Figure fea-kernel. Constituents of the meaning-kernel of an aspect and how they relate.
Article Summary: Dooyeweerd's discussion of the economic aspect is useful but it brief and limited. It states that the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect is frugality, but presents no argument, not taking into account the wider discourse in economics and real economic practice. Even his idea of frugality is limited. In this article, we explore further than Dooyeweerd did, to reveal a meaning-kernel that involves respect for the object, resourcing and future-orientation as well as frugality, and fits well with much of the discourse.
(The ideas in this article are still under development, so comments, critique and discussion are welcomed. The ideas should sometime be written as an academic paper. )
Draft: The content and argument have settled. But some bits still to be added (see end), and proof reading is needed.
What is the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect? What is the specific kind of meaningfulness and associated aspectual laws that the economic aspect brings to Reality. Having a clear answer to this is important because it informs the 'so-what' of economics, what economics is 'for'? It guides both the practice and theory of economics. It determines what we believe the mandate of economics is when embedded into the rest of reality, and what we should expect to be included in economic theory. Our view of the meaning-kernel lies at the very foundation of the foundation for rethinking economics that this project is about and sets the scene for Chapter 4.
Dooyeweerd did pronounce what he believed the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect to be but, as we shall see below, his belief was limited, not least because his pronouncement lacked discussion and justification and failed to take into account explicitly much of the wide-ranging discussions of the meaning of economics. Dooyeweerd, however, believed that
"In fact the system of the law-spheres designed by us can never lay claim to material completion. A more penetrating examination may at any time bring new modal aspects of reality to the light not yet perceived before. And the discovery of new law-spheres will always require a revision and further development of our modal analyses. Theoretical thought has never finished its task. Any one who thinks he has devised a philosophical system that can be adopted unchanged by all later generations, shows his absolute lack of insight into the dependence of all theoretical thought on historical development." [NC,II, 556]
Much discourse in economics since Dooyeweerd wrote has introduced new issues, not least the environmental imperatives, so we are justified in going beyond Dooyeweerd in attempting to understand the meaning-kernel.
To understand the meaning-kernel of any aspect is a challenge, not least because we operate within, and presuppose, that meaningfulness; it is like fish trying to understand the ocean that enables them to exist as fish [Basden 2019]. In this article we face that challenge with the economic aspect.
First, we clarify what we are looking for in trying to understand the meaning-kernel. Then we analyse Dooyeweerd's pronouncement about the economic aspect to separate out items that must find their meaningfulness in the economic aspect from those that are qualified by other aspects. We then survey some ideas from the field that suggest that the kernel is more than Dooyeweerd suggests. Following this, we deconstruct then reconstruct some of the main issues that are qualified by the economic aspect to suggest elements of the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect. We then check this out with a version of Dooyeweerd's method of antinomy by looking at how several known paradoxes in economics may be resolved. Our new understanding of the economic aspect kernel affirms Dooyeweerd's ideas but goes beyond them in a way that can contribute to economics as it is today, especially with the challenges of planetary realities.
Given that the kernel meanings can be grasped only with intuition [NC, II, 129] and not analytical thinking, our search must take careful account not only of economic theory but especially of pre-theoretical experience, with intuition and then begin to reflect [NC,I, 3]. Also as it seems Dooyeweerd tried to do, we presuppose the foundational goodness of what all aspects make possible. (x For Christians this means we are seeking to understand the aspects as the Creator designed them to operate, distinguishing this from the way they operate under the current fallenness of Creation. x)
Of what does a meaning-kernel consist? Dooyeweerd refers to aspects explicitly as "modalities of meaning", "nodes of being", "modes of functioning", "spheres of law", "aspects of time" [===; ===; ===; ===; ===] and implicitly as different kinds of possibility and kinds of Good and Evil and their results [===; ===]. These may be taken as what constitute the elements of a meaning-kernel, but he did not discuss clearly how they relate to each other. Almost his whole interest when discussing meaning-kernels was how the meaning-kernel of each aspect relates to others, both in their mutual irreducibility of meaningfulness and in their analogies, retrocipations and antecipations [NC,II, 74ff.].
Figure fea-kernel shows the elements we will discuss here. They may be similar to the "transcendentals" that Ive [===] identifies, except that his list differs from ours slightly. (The discussion of which elements constitute a meaning-kernel must be left for another occasion, and I ask readers to accept those mentioned here provisionally for this article, pending such discussion.)
Figure fea-kernel. Constituents of the meaning-kernel of an aspect and how they relate.
Meaning is fundamental ("===" [NC,I, 4]) and thus our starting point, from which all other elements derive. (We call it "kernel meaning" to differentiate it from "meaning-kernel", which refers to all elements together.) Dooyeweerd was interested in how the meaningfulness of all other aspects are 'echoed' in each by inter-aspect analogy, in both directions, which is shown by the left-hand triple of arrows. We are interested in the rest, the elements that derive from this kernel-meaning. However, we explicitly show the analogical echoes from all other aspects even within the kernel meaning of the aspect and not just as an externality [NC,II, 74].
Meaningfulness gives us types of things (constituted in the profile of aspects that Dooyeweerd called the structure of individuality (see Chapter 3 and [NC,III, 53ff]), which involves other aspects too, depicted by the three arrows arriving from outwith this kernel. Types of thing was another interest of Dooyeweerd's.
Meaningfulness implies Good (assuming the Creator, the Origin of Meaning, loves Creation and wants Creation to work well together in all its spheres of meaningfulness; it can only not imply Good if the Creator is either a divine joker or divine devil). Therefore the kernel meaning implies a unique kind of foundational Good that the aspect makes possible within Creation so that it contributes to the overall well-working of Creation. (This assumes a loving Creator, who wants Creation to work well together in all its aspects, as Genesis 1:31 suggests. The only way it cannot imply Good is if the Creator were a divine joker or devil who wants Creation to suffer.) Corresponding to Good in an aspect implies an Evil that would spoil Creation. Good combined with Time implies future Good, i.e. potential.
Good implies norm / law. As law it enables functioning that generates such Good that is meaningful in this aspect; as norm it guides that functioning towards the Good and away from Evil. Each aspect has its own distinct set of foundational laws/norms. (The first four aspects, arguably, supply Good without Evil; only from the biotic aspect onwards is the real possibility of Evil or non-good [Note: Good and Evil].) Norms determine what goals we aim and plan for, whether individuals, firms or governments.
Law combined with Time gives us modes of functioning meaningful in the aspect and corresponding kinds of repercussion or outcome, by which the Creator's intended Overall Good comes about. Functioning in any aspect depends foundationally on that in earlier aspects and antecipatorily on those in later, as shown by the four arrows. Both potential and functioning involve or express Time. [Note: Elements of Kernel]
If our functioning obeys the norm then Good results but if we go against it, Harm results - in that aspect, and also in other aspects because of inter-aspect dependency. Therefore aspectual normativity must be presupposed at the very heart of economics, even in its descriptive theories, and not bolted on.
Of other thinkers, some speak of one element, some of another, in ways that can inform us about them, so we may listen to their discourse. One fundamental circumscribing condition for a meaning-kernel is that it should be relevant and tenable for all pre-theoretical experience across all cultures and historic eras from past to future. For the economic aspect, this means going far beyond the conception of economics discussed in the current Global North, whether heterodox or orthodox, left-leaning or right-leaning.
Therefore, as we take account of what each thinker has offered about what defines economics, our task is to seek to identify each of these elements for the economic aspect, elements that cannot be explained by nor reduced to other aspects. Especially from a Creational perspective, which presupposes each aspect potentially brings Good, it is useful to disentangle the unique Good that this aspect brings to multi-aspectual reality from that which is meaningful in other aspects, such as justice and fairness (juridical) or productivity (formative). Of course, all our attribution of meaningfulness is open to challenge and is also somewhat bound to our own culture, but we try to look across cultures and ages (including Biblical cultures and what Smith [17xx, Book 1 Chapter IV] called "the rude ages of society") so that we are less biased towards our current presuppositions.
Summary: Dooyeweerd argued that the kernel norm of the economic aspect is frugality, which makes him in-danger==== of narrowing our understanding of the aspect. We excise==== concepts that are meaningful only once we bring in the economic.
Compared with other aspects, Dooyeweerd's discussion of the economic aspect is brief, contained in two pages of Volume II of his New Critique [1955], pages 66-67. The actual pronouncement of the meaning-kernel is only a quarter of this, the following two paragraphs:
"Another example of the analogical modal use of a scientific term is supplied by the word 'economy'. Its foundational (non-analogical) scientific meaning is the sparing or frugal mode of administering scarce goods, implying an alternative choice of their destination with regard to the satisfaction of different human needs. The adjectives 'sparing' and 'frugal' do not have the limited sense of the economical term 'saving' (said of money for instance). They are only the correlatives of 'scarce' and refer to our awareness that an excessive or wasteful satisfaction of a particular need at the expense of other more urgent needs is uneconomical1."Economy demands the balancing of needs according to a plan, and the distribution of the scarce means at our disposal according to such a plan. In this fundamental sense the term is used in the science of economics, in which the word economy requires no further modal qualification." [NC, II, 66]
The first thing to notice is that Dooyeweerd's claim about the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect takes the form of a statement in the form of dogma without discussion ("Its ... meaning is the sparing or frugal ..."). There is nothing wrong in that per se, because several times Dooyeweerd has made statements seemingly as dogma, ahead of arguing them (such as the theses with which he begins his New Critique. But in this case there is no later argument, only a set of possible analogies of the economic aspect in others here and scattered about in a few other places. He does not even explain why its meaning must be frugality rather than for example prosperity (as most governments today assume). A second thing to notice is that his proposal derives only from one adjective, "economic," rather than taking into account all that occurs in economic activity or is discussed in the discourse of economics. Dooyeweerd's proposal must therefore be seen as incomplete, as indeed Dooyeweerd himself warned [NC,II, 556].
However, from the first sentence above, it is clear that his discussion of the economic aspect is not intended to discuss in depth what the meaning kernel is, but merely to offer "another example" of aspectual analogies. So it is no surprise to find what he said to be incomplete. So we are justified in going beyond Dooyeweerd in understanding the kernel of the economic aspect. We do not treat Dooyeweerd's pronouncement as 'holy writ' in the way others do [e.g. Garcia de la Sienra 1998], but as an initial step in coming to understand.
