Zsolt Boda’s paper entitled “From Ethics to Spirituality: Laszlo Zsolnai on Human Motivations” was published in the book “Art, Spirituality and Economics – Liber Amicorum for Laszlo Zsolnai” (Editors: Luk Bouckaert, Knut J. Ims, and Peter Rona, 2018. Springer).
First, the paper presents Laszlo Zsolnai’s intellectual journey through which he broadened his views on the relevant motivations of economic actors from ethical to spiritual ones. Second, it analyses the pivotal role behavioral models play in the construction of social sciences. Following a meta-critical approach it argues that any social inquiry involves some degree of normative content. Behavioral models are not merely descriptive, but prescribe a certain view on reality. Therefore ‘transformative sciences’, like business ethics or ecological economics, should devote special attention to the problem of human agency as both a practical and a theoretical problem.
Zsolt Boda’s paper shows that the problem of human agency encapsulates several foundational challenges concerning both economics and ethics that Laszlo Zsolnai faced in his inquiries.