Luk Bouckaert, Knut J. Ims, and Peter Rona (Eds.): Art, Spirituality and Economics – Liber Amicorum for Laszlo Zsolnai. Springer, 2018. (This book may be available at Springer)
This volume celebrates the work of Laszlo Zsolnai in the field of the ethical and spiritual aspects of economic life, who has made significant contributions to the connection between ethics, spirituality, aesthetics and economic theory. The book offers a selection of essays concerned with the ethical, spiritual and aesthetic context within which economics as a social studies discipline should be situated in order to avoid the sort of dehumanizing consequences that theories based on utility maximization and rational choice necessarily entail. It presents the economic activities of human beings not as some sort of preordained obedience to universal laws that operate independently of other human concerns, but, rather, as a part of the human desire for the Aristotelian good life. It looks at the various considerations –moral, spiritual and aesthetic – that take part in the formation of economic decisions in sharp contrast with theories that purport to explain economic phenomena solely on the basis of utility maximization.
Contributors include Zsolt Boda (Corvinus University of Budapest), Luk Bouckaert (Catholic University of Leuven), Luigino Bruni (LUMSA University Rome), Daniel Deak (Corvinus University of Budapest), Rita Ghesquière (KU Leuven), Carlos Hoevel (Catholic University of Argentina), Katalin Illes (University of Westminster London), Knut J. Ims (NHH Norwegian School of Economics), Ove Jakobsen (University of Nordland, Bodo), Josep Lozano (ESADE Business School Barcelona), Sanjoy Mukherjee (Indian Institute of Management Shilong), Eleanor O’Higgins (University College Dublin), Hendrik Opdebeeck (University of Antwerp), Peter Pruzan (Copenhagen Business School), Peter Rona (University of Oxford), Paul Shrivastava (Pennsylvania State University), Vivi ML Storsletten (University of Nordland, Bodo), Antonio Tencati (University of Brescia and Bocconi University Milan), Mike Thompson (GoodBrand London), and Stefano Zamagni (University of Bologna).