Though some might debate the precise attribution of aspects there, the main point is that many of these concepts are meaningful in pre- and post-economic aspects, so they are relevant to the kernel meaning of the economic aspect only indirectly. The concepts that earlier aspects cannot find meaningful include: "sparing or frugal mode" (hereafter "frugality"), "scarce", "wasteful" and "at our disposal". ("Needs", though meaningful from the biotic aspect onwards, can be seen as economic if generalised across all these aspects, as discussed later.) So these are the main concepts that we take from Dooyeweerd.
However there are problems in Dooyeweerd's proposal.
One is that this does not identify the kernel meaning, and the unique Good that the economic aspect brings to reality. Frugality and wasteful here are norm and anti-norm that might guide us towards achieving the Good, needs are things, and scarcity and "at our disposal" refer to a state of affairs. None of them are actually meanings.
A second problem is that Garcia de la Sienra 1998] argues that Dooyeweerd's understanding of the economic aspect leads inexorably to Neo-classical Economic Theory (NET). Given that NET is untenable because it does not fit reality, especially recent economic reality [===] (see below), then this would make Dooyeweerd's ideas untenable, and we can ignore them. However, that argument seems to contain flaws (in that he does not question the presuppositions that lie behind NET, namely the Freedom pole of the Humanist ground-motive, nor the validity of isolating economics from other spheres of life (which Dooyeweerd would never do), nor the validity of abstract mathematical reasoning, nor the lack of normative concern in NET (which is important to Dooyeweerd), and he relies on oversimplified examples supplied by Robbins in arguments [Note: Sienra's argument]). So we may still retain at least some of Dooyeweerd's ideas without adhering to NET, and later reconceive some of them and/or add to them.
A third, major problem is that Dooyeweerd did not take account of the wider discourse in economics, taking only one view that happened to coincide with his political views. For example, it is not clear how Dooyeweerd's view would be useful in macroeconomics [Hengstmengel 2026]. It is not adequate to addressing recent issues like ecology, and this is why the Reformational thinker, Goudzwaard [===] argues for stewardship as the meaning-kernel (see below).
So, later, we will look at the wider discourse on what the core of economics is, especially looking at attempts to define economics, and note how each thinker may relate to Dooyeweerd's wider philosophy. We will find much, especially when taking views from cultures and eras beyond the recent Global North.
We must clarify what we mean by the satisfaction of needs, along four dimensions. 1. Do needs include wants, desires, conveniences, wishes, preferences, etc. 2. Do we consider the macroeconomic meeting of needs, like prosperity and communal/national wealth? 3. What kinds of needs should we consider? May we reduce it all to money, or should we explicitly include health, soundscape, freedom of choice, ability to achieve, social richness, happiness, justice, goodness and meaningfulness as well as resources (which might be all aspectual kinds of needs and prosperity)? 4. Do we think about needs and prosperity quantitatively or qualitatively? As discussed in Chapter 5, giving precedence to quantitative thinking, reducing needs-satisfaction and prosperity to hoards of money results in societies and communities devoid of happiness, justice, mercy and worship (c.f. Happiness economics). Here we include some reasonable wants but no more, we consider macroeconomic prosperity because our Dooyeweerdian perspective treats individual and societal functioning with the same suite of aspects, we consider all kinds, and use both quantitative and qualitative thinking; readers who define differently may recalculate the following accordingly.
So the question is: should needs satisfaction and prosperity, as defined that way, be what guides our actions, rather than frugality? Should they be a goal, a norm?
With needs satisfaction a goal, frugality becomes just one means of achieving that goal. But it is far from the only means. In place of frugality, affluent economies often substitute manufacture, investment, borrowing and the like - which all have their place but are often difficult. When they become difficult, we might turn to indulging in injustices like pillage and slavery, to which blind eyes are turned or they are treated as mere "externalities". The tendency to slide inexorably to the evil end of that spectrum is one of the problems of making needs satisfaction or prosperity a goal.
Another is that pursuing prosperity is often self-undermining and counter-productive, especially in the longer term, and these examples show:
Example: When the Spanish discovered an abundance of silver in South America, they thought it would bring prosperity, but the opposite occurred, both in South America, where the indigenous population were enslaved to work the silver mines and in Europe, where the abundance of silver wrecked the economy. What this reveals is something of the aspects of mindset and attitude, discussed below.
Example: When the North Sea was opened up for oil exploration, most was divided between Norway and the UK. Whereas the UK maximized its extraction rate in order to spend it on various projects that seemed to increase its prosperity or status, Norway treated it frugally, and built up an enormous Sovereign Wealth Fund, which now puts Norway in a much better situation than the UK is.
Currently, governments often make prosperity their goal and needs-satisfaction their justification for some of their policies - and the media tell us that we the electors apparently demand that they do so. Severe problems result at all levels. Letting growing prosperity without frugality guide us turns our attention onto ourselves (or others as though they were us) and centres the self rather than others. From a Dooyeweerdian (x and Christian x) perspective, this goes against the norm of the ethical aspect. As such, it can too easily distend into self-serving, unconcerned opulence, comfort, convenience, pleasure-seeking and the uncaring amassing of what Smith disdains as "trinkets and baubles", all at the expense of those we happen not to think about. It leads and has led us to significant damage both to human health and morale (e.g. obesity, addiction, including to social media) and, to environmental destruction, climate change and unsustainability.
More philosophically, given that the Earth is limited, the latter is a violation of frugality. Therefore no integration.
For all these reasons (and more can no doubt be offered) needs-satisfaction and prosperity cannot be the kernel norm of the economic aspect that guides us. So we examine frugality.
Summary: Why should frugality be the norm that drives economics, rather than growing prosperity, which governments tend to work to? Is frugality only relevant in times of scarcity? Is frugality merely austerity? These and other questions need to be answered but Dooyeweerd does not.
Frugality is more an attitude and habit than an action or goal. Unlike prosperity, frugality can be the kernel norm of the economic aspect because it does not work against prosperity. Frugality usually makes prosperity possible, as in Micawber's Rule, and often increases it insofar as the habit of not wasting resources on trivial things is pervasive. Trivial things include unreasonable pleasures and conveniences. Therefore there can be integration with needs-satisfaction and prosperity.
Indeed, in many cultures, especially religious ones, frugality is a virtue. For example to Christians, "self-control" is a fruit of the Spirit of God [Galatians 5:23]. Even an approach that is not explicitly religious finds the normativity of the economic aspect to be a version of frugality: budget constraint [Jongeneel 2019].
On the other hand, frugality has a bad name in affluent cultures because it is assumed to lead to, or even be indistinguishable from, austerity or asceticism. This is not inherent in frugality itself but occurs either when frugality is idolized or absolutized or is combined with injustice and uncaring (dysfunctions in the juridical and ethical aspects). That can rob people of their prosperity and even their needs. That is not a flaw in frugality itself but is a dysfunction in other aspects. Nevertheless, frugality is widely resisted by the affluent of the world, treated as something to ignore, avoid or even treat as evil.
Dooyeweerd offers an explanation of this in his idea of ground-motives. The current Nature-Freedom Ground-motive presupposes human freedom as an absolute antithesis to any form of restraint, and frugality is one such restraint. We treat frugality as restraint either when we see it as an imposition by an authority and its laws, or when and insofar as it involves taking the Other into account - other people or the rest of Creation; we return to that theme later. Since that ground-motive is a cultural presupposition rather than a truth, and Dooyeweerd understands freedom and law very differently - as inescapably bound together, as explained in Chapter 3 - we are free to depart from that view.
Now we need to examine what frugality is.
Some replace frugality by efficiency, especially in business (and was discussed within the RLDG)? Dooyeweerd argues against this [NC,II, 67], on the grounds that efficiency is meaningful in the formative / technical aspect even if it has economic overtones too. Efficiency is governed by the laws of the formative aspect rather than the economic.
In Dooyeweerd frugality and sparingness are "only the correlatives of 'scarce'" [our emphasis], thereby suggesting that scarcity is the root issue. This seems not unreasonable, but there are several problems with tying frugality to scarcity.
1. Either scarcity is an Evil, in which case it would not be present in an evil-less scenario such as Eden, so frugality would be irrelevant and not a true virtue. If all aspects are equally important in Creation [NC,II, ===] then it is not tenable for an entire aspect to be irrelevant. Or scarcity is a Good, in which case frugality is a human functioning that helps us deal with it. But then we must ask which is the Good that we should cultivate and seek to bring about: scarcity or frugal human functioning? It makes more sense to see frugality rather than scarcity itself as the Good.
(Of course, if one defines scarcity so broadly as to be synonymous with the finiteness inherent in all Creation, then there would never be non-scarcity, but we ignore that theoretical abstraction because we want to understand scarcity in its pre-theoretical reality.)
2. Another problem is that scarcity is subjective, relative to the desires or purposes as well as temporal context of the subject Garcia de la Sienra 1998, 184], and a viewpoint that tells us what is scarce.
3. Not only is scarcity subjective, it is also temporal, varying from time to time. This would make frugality meaningful only in situations of scarcity and would be meaningless in situations of plenty. Situations vary from time to time, which gives us a philosophical problem that, unlike most other aspects, which pertain at all times, the economic aspect pertains only part of the time. We do not accept that because to do so might require a fundamental modification of the foundation of Dooyeweerd's philosophy [Note: Law Universality]. We seek an understanding of frugality that pertains also in situations of plenty.
4. More practically if, in situations of plenty, frugality is no longer mandated and we are not guided by it, we might end up in austerity, having wasted resources. What seems plentiful at one time might suddenly become scarce later by our non-frugal activity. Two examples: The wanton destruction of the Passenger Pigeon is one notorious, long-known example, where the destruction actually made that plentiful bird extinct in 1914. Another example is that earlier generations presumed the Earth on which we live is effectively unlimited in its capacity to offer materials and to absorb pollution, but now we find this is not so [Note: Ecological Footprints]. Would it not have been wiser for previous generations to have been more sparing in their demands on what then seemed plentiful? The presupposition of plenty that they held to, and consequent lack of frugality, is proving very hard to reverse.
These reasons suggest that frugality has a wider role or meaningfulness than just coping with scarcity. Frugality released from being shackled to scarcity can be relevant in situations of plenty and with changing situations, and does not necessarily result in harmful austerity. Yet frugality is not an end in itself, but only a guiding norm; it must be associated with a Good from which it derives and which it helps to bring about. What that Good is we discuss later.
Sadly, economics as it is practised and theorized today often reduces frugality to single aspects, losing its multi-aspectual sweep. For example, ensuring sustainable supply of beef for the burger sector decimates a resource meaningful in the biotic aspect, rainforests. In understanding it, later, we must ensure the broadest appreciation of frugality, as multi-aspectual.
