From Material to Moral Order: Ethical Justifications of Foreign Grants and Loans
FAIN: HR-50214-05
Tomohisa Hattori
CUNY Research Foundation, Lehman College (Bronx, NY 10468-1527)
In what sense can foreign grants and loans be understood as moral practices? This project answers this question in three steps. First, drawing on Aristotelian virtue ethic, it reconceptualizes a type of foreign aid in which this claim is most plausible--multilateral and nongovernmental grants--as an international form of philanthropy. Second, drawing on the ethic of reciprocity, it reconceptualizes two types of official loan relations: between states; and between states and international financial institutions. Third, drawing on the critical realist philosophy of social science, it uncovers a deeper reality in which grants and loans are separate but interdependent phenomena: it is not conincidental that grant recipients are also debtors.