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This chapter sketches Arthur Rich’s life and work, and situates his thought contextually. It indicates some of the lines of the development of Rich’s thought, up to the publication of the two volumes of Wirtschaftsethik. It then presents lineaments of Rich’s theological method as set out in Wirtschaftsethik, such as Rich’s understanding of what he calls ‘the basic ethical question’, the general human moral experience, his approach to Scripture, and his adoption of aspects of the thought of Max Weber and John Rawls. This chapter also notes ways in which Rich’s method is representative of other contributions to theological economic ethics, in order to suggest ways in which our reading of Rich has implications for wider trends in theological ethics. The chapter concludes with a brief survey of Rich’s conclusions.

This chapter shows how study of the method of Luther, a skilful pre-modern theological practitioner, can provide a resource for building self-awareness and self-criticism of modern theological assumptions and methods, by comparing Luther’s method to Rich’s approach, in order to note its potential strengths and weaknesses. It examines matters such as Rich’s concept of ethics, his treatment of social ethics as the primary matrix for ethics, his anthropology and its implications for his method, his doctrine of eschatology, and his characterization of the relationship of ethics to the discipline of economics. The chapter shows that Rich is far too ready to take economics for granted as a morally neutral science, and that Luther’s ostensibly more individual approach to ethics enables him to adopt far more socially radical conclusions to Rich.

This chapter explores the theme of religion that descends from the PE. It demonstrates an essential continuity between the ideas presented in the PE in 1904–5, and those advanced in his second wave of religious writing from 1912 onwards (the Sociology of Religion and the ‘Economic Ethics of the World Religions’). It discusses the physical continuity and discontinuity between the PE and the ‘Economic Ethics’, and the qualitative differences between the PE and the later religious writings.

This chapter demonstrates the centrality of debates about economic and social ethics to the construction of Anglican national and transnational identities. It teases out the cross-cultural character of these debates, and argues for the development of complex and sophisticated traditions of engagement across the theological spectrum, which probed the interrelationships between individual and social morality. Reflection on economic and social thought ran through sermons, tracts, lectures, biographies, periodical literature, and treatises on philosophy, theology, and history, as well as informing the work of a wide range of societies, organizations, and philanthropic agencies. Anglican critiques of political economy recognized the Church’s responsibility to identify and confront the growing challenges of capitalism, and to provide frameworks for thinking constructively about the quality of life.

This conclusion summarizes the argument, and makes tentative suggestions as to the wider applicability of the critical questions posed to Rich’s method by the analysis of Luther. It therefore shows how the study of the pre-modern Luther in relation to the modern Rich has provided resources for modern self-critical reflection on method.

This chapter describes the basic goods approach to global policy priorities. It reviews the treatment of human need in political philosophy, economics, and social policy and defines basic goods as those goods and services that meet objective human needs. The chapter identifies a set of basic goods that includes nutritious food, clean water, sanitation, health services, education services, housing, electricity, and human security services. It gives a sense of the magnitudes of deprivations for each of these basic goods. The chapter goes on to link the basic goods approach to minimalist ethics and subsistence rights, to assess the role of basic goods provision in growth processes, and to assess general approaches to basic goods provision.

This introductory chapter introduces the basic goods approach and its relationship to the standard growth perspective and the capabilities/human development perspective. It defines basic goods and services as those that meet central and objective human needs and argues in favor of sustained attempts that achieve their universal provision. It identifies a set of basic goods that includes nutritious food, clean water, sanitation, health services, education services, housing, electricity, and human security services. The chapter argues that what really matters about growth is the possibility that it will lead to an increase in the broad-based provision of basic goods and services. The hoped-for expansion of human capabilities and development is predicated on this expanded provision of basic goods, and the expanded provision of basic goods and services also can promote growth. In these ways, basic goods and services are a critical link between growth and human development.

The chapter explores ethical economic relationships further and the ontological possibilities they generate. In this chapter I turn to Karl Marx’s work on species being in which he uses the term dignity to refer to the kind of humanity realised in socially just economic forms.

This dialogue brings together work on Rabbinic Judaism and Roman Catholicism to introduce the economic and feminist implications of the authors’ respective chapters on genetically modified organisms and Catholic environmental ethics. The authors frame ecological thriving, technological development, and the relation between the two as feminist concerns. Further, they consider the potential and/or limits of their source traditions for feminist engagement. Their discussion affirms the importance of naming unjust power structures, while cautioning against preemptive restrictions that may inhibit promising research and therefore undermine efforts to address injustice. This dialogue illuminates both the potential for innovation and the challenges in comparative religious ethical dialogue.

This concluding chapter reviews the basic goods approach, its intellectual sources, and its practical importance. It emphasizes the role of basic goods as basic rights and connects these basic subsistence rights to the tradition of moral minimalism in political philosophy. It questions the claims of technological optimists and calls for a “rational pessimism” in the setting of global policy priorities. It also proposes a set of ten basic development goals to replace the current and often criticized sustainable development goals. It considers the feasibility of basic goods provision using back-of-the-envelope calculations, concluding that the goal of universal basic goods provision is indeed feasible.