The word "balancing" has two analogical meanings. If Dooyeweerd uses "balancing" by analogy to a physical balance where one scale goes down and the other up, so two needs oppose each other, the satisfaction of one needs necessarily denyng another, hence transgresses the aesthetic norm of harmony. To have the right functioning of one aspect requiring transgression of the laws of another aspect is not satisfactory. If he uses "balance" as an analogy to aesthetic harmony itself (as in "a balanced painting") and the aesthetic is post-economic, then this cannot be central to the economic meaning kernel. Later, we shall replace balance with a more satifactory idea, based on respect for objects and fuature-orientation.
Dooyeweerd's "alternative choice of their destination" presupposes a zero-sum in the distribution of goods. That is, if the goods or resource goes to one destination it does not go to the other. But is that true? Might not some types of resource have multiple destinations? For example, a piece of information can be heard by many simultaneously. Even physical things need not be zero-sum. Example: Hermit crabs line up next to a shell too large for them and when one comes that needs the large shell, it casts off its current one and inhabits it, the next in line casts off theirs and takes that one, and so on down the line. In human life, where zero-sum is forced upon us unnecessarily, this is often because of dysfunctioning in the ethical aspect (meanness). (This is yet another way in which even the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect involves other aspects, as Dooyeweerd maintained.)
Summary: Definitions of economics can inform us of other issues that Dooyeweerd overlooked.
In this section, we (too briefly) survey the extent, past and present discourses around economics in order to identify those concepts or ideas that are economic within it. We will find that most extant thinkers mix other aspects in with the economic, and hence claim things about the economic aspect that are not wholly purely economic. That, however, is no problem for us because Dooyeweerd gives us a conceptual tool with which to separate out the economic from each of the other aspects: an understanding of the kernel meaning and norm of each of the aspects. Thus we can, at least provisionally, identify that which is economic in each, that is, that which needs "no other modal qualification" [NC,===[. We will then bring these together to understand the economic aspect later.
The purpose of this section is not only to grasp the broad sweep of what thinkers have found meaningful in economics, but also to note to what extent Dooyeweerd's philosophy can affirm, critique and maybe enrich each of them (see LACE), if they can and thus are valid to be considered candidates as elements of the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect. A good place to begin is with definitions of economics that thinkers have offered after much reflection.
Adam Smith, seen as the "father of economics," saw economics as the "science of wealth". His Wealth of Nations, though ostensibly an attempt to understand wealth, the economy of the nation as a whole and the nature of money and prices, could also be read,we argue, in Dooyeweerdian terms as an attempt to discern the kernel of economics. Smith was trying to say "There is an economic aspect of reality that cannot be reduced to others; what is it?" He wanted to untangle the economic aspect of reality from other aspects. Previously, for example, provisioning of the poor was seen in terms of the benificence of the wealthy (meaningful in the ethical aspect) but Smith recognised that the workings of the economic aspect ensured that the poor ware provisioned to some extent without this. Previously, wealth was seen as land and what it produces in food or minerals, but Smith drew attention to the production of wealth by human labour, and this led him to the question of divisions of human labour and the nature of money, in prices, wages and rents. Smith argued that the economy of a nation depends on the wealth generated through the goods and services, not just on what the land produces. ("Nation" brings in meaningfulness from the juridical and spatial and formative aspects.)
Smith was not wanting to isolate economics from other spheres of life, especially not from morality, and his awareness of the multi-aspectual nature of economic life even "the good or bad humour of their principal customers" [p.=== about 14 pages into ch VIII on wages]. Yet, too often those who followed him have isolated economics from morality and "humour", and developed his ideas in ways that have become inappropriate and harmful, especially as Neoclassical Economic Theory. One can see throughout his discourse on economics the deep assumption that the "luxury" and "trinkets and baubles" of the wealthy are bad rather than good. The problem is that Smith did not adequately discuss why nor how.
To Alfred Marshall, "Economics is a study of men as they live and move and think in the ordinary business of life ... chiefly ... in the business part of his life" [Marshall 1890,12]. Economics is a "means to ends", where the means are the available goods and services that are available and the ends refer to the welfare needs and requirements by people that are satisfied through the means, so economics science studies needs and means, especially at a societal level. It is clear that Marshall wants to situate economics within the whole multi-aspectual reality of life, not least with government, so his discussion brings in several other aspects along with the economic - formative for business and means to ends, juridical for the entity known as a business and for government, social for businesses and "societal" and multi-aspectual for welfare - but we want to separate out that which has no meaning in other aspects, and needs might be such a concept.
To Lionel Robbins, economics is "the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses." [Robbins, 1935, p. 16]. Scarcity is introduced. He was motivated by 'common sense' (and maybe also by opposition to Keynes [Tily 2007]). There are flaws in his reasoning, including that his way of thinking about economics presupposed the "isolated man" (e.g. Robinson Crusoe) choosing between simple alternatives, and treated mathematically. The alternatives he considers, for example between leisure or producing more, are assumed to be mutually exclusive, whereas in fact, many people find their productive work is enjoyable, so no choice is forced on them, yet they can still be functioning economically. His definition excludes the possibility of contentment as meaningful from the economic aspect. Robbins seems to have presupposed the Is-Ought, Fact-Value divide [===]. The idea of respecting common sense resonates with Dooyeweerd's idea of multi-aspectual, pre-theoretical attitude of thought, but Robbins' version is highly antithetical to it, reducing all to the economic and quantitative aspects, deliberately removing the social aspect, and removing all idea of normativity from his idea of what defines economics.
As has been noticed [Garcia de la Sienra 1998; Hengstmengel [2008]] Dooyeweerd's pronouncement is very similar to Robbins' definition, despite these tensions with his philosophy as a whole. Dooyeweerd's version of it is perhaps a little more dynamic and including normativity. It is interesting that Dooyeweerd never mentions Robbins, so it seems that he just imported what was then a widely accepted view in some circles without question, and was not intending, in the passage earlier, to pronounce on the economic kernel but merely to illustrate how one might link one's understanding of a meaning-kernel to that of others. See below for more.
Frank Knight [1934] made a brief but severe criticism of Robbins which, incidentally, helps us see which portions of Dooyeweerd's philosophy Robbins' approach goes against. In fact, Knight proposed that economics involves at least six "categories", each of which is meaningful in different aspects: economics is multi-aspectual. Though his critique of Robbins does not mention the categories explicitly, they may be seen throughout. In addition to several fallacies in Robbins' reasoning (such as petitiones principii) Knight finds several problems with the substance of Robbins' definition of economics and especially the presuppositions on which it is based. Overall, Knight sees Robbins as reducing economics to a "utility mechanics" that is based on several questionable presuppositions. Among these are:
1. Robbins too strongly emphasises the distinction between Is and Ought, judgments of fact and judgments of value, thus removing any recognition of ethics and the possibility of economic action as being problematic. This goes directly against Dooyeweerd's presupposition that Is and Ought cannot be opposed, even they may be conceptually differentiated.
2. Robbins treats economic activity at the level of society as merely "an aggregation of Crusoes, each on a separate economic island". In Dooyeweerdian terms, that amounts to ignoring the social and post-social aspects.
3. Robbins focuses on means and ends, and does not recognise the difference between technical and economic ends. That is, Robbins conflates the economic and formative ("technical") aspects.
4. Robbins treats ends as given, whereas Knight shows, in a letter to Robbins [Skarbek 2016], that choice of which ends to seek involves value judgement. Likewise, which facts to use in science. Given the unbreakable connection between value and meaningfulness, Knight is stating the Dooyeweerd's first transcendental question in his Transcendental Critique of Theoretical Thought, in which theoretical thinkers abstract data to study, by pre-theoretically choosing aspects ("modalities of meaning" to focus on. Knight's judgments of value presuppose (aspectual) eaningfulness.
5. Robbins does not understand the difference between different kinds of 'causality', treating them all as like physical causality. To make this criticism, Knight shows an understanding of what Dooyeweerd called Cosmic Time, in which the before-after relationship is different in each aspect.
6. Finally, but by no means least, Robbins exhibits reductionism of many kinds in many parts of his argument. In Dooyeweerdian terms, he reduces various aspects to one or maybe two aspects, especially the quantitative. Note that Knight did not disagree with Robbins' view that frugality in use of limited resources is important, which is the point that Dooyeweerd primarily picked up and used in his discussion of relationship with other aspects. But what all this implies is that other parts of Dooyeweerd's definition of economics, which follows Robbins, is out of kilter with much of the rest of his philosophy, which increases the justification in seeking to replace it here.
Knight, also, is the originator of that famous, seemingly arrogant, claim that economics is the science of life (actually the "science of conduct"). We shall see later that this might have arisen from his view that multiple aspects are important in economics.
Paul Samuelson tried to amalgamate Smith's, Marshall's and Robbins' definitions: economics is about how wealth is used, employing scarce resources that can have substitute uses to make goods and services which are then distributed to society for usage. This definition is now accepted by many. But, as in those three thinkers, there is no attempt to differentiate between Good and Harmful economic activity, as we argue is important (Chapter 7).
However, is such an amalgamation valid? To Karl Polanyi [1977], "the term economic, as commonly used to describe a type of human activity, is a compound of two meanings", about means, ends and scarcity and about satisfaction of wants. They "have nothing in common", because they "have separate roots, independent of one another." There is an inescapable tension between frugality and satisfaction of wants: frugality can hinder the satisfaction of wants, and satisfying wants can undermine frugality. Samuelson merely places them together without resolving the tension. Polanyi suggests that they can co-exist in a market economy but not otherwise - though recent experience might suggest otherwise. He defines Market Economy as
"The production and distribution of material goods is carried on through a self-regulated system of markets, governed by laws of its own, the so-called laws of supply and demand motivated in the last resort by two simple incentives, fear of hunger and hope of gain" Polanyi [1977, 57]
That frugality and needs-satisfaction coexist in pre-theoretical experience even without markets suggests that there is a deeper connection between them, which Polanyi might have missed, and that any tension between them might arise from misunderstanding the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect, exacerbated by isolating it from other aspects. Given the foundational belief in Dooyeweerd's philosophy of the inherent coherence among the aspects, in their laws and meaningfulness, Polanyi challenges and encourages us to seek harder to understand the relationship between frugality and needs satisfaction.
To Keynes, economics is "a science of thinking in terms of models joined to the art of choosing models which are relevant" and is a moral rather than natural science, concerning things like motives, expectations and judgments of value. "Unlike the typical natural science, the material to which it is applied is, in too many respects, not homogeneous through time." [Keynes 1938]. It includes macroeconomics, such as aggregate demand. We can see several Dooyeweerdian themes here, the first being the pre-theoretical nature of choosing models, and judgments of value being enabled by the normative meaningfulness of each aspect. Macroeconomics is important because of the aesthetic and post-aesthetic aspects. Indeed, it may be that Keynes yearned for a full multi-aspectual approach.
