2 The first criticizes lending as an exploitative and unnatural activity. Plato, for instance, suggests that the business of lending is lowly and questions whether debts must always be repaid.3 Aristotle elaborates, arguing that money lenders display the vice of meanness, since they love money for its own sake and will lend to anyone from whom the
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