Work

Thomas Aquinas’s bonum arduum applied to economics: towards a lexicon assuming scarcity and risk

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: The expression bonum arduum, which designates a future good that is difficult but possible to obtain, and which is used by Thomas Aquinas to describe the object of hope, does not appear in his economic texts. However, John Paul II refers to Aquinas in Laborem exercens as considering work to be a bonum arduum, thus opening the way to an economic application of the expression. Further investigation of Aquinas’s lexicon of economic activity shows that bonum arduum fills a lexical gap and is particularly well suited to describing the economic good, a rare good whose exchange is risky and takes place over time.

Source: European Journal of the History of Economic Thought

DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2025.2589509

Author: Pierre Januard

Institutions: Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Philosophie, Histoire et Analyse des Représentations Économiques, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Language: English

Topic: Historical Economic and Legal Thought

Subfield: Political Science and International Relations

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W4414936318

FWCI:

Cites: 31

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