We might wonder why Dooyeweerd chose Robbins over Keynes. Was it because Dooyeweerd's political pre-theoretical commitment seems to have been to the conservative, "anti-Revolutionary" outlook inherited from Groen van Prinsterer via Abraham Kuyper? No pronouncement on a meaning-kernel should be made based on political adherence - though of course one can never fully escape that, given we are all multi-aspectual human beings.
So was Karl Marx. Motivated initially by moral concerns, he was keenly aware of the normativity inherent in aspects, and the Harm and Evil as well as the Good in ways that many economists were not. To him, economics was "the study of the laws of motion of capitalist society, allowing us to understand why capitalism perpetually goes into crisis" [The Communist nd.]. For this, he needed to study the social aspect of "the relationship between economics, class structure, and social dynamics" [Duffy 2021]. Of his era, driven by reductionist materialism, he presupposed "the objective quasi-natural laws and processes governing the production of commoditities, their values and money" [Encycopedia of Marxism nd] - perhaps driven by what called the Nature-Freedom ground-motive. Despite this, his ideas of value as from labour as well as use, and capital, are still important in understanding the nature of economics.
Increasingly many thinkers recognise the innate normativity of economics as science and practice, but few have discussed this in depth. The Reformational thinker Jongeneel [2019] argues that the economic discipline has its own normativity that is not to be confused with general ethics. This is based on Dooyeweerd's idea that each aspect brings its own distinct idea of the Good and Bad, its own normativity, and the economic is just one of them. To understand the meaning-kernel, we need to understand how all these normativities relate to each other.
So far, we have considered only the discourse about the meaningfulness of economics understood up to the 1970s by the Global North. But there are many other views found in other cultures, some of which have entered Global North thinking since then, and some still not. Some come from cultures that do not explicitly separate economics off into a distinct specialism. Though dismissed by many as "primitive", we prefer to see them as holding much wisdom meaningful in the economic aspect, especially of a pre-theoretical sort, which informs us about that aspect. This, we believe, resonates with Dooyeweerd's respect for pre-theoretical attitudes. In this, we depart somewhat from the second step in Dooyeweerd's unfinished theory of progress [Note: Non-specialising Cultures]. Some of this wisdom has entered Global North and other economic discourse over the past few decades.
One issue that has entered the economics discourse is that of the value of unpaid work, such as housework, voluntary work and caring in families, all of which are prevalent in the Global South. The United Nations has been discussing how to bring unpaid economic activity into national accounts [===]. To his credit, Dooyeweerd does not make the economic aspect dependent on money, so unpaid work is just as meaningful as paid work.
Another is that some economies are arranged more around gift economics [===], especially in what Dooyeweerd would call "primitive" or "undifferentiated" societies. This (ethical) aspect of economics is well developed there and we refuse to presuppose that its replacement by the selfishness that reigns in so-called developed economies. We must allow gift economics to inform us about the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect.
Yet another issue is the Economics of Enough and its kin [===], which rejects the attitude of always getting more and more for ourselves, and the similar Degrowth movement, which argues that we must reduce economic growth in affluent economies [===]. Though Dooyeweerd does mention satisfaction of needs, he by no means presupposes eternal economic growth. Indeed, degrowth would seem more in line with the juridical norm of responsibility and ethical norm of self-giving love, than what we see in the almost universal worship of economic growth today. See our discussion of Economic Growth.
There is also communitarian economics, which is concerned about problems caused by huge corporations or governments, in which everything, even humans, are treated as mere resource to serve the corporation. A famous opponent of this is Schumacher [1973] in Small is Beautiful. Though influenced by Buddhist thought, what he urges is a multi-aspectual view, in which the pistic ("spiritual") aspect is recognised among many others as important in economics and his essay "Buddhist Economics" contains many points with which Dooyeweerd (and most Christians) would agree, such as that false presuppositions underlie modernism, that human work is not a "necessary evil" but good, and that multiple aspects of life should be considered. Dooyeweerd offers a basis for thinking about the substance of this without falling into ideological reaction for or against.
Economics must be seen as embedded among all other spheres of life [Polanyi 1944; DeMoor 2013]. This concern is reflected in various calls for holism and non-reductionism, including among Reformational thinkers motivated by Dooyeweerd's idea of irreducible aspects [===]. Embeddedness is a version of harmony, which is meaningful in the aesthetic aspect.
One important addition since the 1970s is ecological or environmental economics (here we gloss over the differences between them). It resonates with some of those post-1970s ideas but itself raises the concern of planetary limits (including climate) and responsibility to and for other denizens of the planet (the ecosphere) and for sustainability in the relationship between humans, planet and ecosphere. Sustainability becomes an important economic issue, which puts limits on economic growth [e.g. Club of Rome ===] and mandates frugality, even requiring Degrowth. Some early action inspired by ecological economics might have over-emphasised this at the expense of needs-satisfaction, resulting in threatening to increase poverty for some in India, but since then poverty and ecology have been closely linked. It is now generally accepted that damaged ecology increases poverty and poverty can damage ecology) [===] with the need to balance them (e.g. Doughnut Economics [Raworth 2018]. Environmental economics resonates with embeddedness, communality, degrowth, enoughness and other cultures, all of which are largely ignored by both capitalist and socialist economics.
Many such issues, traditionally, have been treated as mere externalities, but should be brought into the core of economics, and thus find a place within the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect. How may they? One way is to bolt them on, but bolts can be undone. Another is to reduce all value to a single type, quantitative - monetary value - but that removes all differences that might be important.
Keynes [===] believed "Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight." But the Reformational economist, Bob Goudzwaard observed [1975, 151]:
"Keynes suffered from the illusion that this extrication is an easy affair: as soon as the "gods" have led us out of the dark tunnel of economic necessity into daylight we can discard them, since they have then finished their service. But will the gods in turn let us loose? "
In this work, Capitalism and Progress, he examines the idea of progress inherent in economic growth, especially historically, and sees idolatry as utterly damaging, to which all are committed and to which they sacrifice all else. Damage of many kinds is the result, polluting the environment, using up renewable resources, damaging the health of workers, making us all dependent on intensive advertising, and many more [p.212].
Goudzwaard argues for the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect to be stewardship - of each and every 'externality', and each and every thing that might be sacrificed. He argues from the etymology: the Greek word from which "economy" comes is oikonomia, which "designated the behavior of the steward whose task it was to manage the estate entrusted to him in such a way that it would continue to bear fruit and thus provide a living for everyone who lived and worked on it." In contrast, says Goudzwaard, modern Western economics is more like chrematistike, "the pursuit of self-enrichment, for ever greater monetary possessions, if need be at the expense of Others" [Note: Etymology]. Stewardship is responsibility. Now that we have extended economy to refer to nations and even the global economy, the idea of stewardship responsibility still applies - the latter, to environmental responsibility. This is responsibility to another rather than to oneself, which is what many of the above definitions assume. He also argues from a survey of practice, which finds that an idolatrous attitude of self-enrichment, which is the opposite of responsibility, does this damage. The idea of stewardship can bring together several environmental and Global South issues with some Global North issues, and ensures a strong normative element in economics.
The idea of fruitfulness maybe sparked his metaphor of the idea of a blossoming economy: a tree grows taller and taller until it matures to bear fruit, at which point it stops growing taller; just so, an economy may grow when young but once mature it should stop putting its effort into growing and instead into bearing fruit. This escapes the early environmentalist stance of non-growth across the board, to allow the economies of impoverished countries to grow while those of the affluent countries stop growing. A similar idea lies Raworth's [2018] later idea of Doughnut Economics.
Goudzwaard's ideas need fuller and examination and research, for example to deepen it philosophically (e.g. what sorts of things should be stewarded; do they include the products of evil?) and to relate it to mainstream such as Raworth, rather than merely to Reformational or Christian thinking.
(Garcia de la Sienra followed his argument that Dooyeweerd's pronounced economic kernel leads to Neoclassical economic theory with a critique on Goudzwaard. His critique is based on abstract theory rather than taking account of the realities of economic activity in the way Goudzwaard does. It is interesting how Reformational thinkers can hold so different views - showing, as Dooyeweerd was at pains to argue, that theorizing is based on "religious" or ideological ground-motives: Garcia de la Sienra's argument shows signs of arising from the Nature-Freedom ground-motive while Goudzwaard's arises from the Creation, Fall, Redemption ground-motive. This difference needs research and deeper discussion than we can give it here; [Note: Sienra & Goudzwaard].)
The importance of cultural, spiritual and religious factors is being increasingly recognised these days, as underlying presuppositions and motivations for economic activity [e.g. Carney 2021; Sedlacek 2011]. [Gus Speth 2013] singles out "greed, selfishness and apathy". Since this is meaningful in the pistic aspect and also, Dooyeweerd claims, in all theoretical thinking, then it cannot be avoided as we discuss the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect.
One 'primitive' culture is that guided the Torah, and by people like Jesus, Paul and James in the New Testament who were steeped in that culture (even though they also partook of the Roman economy). The Biblical view of economics emphasises the rejection of Mammon. Wealth was treated as a reward for righteous living, and was an opportunity and responsibility to help others rather than to enjoy oneself (whether individual or group). And yet wealth could seduce and deceive, and hinder what is important in life. Value is not just of the coins but of the attitude of heart. Biblical economics is not seen as a specialism nor a separate sphere of life but as embedded within and among all areas of righteous life - a point that Polanyi [===] also emphasises about all economies.
There are also valid insights from other cultures, even those in which economics is not singled out as a specialism. Islamic finance "is based on the belief that money should not have any value in and of itself. It is just a way to exchange products and services that do have a value." and that "money should not cause harm" and encourages partnership [Bank of England 2024]. So money must not be made from money itself (hence no interest), we should not invest in harmful things like alcohol and profit and risks should be shared. Islamic finance is therefore mainly about the nature of money rather than the economic aspect as such, but does emphasise its embeddedness among other aspects.
None of the ideas sketched out above, nor any still to come, can be excluded a priori from consideration when investigating the meaning-kernel. We achieve this by the LACE method of Chapter 3; we have tried to listen to many ideas, to affirm what is valid and to critique them, and we will try to offer below an understanding of the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect that will enable their enrichment.
