Ethical alternatives to homo economicus (reflection on S. Bowles’ book "The moral economy: why good incentives are no substitute for good citizens")

The study presents the new work of an American interdisciplinary researcher, S. Bowles, “Moral Economics. Why good incentives will not replace good citizens”. An interpretatively opened status of the work is justified, in which the identification of the ethical meanings of the classical philosophy of economics (ancient paradigms, works by N. Machiavelli, A. Smith, D. Hume, etc.) with relevant empirical contexts of economic behavior, being morally free, irreducible to the rationality of material incentives, is productively combined. The symbolic structures of social and humanitarian forms of economic thinking are presented by S. Bowles through the image of homo economicus, the dichotomy of good and evil, the metaphor of living civic culture, etc. It is shown that S. Bowles is reinterpreting the concept of moral economics pointing to both the ethical content of classical political and economic theories and the impact that these theories can have on practically oriented economic thinking.