Limits to wealth in the history of Western philosophy

Abstract

In contemporary political philosophy, it has recently been proposed that upper limits should be put on individual wealth acquisition. In this article, we discuss the arguments made by canonical writers in the history of economic and political philosophy about ideas that can be considered prototypes of limitarianism. In contemporary discussions, a distinction has been made between intrinsic and non‐intrinsic limitarianism, whereby it has been doubted that, in present‐day pluralistic societies, the former can be justified. We have found proto‐limitarian claims or justifications for limitarianism in four moral domains: moral psychology, moral reasoning, virtue ethics and political morality. While in the present‐day context, the view that there should be an upper limit to wealth may sound much too radical, we show that throughout history, many influential philosophers made limitarian or proto‐limitarian claims, including many intrinsic arguments for wealth limitarianism. We end the article by outlining the implications of those historical insights for systematic contemporary discussions of limitarianism.