Institutional Economics may be seen as extending Behavioral Economics to recognising that economic activity is not only influenced by individual psychology but is also shaped by institutions. Institutions include individuals, firms, states (or governments), social norms and the role of law. Its approach is empirical rather than based wholly on models, hence in principle open to multiple aspects and their impact on economic functioning. This is highly laudable, but pressure has driven it to considering the formative and social aspects more than others - issues like productivity, innovation and markets.
Thus, across the discourse(s) within economics, we find many issues and factors that are meaningful to gaining a picture of what constitutes the meaning-kernel of economics. From our limited survey above, they include:
wealth, land, human productive labour, wages, prices and rent, economy of nations, needs (welfare, societal) and their satisfaction, scarcity, frugality, tension between frugality and needs-satisfaction, contentment, externalities, embeddedness, morality or normativity in economics, multiple aspects and their intertwining normativities, value and judgements thereof, capital, Global North and South cultures and economies, unpaid work, gift, economic growth and when it is appropriate, enoughness and Degrowth, corporations and communities, effect of institutions, environmental economics and planetary limits, sustainability, stewardship, cultural, spiritual and religious factors, religious beliefs about economics rules (e.g. Jewish, Islamic), and there will be others.
All such issues, and more, must be taken into account in understanding the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect and how it relates to those of other aspects.
The usual approach is to see these issues as theoretical problems to address with a chosen conceptual model, the purpose of which is to address those problems. That is not the purpose here. Instead, we treat these issues as illustrations of the range of issues that are relevant, to expand Dooyeweerd's treatment beyond his rather narrow proposal. We explore a new understanding of the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect, using the plethoric nature of the issues as motivation.
Summary: The economic aspect is the first that gives explicit attention to the object as such, recognising it has meaningfulness both by virtue of and also beyond the purpose of the subject-functioning in which it is involved, and therefore should be respected. The economic aspect enables us to generalise objects, value, needs and sustainability across all aspects.
We explore a new understanding of the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect, which is steered by Dooyeweerd's philosophy and takes the host of issues into account. We remember that, since Dooyeweerd held that meaning-kernels incorporate meaningfulness from other aspects, issues meaningful in those other aspects can be important in understanding that of the economic aspect.
Most discussion of subject-object functioning has paid attention to the subject, but here we give attention to the object as well. In all pre-economic aspects the object is almost anonymous, taken for granted as part of the subject-functioning and is largely overlooked even when the subject-object functioning is thought about. Heidegger suggested that the object is only thought about when there is a 'breakdown'. Usually, subject-functioning is meaningful in one primary (qualifying) aspect, and the object is automatically meaningful in the same aspect. Its meaningfulness is completely subsumed into the subject-functioning of the aspect, and not seen as significant except as enabling the subject-functioning.
For example: the biotic object of food is digested and ceases to exist even as food, the psychical object of an often transient odour or sound, the analytical object of a thought passes unless made permanent as a memory, the formative component used in manufacturing becomes a mere part of the whole, the lingual object of pen is disposed of when empty and not refillable, and the social object that is a tree in a park is cut down when inconvenient even though rare (an economic consideration).
As is argued here, it is the economic aspect that enables and encourages us to give attention to the object as such, generalised across all aspects. From such attention to objects arises all the elements of the economic aspect.
Summary: The economic aspect makes it possible to generalise objects into resource.
In each aspect, the object functions differently, as directed by the aspect that makes its subject-functioning meaningful. From the perspective of each such aspect, the object meaningful in it bears no resemblance to objects meaningful in other aspects. food to keep us alive and healthy as food (biotic), trees to provide nesting places for birds (biotic, psychical), components or tools to construct a machine or sculpture (formative), Mango tree in Uganda providing shade under which people meet (social object; c.f. NC, II, ===).
To give attention to the object-as-such and understand it, we must generalise the object across all aspects. That this is the kernel meaning of the economic aspect is, fundamentally, a dogma to replace Dooyeweerd's dogma, but support comes from pre-theoretical experience and from the theoretical discourse of the field.
In everyday life, when we function in the economic aspect we find ourselves using the notions of resource (or capital), needs or value of objects: the subject needs resource and treats them as with value. These concepts make sense in the economic aspect without further aspectual qualification, whereas in other aspects they need aspectual qualification (such as biological, psychological or social needs, ecological, social or moral capital, and so on).
In the theoretical discourse of the field, we find Knight [1922] making his famous claim that economics is the "science of life" or "science of conduct". Though this seems arrogant, it may be taken to refer to the multi-aspectual nature of human life being seen in a way that spans all aspects by generalising across them, suggesting there is such an aspect, and that is the aspect that makes economic meaningful. [Hisrhleifer 1985, 66] noted that it is that such economic concepts as costs and scarcity (which are linked to value and resource) "are truly universal in applicability" - which in Dooyeweerdian terms means across all aspects - that gives economics its power to invade human life. Further, that economic concepts can embrace all and any aspects may be part of what Keynes was alluding to in "the material [of economic science] is, in too many respects, not homogeneous through time" [Keynes 1938].
So it is reasonable to see the economic aspect as the one that gives attention to the object as such, generalising across all aspects. The rest of this section explores the implications==== of this to arrive at a proposal about the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect and its elements.
Thus resource is how the object is seen from the perspective of the economic aspect. The concept of resource relates to concepts like asset (resource that is owned), capital (an accumulation or store of resource), provision (resource made available to somebody) or "at our disposal" (resource easily obtainable to enable some subject-functioning).
It is erroneous to say "X is a resource"; it is correct to say "X is treated as a resource (when we take an economic perspective)." Resource is a role made meaningful by the economic aspect rather than an entity type. Often, when we treat a thing as resource, we give it different names from that which it has in its own right; examples are given in Table t-asp-resource, in which column 2 names the object as it is in its own right, and column 3 is the name we give it as seen as a resource. In column 2, it is a thing meaningful in multiple aspects, which may take the role of object in many subject-functionings and sometimes even the role of subject itself. The cow may be treated as a biotic resource of beef for feeding us, but it also has another biotic meaning that is not seen as resource, as part of an ecosystem, and perhaps also a social meaning when it a child's pet. To a railway planner, signalled sections of track ("paths") are a resource that enables planning movement of trains with safety, whereas as such, the track has physical, kinematic and other meaningfulness.
Several things may be said about object treated as resource.
1. Object as Multi-aspectual Thing. Whereas the object of subject-functioning is meaningful in one aspect, the thing that takes the role of object there is usually meaningful in several aspects, according to its structure of individuality. Therefore its meaningfulness is by no means exhausted by that of one specific subject-functioning, but extends to other subject-functionings in which it acts as object and even sometimes to acting as subject itself. This is why allowing reduction of assessment and decision-making to the economic perspective alone is damaging and dangerous.
For example, in signing a contract, my pen is a lingual object but also, if I want to impress the other party, I might use a prestigious pen as a social object, and since the pen leaves liquid on solid material, the pen is a physical subject. When I signed my new baby's birth certificate, the latter was particularly important, since paper and ink were such as to give physical longevity, without fading.For example, exotic fruit grown in Africa for the European market comes from biotic subjects (plants) that are also physical subjects in consuming a lot of water - of which other things are deprived. In the worst case, the other things are obliterated (as in destroying rainforest by soya producers).
We must always keep all other aspects in mind when thinking economically and the economic aspect itself encourages this when properly enacted. Often the wider potential of the resource object is not yet known or taken notice of. This is why economics must always be "embedded", as Chapter 4 emphasises, and its theory must always express this. But it doesn't!
2. Necessity. Usually without the object that enables it the subject-functioning cannot occur; the object is necessary. The lack of an object prevents or hinders not only the intended subject-functioning but also other functioning (subject and object) in which it would be involved (such as a tree in an ecosystem). This is the foundation that makes needs meaningful. Different needs are satisfied by different subject-functionings and their objects.
3. Alternative uses. Dooyeweerd's and Robbins' alternative uses of a particular thing is possible because of the multiple aspects in which the thing itself is meaningful: a tree as home for birds and insects (biotic aspect) or as timber (formative), which itself is used for making furniture (psychical) or goal posts (aesthetic). It is the economic perspective that enables such alternatives for a choice. If we choose with respect for the objects in all their multi-aspectual meaningfulness then it is not disharmonious. Conversely, substitution. One thing may be substituted for another as resource to enable the same subject-functioning. Even different subject-functionings may be substituted to fulfil the same need, for example for food, as expressed in the saying "Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach them to fish and you feed them for life" giving (ethical functioning) replaced by education (formative-lingual).
Always, the real value is of an aspectual kind (i.e. modally qualified) and economic value-as-such is a reified concept substituting for that across all aspects. There is both a benefit and a danger in this.
The benefit is that it enables markets to function. Without the ability to grasp intuitively (and also theoretically) the idea of generalised value across all aspects, beef might be exchanged for beer since they are both of biotic value, but not for books, which have no biotic value but only lingual value. The economic aspect, by enabling us to conceive or intuit or work with the general, trans-aspectual idea of value, makes exchange across different aspects meaningful and not just arbitrary.
The danger is that of reductionism, in that all too often the real value is obscured by an amorphous, generalized value, especially encouraged by monetization of economic activity and theory. Price is not value, nor even a measure of it, but only of the groupthink of a market society about how much money to exchange for something.
This is a tragedy because in its actuality, the economic aspect that has the potential to widen our perspective beyond one aspectual kind of value to all the others but with monetization it does the opposite. The specific aspectual Good an object can bring is 'known' to the primary aspect of the subject-functioning but much of the potential Good goes beyond this, because the object is also meaningful in other aspects (as expressed for instance in its structure of individuality as an entity). It is the economic aspect that, in principle, 'knows about' all this other Good, and treats it too as value, opening the curtains for us to see all kinds of Good (value) in other aspects.
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This recognition of multi-aspectual Good (value) is important in environmental economics, which recognises and sometimes emphasises the hitherto overlooked importance of biotic (ecological) Good. It is also the idea of multi-aspectual value that enables us to formulate indices of the Overall Good of a nation or community, across multiple aspects: Gross Happiness Index, Human Development Index, etc. (The problem with these is (a) quantification, (b) missing aspects, with GDP being among the worst.)
Understanding value in this way offers a grounding for the idea of negative value, which is important in Chapter 7. Negative value is the Harm that functioning with the object could do, which is the preventing or removing of Good, lessening the Multi-aspectual Overall Good. We thus have negative value meaningful in each aspect generalized across all aspects as negative value-as-such.
