The Uncommon Common Sense of the Science of Economics: Sound Money and How it Relates to the Economist as Liberal Artist and Prudential Organizational Psychologist

Abstract

Well known to students of St. Thomas Aquinas is that he maintained that the whole of a science is contained in its principles and that its principles are contained in its definitions. The author takes as his point of departure for this article a definition of money that he gave in the article he wrote for the 2019 Aquinas School of Leadership’s School of Economics inaugural issue for the Studia Gilsoniana: “Aristotle and Aquinas on the Virtue of Money as a Preservative of Justice in Business Affairs and States.” According to him, as a species of economic activity, the definition of money must contain what Aquinas considered to be his generic definition of the science of economics and the essential principles he thought this definition contains. The present article he writes is an attempt to unpack some implications contained in St. Thomas’s generic definition of the science of economics of which money is a species.

Keywords

• thomas aquinas
• common sense
• science of economics
• sound money
• economics
• liberal art
• organizational psychology
• money
• economic activity