Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

On "Strongly Fortified Minds": Self-Restraint And Cooperation In The Discussion Tradition, Sandra J. Peart, David M. Levy

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Accordingly, this essay explores some unappreciated benefits of discussion. While educators frequently favor discussion as a means to encouraging engaged learning, they nonetheless rarely attempt to explain how or why these benefits arise. More than this, the role of economists from Adam Smith through Frank Knight and his student, James Buchanan, in explaining the benefits associated with discussion has been neglected both within economics and throughout the academy. In this tradition one accepts the inevitability of an individual "point of view" and the good society is one that can govern itself by means of an emergent consensus among points of …

Comment: Entering The "Great School Of Self-Command": The Moralizing Influence Of Markets, Language, And Imagination, Sandra J. Peart

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Economists for centuries have struggled to understand the self-other relationship and its implications for economic life. For economists in the classical tradition of Adam Smith, this was a central question regarding the wealth and flourishing of nations. Later, as this volume demonstrates, the relationship of the self to others was forgotten as economics became associated almost exclusively with the pursuit of what Peter Boettke and Daniel Smith describe as "ruthless efficiency."

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and a growing body of experimental and empirical evidence showing the predictive shortcomings of narrow self-interest models, a more capacious economics …