Campus Units
Philosophy and Religious Studies
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
2018
Journal or Book Title
Finance and Society
Volume
4
Issue
1
First Page
41
Last Page
59
DOI
10.2218/finsoc.v4i1.2739
Abstract
This article examines the conceptual transformation of what was once considered usury into finance. To counter traditional arguments that usury was exploitative and unnatural, early modern theorists reconceptualized debt as a form of investment for both borrowers and lenders. Today, this ethical justification of debt as an investment underlies the rhetoric of finance and financialization. Close examination of the realities of contemporary financialized debt, however, reveal that much of this rhetoric is misleading and false. While the rhetoric of finance is unrelentingly oriented toward the future, the lived reality of debt is one of being constrained and haunted by the past. Relatedly, this rhetoric exhorts borrowing for investment, while finance has actually had the opposite effect of making consumer debt a necessity for the majority of Americans. Taken together, these realities of debt today contradict the rhetoric of finance as investment and undermine the ethical framework on which it depends.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Copyright Owner
The Author(s)
Copyright Date
2018
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Padgett-Walsh, Kate, "Transforming usury into finance: Financialization and the ethics of debt" (2018). Philosophy and Religious Studies Publications. 31.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/philrs_pubs/31
Included in
Banking and Finance Law Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, Finance and Financial Management Commons
Comments
This article is published as Padgett-Walsh, K. “Transforming Usury into Finance: Financialization and the Ethics of Debt,” Finance and Society 4:1 (2018) DOI: 10.2218/finsoc.v4i1.2739.