Ethics, Risks, and Sustainability: A Theological Perspective

In his book commerce des promesses, Giraud (2014) reminds us that a claim is never just a promise of future payment. Even if we take all possible precautions and guarantees to ensure the solvency of the debtor, we cannot absolutely guarantee the occurrence of a future due date, which is by nature uncertain. In the face of this evidence, the concept of a “risk-free assets,” which constitutes one of the cornerstones of modern financial theory, raises epistemological and ethical questions. Assuming the existence of risk-free assets amounts to positing that the future is predictable and that creditor default scenarios are simply eliminated from the realm of possibility. However, uncertainty about the future results of an action often implies acting on the basis of the value of the action itself, rather than on its expected results. In a perfectly transparent deterministic world where the future would be known with certainty, ethics would be of little importance. But the uncertain nature of economic activity implies an ethical consideration of economic risk. Islamic finance is an example of a philosophy of economic risk that shapes behavioral archetypes in market relations. In Islamic economic morality, risk is seen as an unavoidable social cost, a kind of “common evil,” comparable to Ostrom’s notion of “common good.” This common evil should be assumed collectively and shared fairly rather than be simply denied. From this perspective, the existence of risk-free assets thus creates an illusion of secure income for financiers, which would be independent of the future state of the world. This illusion can bias long-term investment decisions against the SDGs.