This understanding of the relationship between generalized value and the various aspectual kinds of value works for both subjective and objective value, inherent and context-bound value, which are discussed in Chapter 5. Dooyeweerd offers a view that refuses to presuppose the Nature-Freedom Ground-motive, which sets them against each other, and offers an integrative pluralistic view based on aspectual meaningfulness. Whereas most conventional economics sees value only in terms of the subject, Dooyeweerd enables us to see value in the object that transcends the subject. Subjective value is not denied but isthe subset of all value that a subject happens to value, a subset of all that makes the object meaningful, that is, its structure of individuality.
Summary: The economic is the first aspect that gives respect for the object. This reveals that there are two types of frugality, with different motivations: scarcity-frugality and respect-frugality.
The object is an Other with which the Self (subject) must reckon. In subject-subject functioning, it is known that the Other must be given respect - and it could be said that that is what the social aspect enables: respect for the other subject - though that is not argued here. In subject-object functioning, there is also be respect for the object (or disrespect). It is the economic aspect enables respect for the object. Recognising the (multi-aspectual) value of objects accords dignity to the object beyond being a mere anonymous component of subject-functioning.
This idea of respect for the object has far-reaching implications for our understanding of the kernel meaning and norm of the economic aspect.
For example in furniture making, there are formative, physical, aesthetic, economic and other aspects of the human activity. The good crafter treats the timber with respect, taking careful account of beautiful grain pattern (which can enhance the aesthetic of the furniture) and of where knots are (which can weaken it), and cuts it accordingly. After a time, respect becomes a habit and attitude, which leads to less waste of timber and better furniture. Those are the economic aspect of the work.
Respect for the object is the element in the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect that is the unique kind of Good that it makes possible. When we respect the object as it is (and not just as it serves our purposes) then its full potential can be realised, including in ways that are unexpected and even currently unknown to economic theory. This approach ensures that the economic aspect is in harmony with the rest of the aspects. Respect for the full dignity of things in the role of object, respecting the full multi-aspectual meaningfulness of the object as a thing in its own right, overcomes the tragedy that was mentioned above.
Its corresponding Evil is disrespect for the object; understanding this can help us understand respect for the object more clearly. There are two main ways of disrespecting the object (and this can also help us understand respect more clearly). One is to waste or squander the objects. Squandering treats the object as of little consequence and makes the object less available for its wider meaningful and potential as object in other subject-functionings or as subject itself. The other way is to reduce its meaningfulness to the aspect that makes the subject-functioning meaningful and ignore its full multi-aspectual being and functioning and potential contribution to Good. Respect and disrespect are attitudes, dispositions. Disrespect treats the object as having no other value that to serve 'my'/'our' interests, wishes and desires. It is what happens when industry or government has no concern about the environmental value of forests, animals, minerals, wildlife corridors, etc. or the wellbeing of workers, neighbours or even customers and suppliers.
An extreme example of such reduction is found in treating humans as object is often seen as wrong, but we must clarify why. Treating humans as resource is merely taking an economic perspective of them, and need not be wrong in itself. Treating humans as object (or resource) is wrong when we treat the human as nothing but resource - notoriously wrong in slavery. Less cruel perhaps, but definitely dangerous, is the renaming of Personnel departments in organisations as "Human Resources". This is a form of disrespect to the full multi-aspectual meaningfulness and mandate of humans, and is often driven by selfishness (ethical dysfunction) of the organisation and its management, resulting in oppression and injustice (juridical dysfunction).
If respect-as-such is a functioning in the pistic or ethical aspect, in believing the full meaningfulness of the Other, respect for the object is its analogical echo within the economic aspect.
(x Respecting the object is important in a Creational approach, in that it resonates with the idea that a Creator created all, and that all meaningfulness and good refers always ultimately to the Creator. Theologically - and we cannot treat this as philosophical proof but only as an indication - respect for the object resonates with respect for Creation, which we find throughout the Scriptures, including humans tending and caring for the Garden, God having compassion on all Creation, and Paul telling us that everything in Created is good and all should be accepted, received with thanksgiving (Genesis 2, Psalm 145:9, I Timothy 4:4). Disrespect for the object goes against these. x)
We may now understand Dooyeweerd's "balancing needs" differently, in that (a) frugality as a norm allows for contentment within economics, (b) economy comes about because we respect the objects, and (c) we happen to choose one thing as resource for our functioning in this very moment rather than another, and if this is driven by respect for objects then it is not disharmonious.
Some suggest we respect an object when we use it as a resource, some going further to suggest that it is wrong not to use it, and some even add a religious force==== to this (disrespecting the Creator). This reasoning has been applied to oil and coal by those who want to resist climate and environmental responsibility [e.g. Cornwall]. There are four reasons why this reasoning is wrong. First, what really respects an object is not using it as such but engaging with it in its full aspectual potential. Felling trees of a forest to extract some timber is not respect in itself because timber is not the whole potential of those trees - which includes contributing an ecosystem. Second, the object could be used for something else. Third, respect for the object does not imply that restricting use of an object as resource for our particular purpose now is evil; we respect it even when we leave it for the future. Third, the underlying problem there is not economic but pistic and ethical dysfunction of narrow view driven by self-interest.
Thus use of the object is at best only partial respect, only for the limited purpose of the current subject and not for the object in its full multi-aspectual potential. The implication of this is not non-use but rather careful, respectful use that is always aware of the other potential that is being denied. That is, an attitude of "sparing or frugal" use, in which we would never waste the resource.
Summary: There are two types of frugality, motivated by respect or scarcity. Respect-frugality goes deeper than scarcity-frugality and can include it. Scarcity-frugality becomes irrelevant in times of plenty while respect-frugality is still relevant.
It was argued above that frugality rather than needs-satisfaction is the norm that should guide economic activity. This section helps to resolve some of the problems with frugality discussed earlier.
The root of the problems is that to Dooyeweerd (and Robbins), frugality is "only" a correlate of scarcity; that is, scarcity is the reason why frugality is a norm. But then in situations of plenty frugality is unnecessary. Moreover, since scarcity is subjective and context-dependent, frugality too would be. This is problematic.
It is when frugality is motivated by scarcity ("scarcity-frugality") that the problems proliferate. If frugality is motivated instead by respect for the object ("respect-frugality"), the problems lessen, because it recognises the full multi-aspectual meaningfulness and value of the object, whereas scarcity-frugality is tied to whatever the subject deems important at that time and in that context.
Respect-frugality is a condition for sustainable prosperity, even if immediate league-table measures of prosperity might seem to increase when we waste resources.
A simplified version is depicted in Figure fea-frugality, using the example of furniture-making, in which respect for the timber used, especially its grain and knots, usually produces better, stronger and more beautiful furniture, which is likely to sell better and give the purchaser better service and last longer.
Figure fea-frugality. Two frugalities, prosperity and austerity.
For these reasons, we suggest that respect-frugality, rather than scarcity-frugality, is the kernel norm of the economic aspect. It is notable that most of what scarcity-frugality concerns itself is automatically within the scope of respect-frugality.
The emphasis turns away from reduction in consumption, though this is likely to be the natural outcome of a respect for the object, no longer seen as a burden but a moral satisfaction.
It is often said that limits in resource stimulates innovation; this is correct, but not fully so. The mere tyranny of limits does not by itself stimulate innovation; instead it might stimulate anger, which closes down innovation. For limits to stimulate innovation there must be a certain attitude, not an attitude of putting myself first and assuming the world should give me everything I need, but an attitude of loving service and respect for the Other and its full multi-aspectual potential. It is respect for the object that enables us to take an interest in it and discover its potential, and this is what stimulates innovation.
Stewardship, which Goudzwaard [1979] suggested is the kernel of the economic aspect, involves respect for what is stewarded and for its ultimate owner. Should we therefore replace respect-frugality by stewardship? Our answer would be "Not usually" because ownership is meaningful in the juridical aspect rather than the economic. (The owner would have to be identified and, for stewardship applied to environmental sustainability, as Goudzwaard does, the owner is often identified as "future generations" but this is juridically problematic and open to denial. The real harm to future generations is that resources will no longer be available to them, which is an economic isue and not to do with ownership.)
Thus respect-frugality can achieve anything that scarcity-frugality can and more, and so is more flexible and inclusive as a norm.
(x Strong support for this view comes from a Biblical perspective, in which humans are understood as partners with the Creator in bringing blessing and development to Creation. This is the ground-motive within which Dooyeweerd worked. By contrast, both the idea that humans are pampered, privileged, spoilt children of the Creator on the one hand (the presupposition of Freedom-Humanism and Prosperity Christianity) and that humans are merely another kind of evolutionary-competitive animal on the other (the presupposition of 'Scientific' Humanism) - both treat prosperity as an aim and frugality as a constraint on it that should be ignored. x)
Summary: Needs are norms generalized across aspects and the resources (objects) needed to fulfil those norms. Needs-satisfaction is an outcome of good functioning, often unsought, and it is dangerous to treat it as a goal. Needs rather than wants. Prosperity likewise, but often applied to communities, and multi-aspectual not just financial.
===== find litr on relshp btw needs-satisfaction an prosperity, and wants-satisfaction and Usless and Harmful ec activity; M. Max-Neef 1992?.
Though we have argued, both theoretically and practically, that needs-satisfaction (whether basic subsistence or full prosperity) cannot be the kernel norm of the economic aspect, how does it fit within or outwith the meaning-kernel? Dooyeweerd, Marshall and Samuelson include it as economic and Smith focused on the attendant idea of wealth, but we may question these in the light of more recent understanding of economics, especially how an emphasis on making ever-increasing prosperity or wealth a goal (as in most affluent nations) damages the Planet and global and local ecosystem as well as human wellbeing.
The word "need" has two meanings that are relevant here, both of which refer to a particular aspect. First, it signifies the norm of that aspect (e.g. the need to live, biotic; the need to communicate, lingual). Second, it signifies the objects that are needed in order to fulfil that need (e.g. food; words, signs and a medium). When we generalise across aspectual needs, to need-as-such (or just needs, unqualified) the objects generalise to resources. So, needs (as such) are generalised resources with a reference to generalised aspectual norms.
We may, if we wish, allow needs to include some wants, but we must be wise in doing so. What may be a need in one aspect is at most a want in others (e.g. to the biotic aspect, food is a need but to innovation (formative), food is mere nice-to-have, and to the pistic perspective of fasting, food is a non-need). As discussed earlier, true prosperity is not just large amounts of material resources, but is multi-aspectual, and is not just human flourishing but the flourishing of the entire human and non-human Creation together (x the "very good" of "all that God made" [Genesis 1:31] x). It is Multi-aspectual Overall Good as defined in Chapters 3 and 4 - what has been called Shalom, Salaam.
