Philadelphia, Pa., May 31, 2019 / 04:11 pm (CNA).- Among the greatest gifts the Church has to offer the secular world is a profound understanding of happiness, which does not rely on wealth, said a Villanova University economist in a recent speech.
“We cannot think well about economic life, or the challenges to economic justice and the environment that we confront, if we do not first think hard about the shape of human happiness and the proper role of wealth,” said Mary Hirschfeld.
She said that the Church’s teaching is an invitation to radically reconsider how we view the economy and the purpose of wealth, but that teaching is often misunderstood by society.
“The Church’s vision of the relationship between wealth and happiness, and what that means for creation and the economy is not easily understood by those who were formed with the secular understanding of the world.”
The economics and theology professor received the 4th International “Economy and Society” Award in the category of “Social Doctrine Publications” at a ceremony on May 29. The award is granted by the Centesimus Annus – Pro Pontifice Foundation. It was presented by Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising.
The award was given in recognition of Hirschfeld’s recent book, “Aquinas and the Market. Toward a humane Economy” (Harvard University Press, 2018). [See CWR’s April 25, 2019 review of the book.]
In her speech at the award ceremony, Hirschfeld said that although she had a Ph.D. in economics, her entire view of social and economic development was transformed after she converted to the Catholic faith as an adult.
After years of being successful by worldly standards, she found something missing in her life. It wasn’t until she found the Catholic Church that she discovered the “banquet” that would satisfy her hungry soul.
In encountering and embracing the Catholic faith, Hirschfeld said, she found that true happiness lies in an infinite good that could not be found in an accumulation of finite goods.
“No amount of money or prestige was going to alleviate that hunger,” she said. “Instead, I found that my true hunger was for God.”
But the Church also gave her a new lens to see the finite things of the world around her – the goodness of the people in her life, the gift of community, and the importance of virtue.
When Hirschfeld returned to school to study theology, she found herself struggling to reconcile her background in economics with her newfound Catholic faith. Upon reading St. Thomas Aquinas’ teachings on private property, she found what seemed at first to be a contradiction.
On one hand, Aquinas seemed to say that “private property is fitting because it channels our propensity to work for ourselves in socially useful ways,” Hirschfeld said. This aligned perfectly with what she believed as an economist.
“But then [Aquinas] said we are also to hold private property as if it is in common, that is ready to share with others the fruits of our labors. That read to me, as an economist, as a pure contradiction. On the one hand, private property is good because it gives us an incentive to work hard. On the other hand, we are supposed to turn around and give it all away. What sort of incentive is that?”
Ultimately, she realized that the two different understandings of incentives and private property are due to radically different understandings of human happiness. Economists, she said, see happiness as acquiring wealth and goods, while Aquinas sees happiness as “something that is found in the higher goods of God, family, community, and virtue.”
“The crucial difference lies in how we understand the role of material wealth in a good human life,” she emphasized. “For Aquinas, the ‘incentive’ is that we want to provide ourselves with what is reasonably necessary. But once our needs are secured, we would naturally wish to look to help others. Anything above what is necessary to us is, for Aquinas, superfluous.”
For economists, however, Hirschfeld said, the incentive to work hard is the desire to accumulate more wealth and possessions. “However much we have, we think a bit more would be helpful and so we work hard.”
“But that same logic means we would not experience our wealth as abundance, and so we would find it hard to give to others,” she said.
This distinction is important to recognize, the economist said, because when we discuss the economy with people who have fundamentally different assumptions about wealth and human happiness, misunderstandings are likely to arise.
Hirschfeld suggested that much of the Church’s rich body of social thought has not had the impact on the world that it could have, in large part because people do not fully understand it.
Her new book aims to help bridge the gap between the Church and the secular world, laying out a Catholic understanding of wealth and happiness in order to foster a dialogue that has significant implications in thinking about the economy.
“Perhaps this is the gift of the convert,” she said, “to see what cradle Catholics may take for granted, and to build a bridge to bring the gifts of the Church to a world that desperately needs them.”
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
In a civilized world, economy needs to be at the service of human beings and not the other way around.
Long before Aquinas, Saint Augustine also said this: “[The passions] are more easily mortified finally in those who love God, than satisfied, even for a time, in those who love the world.”
