In view of the understanding of ethics explicated above, modern economic ethics can be and has to be fundamentally developed as a rational ethics of economic activity. The basic systematic problem of modern economic ethics will be elaborated under this central idea and set off against two other approaches which have hitherto dominated the discussion.

At first sight it seems reasonable to conceive of economic ethics as ‘applied’ ethics for the areas of life and society in which the economy operates (Section 3.1). A closer look reveals, however, that such an understanding of economic ethics is inadequate. It is subject to the systematic misapprehension that ‘the economic sphere’ is an area still untouched by ethics into which morality must first be introduced and, what is more, as a complement or corrective which is external to the ‘value free’ inherent logic of the economy. This approach systematically ignores the fact that the inherent logic of the (market) economy, the extremely powerful economic rationality, itself implicitly or explicitly always claims a normative validity which inevitably comes into conflict with ethical rationality. Every conception of rationality has a normative significance, as it determines how people ought to act rationally. The position economic ethics as ‘applied’ ethics would like to fill is consequently already occupied; two competing normative logics are opposed to each other, whose relationship requires clarification.

The economic understanding of rationality is defined and cultivated paradigmatically in economic theory.