Spirits and economics

Nimi Wariboko

pp. 141-153

in: Amos Yong, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Kirsteen Kim (eds), Interdisciplinary and religio-cultural discourses on a spirit-filled world, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Abstract

Is spirit antithetical to economics? Economics is fundamentally concerned with the reproduction of life, dense material efforts to turning back the threats of death against life. Economics is devoted to the care of life, to the physical necessity of existence. But spirit, at the minimum, involves the freedom to transcend self-sustaining life, the bondage of physical life to physical life. One appears to be about managing necessity, the other about participating in freedom.