Aye, and here’s the rub. . . In our entrenched, economically-structured and Consumerist Lifestyle where exactly—today, both personally and systemically—is the line to be drawn between real “needs” and superfluous “abundance”? Who on the production lines are to be the first cut loose and sent forth to find or invent new work? And, in the cause of inter-generational solidarity, in addition to an atmospheric national debt, what other kinds of debt are being shoveled over the fence into the future?
Or, are technology (Technocracy?) and human ingenuity permanent and reliable jokers in the deck of modern economics—-the reverenced cornucopia called GNP?
Pope St. John Paul II explicitly called for “important changes in established lifestyles, in order to limit the waste of environmental and human resources, thus enabling every individual and all the peoples of the earth to have a sufficient share of those resources” (Centesiumus Annus, CA, 54).
What does this one-liner really mean? A prominent abbreviation of CA chose to edit-out this balancing (yes?) perspective, entirely, as simply an inadvertent anomaly, a throw-away.
Charitably, I hope the author of this article simply misunderstands Dr. Hirschfield’s work. Aquinas might be paraphrased as saying “private property is fitting because it channels our propensity to work for ourselves in socially useful ways,” but I do not think he says “we are also to hold private property as if it is in common, that is ready to share with others the fruits of our labors.” He says we are to act as “stewards” of what we have been given and use it for the “common good”. And respectfully, these are simply the difference between is-statements and ought-statements. He’s explaining the way human’s actually do function and then he enters morality in saying how we can be our best.
Second, the author of the article states “Economists … see happiness as acquiring wealth and goods.” This again is either the article author completely misunderstanding or Dr Hirschfield saying something that no economist thinks. Economists never talk about happiness coming from wealth and goods – ever. It’s a matter of satisfaction of preferences AS A PERSON SEES THEM NOW.
My biggest beef however is with the conflation of economics with the outcomes of markets and the general undertone of the article. The undertone is that it’s all so unsavory. Frankly it smacks of gnosticism. Economics, by telling us how preferences are going to be satisfied under a given set of rules – a market – is somehow unsavory. Just by telling us how people will respond to incentives, the science of economics itself is unsavory? Would you yell at a rock because it drops on your foot when you let go? Nonsense.
Economics is an area of study – how people with given preferences respond under a certain set of rules in the face of uncertainty and scarcity – that field of interaction between preferences, rules and resources is called a market. Economics is not about getting rich or materialism or anything like that except in the sense that if you value certain things then it can definitely tell you what path to follow to get more of it or less of it. It doesn’t say “go out and rip and tear and to hell with everyone.” That is an ethic – an ought – and economists do not talk like that. It’s a science about what we fallen creatures do given certain very specific conditions. As I said in the review of her book if you don’t like the outcome of a market, then you can always change the rules which almost always means police and guns and violence. But better yet, how about if, as disciples of Christ, we work to change human preferences. I really do not get what is so hard here. Stop blaming economics or the market when it’s really our sin hardened preferences that deserve the blame.
If Dr. Hirschfield wants to discuss what we should do with wealth – well and good. That is called morality and we have been working on that for about 10,000 years. Christ has shown us a new way – self emptying love as a way of true happiness. And that is wonderful. It is life itself. But it doesn’t change the existence of markets just like it doesn’t change the existence of gravity or the strong force. Given people’s preferences whether they are angelic or demonic, economics is the study of how those preferences will actually work out.
Superb insights and analysis, Tim H. I also noticed what appears to be some significant misunderstandings and jumping to false conclusions by either the article author or Dr. Hirschfield or probably both. For example, note the following excerpt from the article summarizing one of Hirschfield’s positions:
“On one hand, Aquinas seemed to say that ‘private property is fitting because it channels our propensity to work for ourselves in socially useful ways,’ Hirschfeld said. This aligned perfectly with what she believed as an economist.
‘But then [Aquinas] said we are also to hold private property as if it is in common, that is ready to share with others the fruits of our labors. That read to me, as an economist, as a pure contradiction. On the one hand, private property is good because it gives us an incentive to work hard. On the other hand, we are supposed to turn around and give it all away. What sort of incentive is that?”
Taking into consideration what you have written about Hirschfield’s misconception in the use of private property, she also leaps to an egregious false conclusion that “we are supposed to turn around and give it all away. What sort of incentive is that?” Aquinas never said to give it all away, but indeed as you rightly point out, to use private property to benefit the common good, and for anyone who is truly objective in this regard, the legal and moral use of private property always contributes to the common good in a variety of ways.
