Ethics and politics: between reason and market

Abstract

In this paper I want to analyse the main elements of socialism and liberalism under the perspective of morality. I intend to show that besides the economic analysis and the historic scientificism the moral program of these schools of thought is a privileged key to understand the bifurcation with which the social movements have been faced along the political confrontation, which took place in the last century and a half. In order to develop this idea, I choose the theme of ethics in politics as a guiding line in the investigation. To the analysis of the grounds of morality in each of these theoretical positions I gave to the notion of value a central role in the inquiry and I resort to some main figures of modern philosophy, particularly to Kant an the empirical moral philosophy o Hume. In the last part of the paper, value is taken as the ground for a discussion of the relationship between ethics and politics within the scope of the debate confronting socialism and liberalism.

Key words: socialism, liberalism, ethics, politics and value.