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The rationality of formal ethics and economics follows two principles: the individual maximization of the attainment of subjectively-defined goals and the coordination of maximization. Coordination takes place as ethical coordination within the decision-maker by means of universalization, and as economic coordination externally by the decision-maker and the price system. The formation of preferences is directed toward universalization; the economic coordination of preferences is directed toward the ability of persons to live together. In the formal ethics of rules, as in the economic coordination of the price system, the content of the ethical will is formed by rules. Can the ethical side of the determination of the will, which should be achieved by ethics, consist only in the formal principle of universalization? If ethics is determined only by the categorical imperative, is it not underdetermined, because it should not merely clarify the question of how I can best achieve what I already intend here and now — as economics does — and because it should not merely answer the question of what I should do — as Kantian ethics does? Ethics must instead also provide an answer to the question of what I should or can desire, if I have become conscious of my will by taking distance and expanding the perspective of my self and the situation in which I stand. Ethics must seek to explain what asuccessful life is on the whole, not merely which actions are universalizable. Ethics serves to answer the question of what I actually do and can desire.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-010-0956-0_4

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