Critical ethical naturalism and the transformation of economics

In this article I shall argue that critical ethical naturalism, an ethical position elaborated by Tony Lawson, can help understand Lawson’s critique of modern mainstream economics. According to critical ethical naturalism, human action should be concerned with removing obstacles that lie in the way of human development and flourishing. The attempt of transforming economics into a discipline that contributes to human development, rather than being an obstacle to such a development, can be seen as an exercise driven by critical ethical naturalism, albeit in a more implicit way in Lawson’s earlier writings, and in a more explicit way in more recent writings. But the significance of critical ethical naturalism, as elaborated by Lawson, goes well beyond the problem of transforming economics, and so I shall also highlight some more general implications of this ethical position before addressing the specific problem of transforming economics. To do so, I will first present Lawson’s critical ethical naturalism, while showing the relevance of his social ontology for the study of ethics at various levels of generality, including meta-ethics, ethical theory and applied ethics.