ABSTRACT
The fundamental ethical problem in bankruptcy is that insolvents have promised to pay their debts but can not keep their promise. The Ethics of Bankruptcy examines the morality of bankruptcy. The author compares and contrasts the Humean doctrine of promises as useful conventions with the Kantian view of autonomous agency constituting promissory obligations; he explores ethical concerns raised by forgiveness, utilitarianism and distributive justice and the moral aspects of insolvents' contractual, fiduciary, tortious and criminal liability. Finally, the author assesses recent bankruptcy law reforms. Bankruptcies severly hurt creditors and society. For the insolvents and their families the experience is painful and stigmatising, yet philosophers have paid little attention to the moral aspects of this violent social phenomenon. The Ethics of Bankruptcy is the first comprehensive study that employs the tools of ethics to examine the controversies surrounding insolvency, which makes valuable and sometimes controversial reading in a decade recovering from the Recession.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |4 pages
Prologue
part I|11 pages
The ethical trouble and its makers
chapter Chapter 1|9 pages
The institution and the conflicts behind it
part II|48 pages
Philosophical fundamentals of credit
chapter Chapter 2|8 pages
Natural law, consequentialism and contractualism
chapter Chapter 4|13 pages
Ethics founded on autonomy
chapter Chapter 5|14 pages
Autonomy and promissory obligations
part III|26 pages
Ethical principles of insolvency
chapter Chapter 6|6 pages
Going broke, breaking promises
chapter Chapter 7|10 pages
Deontological ethics and insolvency
chapter Chapter 8|8 pages
What kind of discharge?
part IV|35 pages
In defence of dunning
chapter Chapter 10|24 pages
Punishment
part V|32 pages
Applying the principles
part VI|33 pages
The corporate veil