And of course, whether people like it or not, the always operative invisible hand concept of Adam Smith demonstrates how the pursuit of productive efforts and wealth leads to many others benefiting in the process since nobody can simply produce X goods and accumulate X wealth unless things produced are also desired and purchased by others.
And to be sure, the accumulation of wealth and the pursuit of wealth in and of itself is not an evil as suggested by Hirschfield if she or others determine that the pursuit is for “too much wealth accumulation,” but again as you rightly point out, the morality aspect applies to what and how we do anything, so if a person pursues X to the extent that he or she shirks other responsibilities to God and others, then that person has failed a basic aspect of morality, but if other responsibilities to God and others are not being shirked in the pursuit of wealth, then such pursuit is moral…even if it brings about massive wealth accumulation in the process.
You know, the pursuit of knowledge is a wonderful thing, but taking part of Hirschfield’s attitude into consideration for a moment, did she really need 2 PhDs? Imagine what other things she could have done for others with the time it took to acquire the other PhD, which is clearly an excess since the vast majority of those who possess a PhD only have 1? Did she need twice as many PhDs as most other possessors of PhDs?
The questions above are silly, of course, but they do reflect an underlying attitude in Hirschfield’s approach. Pursuing ever more knowledge can be just as easily abused as pursuing ever more wealth, so once again it always comes down to what people do with their extra amount of whatever it is they have; not simply that they have it or pursue more of it.
Also note one more excerpt from the article to further demonstrate more misconceptions and false conclusions of Hirschfield along the same lines mentioned above:
“‘However much we have, we think a bit more would be helpful and so we work hard.”’
‘“But that same logic means we would not experience our wealth as abundance, and so we would find it hard to give to others,’ she said.”
This false conclusion is what one would expect to hear from yahoos like Socialists Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Once more it betrays a significant misunderstanding of what people do with their wealth and how they must serve others’ needs to accumulate it, and it also falsely stereotypes people who accumulate lots of wealth as being hoarders of their wealth, and that almost all of them are unwilling to share their wealth with others. If this conclusion was really true, numerous charities throughout the world would not exist since many receive their greatest contributions and financial capacity to continue their work by those people Hirschfield claims don’t view their wealth as an abundance to share with others. Indeed, these “hoarders” are the same people who have founded many charities throughout the world, and they can do this because of the abundance of wealth they have accumulated.
Docent writes: “Aquinas never said to give it all away, but indeed as you [Tim H.] rightly point out, to use private property to benefit the common good…”–and on this point there can be today something more capacious and perceptive, and more forward-looking and intentional in play than any mechanistic solidarity found in Adam Smith’s “hidden hand.”
From Centesimus Annus: “Whereas at one time the decisive factor of production was the land [13th century?], and later capital [19th century?]–understood as a total complex of the instruments of production–today the decisive factor is increasingly man himself, that is, his knowledge, especially his scientific knowledge, his capacity for interrelated and compact organization, as well as his ability to perceive the needs of others and to satisfy them” (n. 32).
P. Beaulieu: “…and on this point there can be today something more capacious and perceptive, and more forward-looking and intentional in play than any mechanistic solidarity found in Adam Smith’s ‘hidden hand.'”
Remarkable misunderstanding here. First of all, “more capacious and perceptive” is just a bogus claim without any substance, but even worse is the complete lack of perception regarding the reality of the “invisible hand.”
Indeed the “invisible hand” is as forward looking as it gets. In fact, it is a timeless reality of economic life that describes how a free people naturally (never mechanistically; that pertains to directed economic actions by governments that disrespect basic human freedom granted by God) interact with each other to produce many goods/services for the benefit of themselves as well as others. These interactions are voluntary and completely free, and they fully respect the natural order established by God. There is a famous short essay entitled “I, Pencil” that provides a good explanation of the “invisible hand” in action, and in this explanation is a most capacious and perceptive appreciation of serving God’s creative order as free people endowed with gifts given to them by God. A copy of “I, Pencil” can be found at the following website:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I,_Pencil
Enjoy the wisdom contained in the essay.