The actual satisfaction of the need or want is formative functioning, an achievement, for which objects meaningful to the kind of need are involved as tools, components and raw materials. Both needs-satisfaction and prosperity are outcomes of good economic activity, needs-satisfaction more for individuals and prosperity more for communities or societies. They are the repercussion of the functioning.
Means-end logic suggests to us that we may treat such outcomes as goals or aims. This is, however, not meaningful in the economic aspect but in the formative. Indeed, with economic functioning as such many of the highest-quality outcomes are unsought, more like a reward for good functioning, to be accepted with gratitude, than something to plan for. (x The Bible sees prosperity as a kind of reward for keeping God's Law. x) Treating an outcome as a goal can often treat the objects with disrespect (waste or reductionism), because the formative aspect is pre-economic and hence unaware that respect for objects is good. It is often open to being engulfed in our own subjective, often selfish, purposes and wishes. Since business people have been trained to drive their businesses by goals, has much economic activity been narrowed and distorted and much potential good lost?
True needs-satisfaction and prosperity must persist, not just occur for a day. That leads us to sustainability.
When we obey the norm of frugality, resource is kept available for future functioning and, since what is meaningful to the economic aspect is the view of functioning across all aspects then we fimd resources of all kinds are kept available, allowing continued multi-aspectual functioning. This is necessary for sustainability. Sustainability may be qualified by each aspect: if ecological resource is kept available then we have environmental sustainability, but we also talk about sustainable development, sustainable communities, sustainable business, etc. - all with modal qualification. It is the economic aspect in which we can think about sustainability as such, without modal qualification, generalised across all aspects, and we may give it the name sustainable prosperity (as per our definition of prosperity) - the outcome of frugal functioning.
For overall sustainability, frugality needs to be practised as a habit of life that will continue in times of plenty, not only in times of scarcity. Since all aspects work together, dependent on each other, ensuring frugality as a habit and attitude across any and all aspects, increases sustainability.
In pre-economic aspects the functioning and outcome we are mostly concerned with the present and immediate future, but in the economic aspect we become concerned with the longer-term future. When we practise frugality we ensure future availability of resources so that they may be available as objects in future Good functioning. That resources remain available for future functioning is a concern of the economic aspect. How this works in all aspects together is the concern of the aesthetic.
Without the economic aspect, pre-economic aspectual functioning seems quite ready to sacrifice the future in order to fulfil their immediate norms. In most of the formative functioning of goal-driven decision-making, planning and execution, for example, immediate achievement is everything and the farther future is too often ignored and therefore sacrificed. In the biotic aspect, organisms tend to over-consume if food is available, sometimes undermining their own future. (I met this when visiting the Red Squirrel sanctuary in Formby, UK, where I saw they had stripped the bark of various trees, killing them and thus depriving themselves of food in the future.)
The idea of sustainability and frugality challenges both capitalist and socialist economics [Goudzwaard 1979], because both seem to lack an intrinsic respect for the future (though they might bolt it on theoretically). Capitalist economics presupposes the future as mere trajectory from the present and socialist economics presupposes the future as the righting of past wrongs. Neither treat the future seriously in its full, multi-aspectual meaningfulness and reality.
The economic aspect is thus future-oriented in a way that earlier aspects might not be.
Notice that there is nothing in any of the above about money, and nothing here about economic growth, the latter being also future-oriented. It is notable that almost none of the economist thinkers above include them in their understanding of the nature of the economic. The economic aspect does not include them in its kernel; money and economic growth are not essential therein; instead, they are things that are meaningful in the economic and other aspects in particular cultural contexts. Neither true needs nor true prosperity per capita grow.
The call for economic growth among impoverished nations is not primarily an economic issue but one meaningful in the juridical, ethical and aesthetic aspects, all post-economic and hence only vaguely grasped when viewed from the economic aspect alone. The call for economic growth by most politicians and media pundits of affluent nations has many roots, most unhealthy (cultural expectation of ever increasing satisfaction of needs turned into wants, into wishes, into preferences, at the expense of all else; fear of a vocal greedy electorate; political rivalries or warfare; groupthink; and the like) but that does not justify making is an essential component of the kernel of the economic aspects. This is why many rightly call for Degrowth of affluent economies [Jackson ===], and yet recognise that impoverished economies should grwo - a stance introduced several decades earlier by the Reformational thinker Goudzwaard's [===] metaphor of the Blossoming Economy. (Of course, Degrowth must avoid austerity, but it can be guarded against not by growth but by genuine respect-motivated frugality.)
# Respect-frugality is thus a stronger and surer route to sustainability, not least because of its multi-aspectual rather than narrow, subjective view of the object and because of what we are aiming at in the future.
Summary: Dooyeweerd was correct in locating the economic aspect after the social and before the aesthetic.
Dooyeweerd placed the economic aspect after the social aspect and before the aesthetic; does our expanded idea of the economic kernel still fit there?
The economic aspect succeeds the social aspect in that good economic functioning depends foundationally on good social functioning. It is not clear that Dooyeweerd's idea of frugality linked to scarcity and associated things like alternative destinations requires the social at all, since the individual can exercise such frugality without any reference to other people. It is not known whether or where Dooyeweerd argues for succession to the social. However, his contemporary Haan [1971] did. What does depend on good social functioning is the operation of markets and their exchanges, and agreement over value. Our expanded idea includes these and thus provides a basis for Dooyeweerd's placing the economic aspect after the social.
The economic enables generalisation across aspects, which is what the aesthetic aspect depends fundamentally on in order to harmonise.
The aesthetic aspect (in its meaningfulness as harmony rather than as enjoyment) follows the economic in that aesthetic functioning is undermined by superfluity and requires frugality. This is something that Dooyeweerd argues [NC,II, 67]. So on this we agree with his placing the economic before the aesthetic aspect. Indeed, we have seen how economic provision of resources across all aspects prepares for harmony in multi-aspectual functioning.
However, Dooyeweerd's frugality is scarcity-frugality; does respect-frugality still act as a foundation for the aesthetic? We would submit that it is an even better foundation, in that true aesthetics, in both harmony and delight, depend on respect for the aesthetic objects. Harmony (of the aesthetic kind) cannot fully occur without taking full, multi-aspectual account of the meaningful being and possibilities of each and every object therein. Treating any object with less than full respect, such as might happen with 'background' objects, can reduce the aesthetics.
However, we can go further. Aesthetic harmonizing needs to be able to take a view across all aspects, not just across all entities, relationships and processes. It is the economic aspect that enables generalisation across all objects (and maybe the social that enables generalisation across subjects), thus making ready for aesthetic harmonizing. Is this what Hayek [1937] was trying to get at in his famous article Economics and Knowledge when he said that the Market is a marvel in coordinating in situations of distributed knowledge? Markets have to cope with knowledge distrbuted not only across many individuals but also across multiple ways of things being meaningful and good?
Might the sharp contention between state-led and laissez-faire economics (in which Hayek and many others took part) may be softened once we understand the location of the economic aspect (c.f. embracive perspective)? Those who argue for laissez-faire and its ilk often refer to human functioning in the earlier aspects, those in which individual activity is meaningful. Those who argue for state-led economics are often concerned about overall functioning and repercussions, which are meaningful in the aesthetic aspect onwards, especially the juridical, in which power to act justly is vested. If we adopt Dooyeweerd's multi-aspectual view, then both are part of the same whole picture, in which there is the grounds for and possibility of harmonizing or integrating between them. Note that some laissez-faire economists rely on Smith's "invisible hand" but, as argue in our discussion of Smith, the invisible hand is about the economic aspect being intertwined with all other aspects, including the aesthetic and juridical?
Therefore we see no reason to change the location of the economic aspect within the aspectual order.
Are other economic ideas, such as future orientation, as an outcome, depended on by the aesthetic? It does not seem so important a dependency - until we reflect on the aphorism, "Life is short but art is long."
How various aspects depend on the economic aspect needs to be researched.
Summary: Our view of the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect can address several known paradoxes in economics - and thus passes Dooyeweerd's antinomy test for meaning-kernels.
Along with working out the kernel meaning of aspects, Dooyeweerd would employ the philosophical method of antinomy, in which he showed how his proposal could explain various paradoxes. A famous example is Xeno's Paradox, in which Achilles seemingly can never overtake a tortoise - because it tries to explain a kinematic phenomenon (speed) solely in terms of spatial concepts (locations on the race track).
However, he did not do this in his brief treatment of the economic aspect. So we continue his attempt by examining paradoxes that have arisen in economics.
Respect for object as resource can explain the Paradox of Plenty (or Resource Curse), in which countries rich in natural resources tend to have poor economic growth or prosperity - and the paradox within this paradox that Norway is an exception in being rich in natural resources as well as prosperous. If we treat frugality as mandated only by scarcity, then the resource-rich country (or community or company) will not treat those resources with respect and responsibility, but only in a utilitarian fashion, as a means to whatever ends they happen to value, and will be open to exploitation by others forcing down the price.
That Norway has remained prosperous, with a massive Sovereign Wealth fund built up from selling the fossil fuels it has extracted from its share of the North Sea reserves is because they treated those reserves with respect and future-orientation, and did not squander them as Britain did with its share of North Sea reserves. Britain treated those reserves as merely fuelling attempts at immediate economic growth (its presupposition of the norm of the economic aspect) and is now struggling.
The Diamond-Water Paradox is that water, which is immensely valuable, even essential, attracts a low price while diamonds, which are luxurious non-essentials attracts a high price. This too can be explained by making scarcity the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect. By contrast, respect for the object would recognise the immense multi-aspectual value of water compared with diamonds despite its abundance, and the theory and practice of economics would unfold differently.
Interestingly, scarcity-frugality leaves us unable to explain the paradox that we assign so little value to the most scarce resource we have: the Earth, which seems to be utterly unique among the billions of other planets in the Galaxy and beyond. Respect-based frugality, however, can, especially by those who adopt a religious attitude of respect for Creation.
Figure fea-kernel. Constituents of the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect.
Instead of frugality, prosperity etc. as the kernel meaningfulness as presupposed by Dooyeweerd and others, we have argued for:
Such an understanding of the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect accommodates many of the main concepts and issues that occur not only in Dooyeweerd but also in the wider discourse of economics, and yet repositions some of them no longer as goals or norms but as beneficial outcomes. The following goes through the extant thinking discussed earlier.
