Thomas Aquinas on Justice as a Global Virtue

Today’s globalized economy cannot be governed by legal strictures alone. Both objective moral precepts and subjective virtues are requisite for its sustained success.

Thomas’s moral theory meets the present need for a business ethics that transcends the legal realm by linking the ideas of justice and virtue in an ingenious way. While allowing for, and incorporating, the specificities of region, culture, industry, and religion, Thomas’s virtue theory also aims to coordinate public and private activities through a set of context-invariant, justice-oriented norms with conceptual appeal to contemporary questions of global business ethics.