Ships passing in the night…
I actually recall well reading “I, Pencil” after it was published, and recall a similar and later tale, equally instructive, about the weighty National Geographic Magazine–that if the government were in charge of the economy all used copies would end up in one place and Manhattan would sink into the Hudson River.
No endorsement here of “yahoos like the Socialist Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren”, rather simply attention to the fact that such innovations as the more deliberate and explicit, corporate-boardroom “triple bottom line” do not show up yet in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.
From Centesimus Annus (n. 36), we have this: “I am referring to the fact that even the decision to invest in one place rather than another, in one productive sector rather than another, is always a moral and cultural choice” (last five words in italics) and surely a conundrum, too, for finite minds–hence, “the market”.
But, then, as for the market, this on the added defense (yes?) of collective goods: “Here we find a new limit on the market: There are collective and qualitative needs which cannot be satisfied by market mechanisms. There are important human needs which escape its logic” (CA 40).
NOT a license here for Socialism, but perhaps an admonition that the buffalo hunters needed to be reined in a bit, and that the Dust Bowl was not entirely climatic in origin, and that overnight digital currency mobility might have had something to do with the aggravated global market collapse of 2008.
Regarding CA and the meaning of “capitalism”, then–and a very difficult vocation for well-formed laity today–we have this:
“The answer is obviously complex. If by ‘capitalism’ is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of the ‘business economy,’ ‘market economy’ or simply ‘free economy.’ But if by ‘capitalism’ is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative” (CA 42). (partial translation: abortion clinics don’t cut it, so to speak).
Moreover, reining in the occasionally unhelpful pronouncements from chancery offices: “The Church has no models to present, models that are real and truly effective can only arise within the framework of different historical situations, through the efforts of all those who responsibly confront concrete problems in all their social, economic, political and cultural aspects, as these interact with one another” (CA n. 43).
I see no real contradiction in our above comments, but do propose that neither Aquinas nor even Adam Smith nor (ADMITTEDLY, above) red hats have the silver bullet for human flourishing in the 21st century. Yes, of course: no silver bullet anywhere, ergo, the “free economy”.
So, I propose, a VOCATION for the laity, and one that (as I have said elsewhere in CWR) would be better served if much of “autonomous” Catholic higher education had not derailed itself with the 1967 Land o’ Lakes Declaration. Woodstock in cap and gown.
Centesimus Annus and all of the Catholic Social Teaching (a misnomer addressing the societal: economics, culture, and politics)add up to less than a feared economic stencil, and yet more.
Okay, Peter.
I am glad you do not endorse the yahoos, but something is still very much amiss when you write “…rather simply attention to the fact that such innovations as the more deliberate and explicit, corporate-boardroom ‘triple bottom line’ do not show up yet in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.”
They had certainly showed up by the time of “I, Pencil,” and even with such bottom line thinking, it doesn’t matter, because the “invisible hand” is timeless and always operative insofar as people are free to pursue their economic well-being.
Now of course, some or even many boardrooms, CEOs, managers, owners, and so on can be the greediest people of all time in pursuit of ever more wealth, but they can only accumulate more wealth by providing goods and services for others, which opens up more employment opportunities for others as well.
Also somewhat problematic is your “…that overnight digital currency mobility might have had something to do with the aggravated global market collapse of 2008.”
This looks like at least partly blaming the market or perhaps capitalism in general for something that, if true as suggested, may very well have simply been an abuse of capitalism via inappropriate interventions fostered by governments and/or central banks.
Lastly, I also find much wisdom in Centesimus Annus. I only wish that the insights the saintly Pope John Paul II gained from his experience living under the yoke of socialism/communism would be better understood and appreciated by Pope Francis whose unfortunate experience living at times under various forms of “cowboy or gangster capitalism” apparently prevents him from seeing the goodness in capitalism in general, and it also makes him lean toward socialism despite the terrible track record of this system in his native country and South America in general. Pope St. John Paul II provides an intelligent and indeed measured endorsement of capitalism while pointing out the need for it (like anything else) to have a strong moral compass operating at all time, but for Pope Francis, he seems only capable of ignorantly criticizing capitalism and the United States’ practice of same while simultaneously endorsing more people illegally trying to enter this country that promotes ‘greed’. These migrants aren’t fleeing to socialism; they are seeking more economic opportunities and freedom offered by the US, but this basic reality of human nature eludes Francis.