But more substantially than solving such abstract philosophical problems, it offers a foundation for a new approach to economics, which might have immense practical implications. It has been suggested above that many of the failings and harm of current economic thinking and practice derive from ignoring or replacing some of these (though that suggestion requires fuller research). If the suggestion is valid, it follows that rethinking economics along these lines might ameliorate, if not solve, many of the problems economics brings - by bringing in a better foundational kernel meaningfulness, an attitude of respect for the full multi-aspectual being of objects, a more satisfactory treatment of value, a norm of frugality, a better understanding of economic activity (as activity in which respect for aspectual value of things as resource is important) and prosperity or needs-satisfaction as an outcome (for which we can be thankful) rather than a goal or norm (that imposes unnecessary stress on everyone). And it inserts a clear distinction between frugality and austerity, shifting the practical emphasis away from mere negative decrease towards positive responsibility, which humanity intuitively sees as a virtue. A number of attempts to rethink economics have been offered [Cojanu 2017], but most of them replace one or a few of the elements rather than all together, and fail to address all the problems.
Our view of the economic aspect meaning-kernel has important implications for economic practice and theory. For example, it might imply a radical rethinking of GDP. Currently GDP ignores the difference between Good and Evil, adding together the money made from them, but it should separate them and, for example, be redefined as subtracting Evil from Good: GDP = Good - Evil - which implies that economies that depend on Evil will be measured as having low or negative GDP. Such measures need research and discussion.
Our view of the economic aspect includes and embraces Dooyeweerd's. So not only does it support most of what has been written in economics using Dooyeweerd's ideas (though not, for instance, Garrcia de la Sienra's [===] contention that Dooyeweerd implies NET) but it also supports==== Dooyeweerd's use of it in relation to other aspects. For example, Dooyeweerd argues that the aesthetic aspect depends on some kind of frugality in order to have elegance and avoid the superfluity that negates art. We enrich frugality with respect, and it is respect for the materials, subject matter and style that contributes to great aesthetics, not just curbing the amount of stuff. In effect, it implies a criticism of Dooyeweerd for not properly allowing the implications of his whole philosophy to inform his understanding of the economic aspect.
If the meaning-kernel of an aspect includes respect for the object, then it is likely there is another aspect whose meaning-kernel includes respect for the subject. This would quite naturally be the social aspect. To say, as is usual, that the meaning-kernel of the social aspect is "social intercourse" does not tell us what social is, and that is what we need. Whereas pre-social aspects involve a subject, and the lingual aspect even strongly implies inter-individual sharing of pieces of meaningfulness (i.e. communication) this does not imply respect. Respect for the subject implies a subject-subject relationship in which each subject treats the other as at least like themselves in some way. This suggestion needs working out but that must be carried out elsewhere.
Working out the implications of this understanding of the economic meaning-kernel must be done in full recognition of the embeddedness of economics in life and theory. Putting this philosophically, the economic aspect inescapably involves and echoes all other aspects, and they the economic. Thus, for example the argument that Dooyeweerd's view implies Neoclassical Economic Theory [Garcia de la Sienra's ===] is flawed partly because it explicitly restricted itself to considering the economic aspect alone.
The understanding developed here is offered, not as some final pronouncement, but as a provisional attempt at understanding the meaning-kernel that calls for critique and refinement, in the manner Dooyeweerd described for in NC,II,556.
It may be noticed that though we criticise Dooyeweerd's specific dogma about the economic aspect, we have employed much of his philosophy to form our proposal, not only his idea of aspects as modalities of meaning, modes of being, modes of functioning, the idea of meaning-kernel, but also his understanding of the subject-object relationship and his theory of ground-motives. What anyone presupposes as the kernel of the economic aspect is deeply influenced by the culture of the time, the attitude and mindset, society's ethical and pistic functioning - which Speth [2013] says requires a "spiritual and cultural transformation". Our proposal for the meaning-kernel of the economic aspect might help this by providing an intellectual scaffolding for it, (x especially one that resonates with much that is found in the Bible x).
Finally, a warning: Respect for the object must be genuine; a danger is that those who do not want to reduce their consumption will pick on some objects to 'respect' while denying the generic respect for all kinds of objects. Beware such arguments.
Dooyeweerd used the metaphor of reality "avenging itself" on our stubborn stupidity [Note: Reality's Revenge]. In economic crises over recent decades, is the economic aspect itself "avenging itself" by telling us "I do not work by self-interest nor greed"? Might environmental movements be seen as expressing this? Might it be the economic aspect itself that is now calling us back to our responsibility for the future and to respect the objects (resources) that we have presumed to squander? Might it be calling us back to ideas of thankfulness and care rather than self-interest and greed?
Might the economic aspect, in fact, be telling us that it does not work well unless in harmony with all other aspects? That widens the discussion, and is taken up as Chapter 4 continues.
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This is part of a Rethink of Economics undertake by the RLDG, with the help of Dooyeweerd's philosophy.
Created: 4 June 2024, from material from r4-mmm; Last updated: 4 June 2024 edited, and links corrected. 5 June 2024 other aspects. 8 October 2024 value as central; summary. 13 December 2024 management. 11 September 2025 de Soto wealth creation as well as allocation. 30 November 2025 rw dy-Robbins after discussion with Alan Storkey, to whom thanks. 1 December 2025 rw section on Dooyeweerd kernel; why resp obj 1st, corr 2 links; value not subjective. 3 December 2025 defns etc. 4 December 2025 four theme in kernel. 6 December 2025. 8 December 2025 respect, frugality, wealth. 9 December 2025 stewardship, future, sust. 11 December 2025 rid most old stuff. 13 December 2025 new bit on defns from the field; polanyi 2meanings. 17 December 2025 concl: all emerging from resp for obj. 18 December 2025 Process. 19 December 2025 rw. 20 December 2025 editing some, and future-orientation. 22 December 2025 wealth. 29 December 2025 wealth or frugality placed before frugality. 31 December 2026 rw future, w location. 1 January 2026 Concl. 2 January 2026 brought in the defns, and Hengstmengel cf robbins. 8 January 2026 continue rw. 10 January 2026 frugaity, Diamond-Water. 12 January 2026 idolatry of military etc. 13 January 2026 austerity, prosperity, nfgm. 14 January 2026 some rw, and begun ridding old stuff. 15 January 2026 ridding; new intro; respect, prosp, future, sust. 16 January 2026 paradoxes and location. 19 January 2026 concl. 21 January 2026 edit Concl. 22 January 2026 fig fea-kernel. 23 January 2026 edits from start. 26 January 2026 more edits. 27 January 2026 fig fea-kenelec. 28 January 2026 editing. 29 January 2026 value, prosperity. 2 February 2026 edit future, locn, antinomy. 3 February 2026 some bits at end rid; added summaries; --- upl,p,pdf. 5 February 2026 more edits, but lesser. 7 February 2026 more edits. 9 February 2026 edits to pdox, conc; dealt with ===. 12 February 2026 gdz. 14 February 2026 dealt with most ===. 17 February 2026 rw subject-object and resource; and =====s. 18 February 2026 "draft" and rw ch smy; ----- upl,pdf,printed. 19 February 2026 softened the criticism of Sienra. 20 February 2026 ditto. 25 February 2026 econ activity in intro; meaning-kernel section shifted later. 7 March 2026 removed the claim that Dooyeweerd solely considers frugality; thanks to Gregory Baus. 18 March 2026 some bits about which is the norm. 31 March 2026 took in some scrap-notes esp. re value. 6 April 2026 starting to rethink phrasebyphrase anal of Dooyeweerd; rw Robbins. 9 April 2026 rw elements of kernel after reading Dooyeweerd. 10 April 2026 rw kernel (a). more rw kernel (d). 11 April 2026 kernel to first sect. detailed anal of d into d. moved sienra to Dooyeweerd section. 13 April 2026 rw extant. 17 April 2026 rid extraneous stuff re extant. 18 April 2026 rid rp stuff; new sect on which is the norm. 21 April 2026 frug. 22 April 2026 rearranged sections. 23 April 2026 rw extant a bit; value. 24 April 2026 sorted out prosperity and sust into 1 discn after extant and 2 implications of Respect kernel. 25 April 2026 Value. 27 April 2026 rw s-o etc. 28 April 2026 compiling section 4 on new und. 29 April 2026 continuing, rw respect; rethink prosp. 1 May 2026 brought stuff from edited sheets. 1 May 2026 began rw prosp. 4 May 2026 finished editing prosp; edit frug. 5 May 2026 rw value in §3 (a) a bit in §4 (c). 7 May 2026 §3 value rw (a); Quit a bit of §4 rw (b). 8 May 2026 rw §4 value. 12 May 2026 rw Genzd obj and moved earlier than value. 13 May 2026 rw multi-aspectual (a), respect (b). 14 May 2026 rw frug. 14 May 2026 rw needs-sat; some bits throughout (c)(d)(e). 18 May 2026 edit intro, §1 (a); Dooyeweerd (b). 20 May 2026 stuff for elements and concl from recording on walk; concl. 21 May 2026 bits of rw; concl: how elements address issues. 22 May 2026 concl. 23 May 2026 concl. 26 May 2026 human effort; needs sat eds. conc. 1 June 2026 Locatino: Hayek and invis hand. 4 June 2026 bits. 19 June 2026 Frank Knight. 22 June 2026 new end of dycore. 23 June 2026 dy-smith,marshall,robbins. 24 June 2026 Frank Knight. 25 June 2026 continued rw extant to bring Dooyeweerdian comments in. 26 June 2026 gdz. 27 June 2026 finished extant, except for instituitional. 2 July 2026 Resources not zero sum. 30 July 2026 resp for obj stimulates innovation. 7 August 2026 edit kernel; cmt-out value. 10 August 2026 eds. 11 August 2026 rw n-s. 12 August 2026 §n-s, frg rw. 13 August 2026 (a) a few corrs, changes before rearrange. (b) rearrange: Needs-sat, Frug go into Dooyeweerd section -----. 14 August 2026 sust. 15 August 2026 ecx as gen obj. 17 August 2026 rw gen obj (a,b); rw value (c); rw respect (d). 18 August 2026 rw frug. 25 August 2026 re subjective val to r5. 1 October 2026 price not value. 17 October 2026 returned to this; dealt with a few =====. 17 October 2026 contrast scarcity and respect frugality convered to 9 bullets. 19 October 2026 institl ecx, finished frugality section. 20 October 2026 needs-sat,props; sust, ecgrowth, polanyi rw. 22 October 2026 rw Smith. 3 November 2026 finished Smith and others and listed topics in Extant. 4 November 2026 Began edits of §4 on new kernel; needs. 6 November 2026 respect for object rw. 11 November 2026 to thinkers/.