Some History of Economic Thought and the Criticism of the Exploitation Theory. Economics and Ethics. My Three-Level Approach to the Study of Society

This next-to-last section of the syllabus deals with the history of economic thought. The reading you have done describes how, unbeknownst to themselves, the first economists began to emerge. They were the great jurisconsults of classical Rome, who were the first to theorize about the spontaneous market order. Then came the obscurantism of the Middle Ages. The great writings of the classical thinkers were preserved mainly by the church and the monasteries until the Renaissance, when there was a sort of reawakening of classical civilization (thus the term “Renaissance”). The great minds of that time, who were almost all clergymen, made important contributions as well, particularly from the late Middle Ages onward. For instance, we could talk about Peter John Olivi, Saint Antoninus of Florence, and Saint Bernardino of Siena, who theorized about entrepreneurship and the spontaneous market order. This whole tradition was ultimately refined at certain universities in Spain, especially the University of Salamanca, during the Spanish Golden Age. I am referring to the theorists of the School of Salamanca (professors of morality and law), who also witnessed first-hand a series of highly significant economic phenomena that emerged as a result of the recent discovery and conquest of the Americas by the Spanish. These events flooded Spain, and then the rest of Europe, with precious metals, and they brought a revolution in prices which these theorists were the first to analyze.