Heinrich Pesch, S.J. (17 September 1854 – 1 April 1926) was a German Roman Catholic ethicist and economist of the Solidarist school.[1][2][3][4] His major work, Lehrbuch der Nationalökonomie,[5] is generally regarded as a source for Pope Pius XI's social encyclical Quadragesimo anno.[6][7][8][9]
Biography
After studying law at Bonn, Pesch entered the Society of Jesus in 1876. He made his novitiate with exiled German Jesuits in the Netherlands. For his studies of philosophy (1878–1881) Pesch was sent to Bleijenbeek, also in the Netherlands. He completed his theological studies at Ditton Hall (1884–1888). While in England, Pesch lectured for a few years at the Stella Matutina school. He was ordained priest in 1888.
From 1892 until 1900 Pesch was spiritual director at the Mainz seminary, where he wrote his first book Liberalism, Socialism and Christian Order. Through lectures of the publicist Rudolf Meyer Pesch became acquainted with the teachings of Marx and Rodbertus. After a renewed study of economics with Schmoller and Wagner in Berlin (1900–1902), Pesch moved to Luxembourg and worked on his major opus Lehrbuch der Nationalökonomie. He died in 1926.
^"The monumental work of the German Jesuit Heinrich Pesch, Lehrbuch der Nationalökonomie, created an economic and social doctrine called solidarism. Pesch based his economic analysis on the bond, factual and moral, which unites the members of society with one another and the social whole, and the whole with its members. Since man is a being not merely social by nature, but whose actual existence is always in a concrete social environment, the abstract theories of individualism can neither explain nor guide society; on the other hand the socialist theories which tend toward denial and destruction of individual life make an equally unreal abstraction. Solidarism, a mean between these extremes, bases social unity on human nature and the common good.
Since solidarism is a directive or ethical principle as well as an explicative principle it must be based on moral reality. The moral
principle of social life is the common good. The basis of solidarism is the principle of the mutual rights and duties of society and its
members. Pesch called this principle social justice." — Shields, Leo W. The History and Meaning of the Term Social Justice, Thesis (Ph. D.) University of Notre Dame, 1941, p. 37.
^Grosschmid, Geza B. "Pesch's Concept of the Living Wage in 'Quadragesimo Anno'," Review of Social Economy12 (2), 1954.
^Ederer, Rupert J. "Heinrich Pesch, Solidarity, And Social Encyclicals," Review of Social Economy49 (4), 1991.
O'Boyle, Edward J. "Contributions of German and American Jesuits to Economics: The Last 100 Years," Forum for Social Economics31 (2), Spring 2002.
Briefs, Goetz. "Economics of Heinrich Pesch," Social Order3, December 1953.
Briefs, Goetz. "Pesch and his Contemporaries," Review of Social Economy41 (3), 1983.
Ederer, Rupert J. "Juan Donoso Cortes, Heinrich Pesch and Solidarism: An Ethical Economic System," Social Justice Review72, July 1981.
Ederer, Rupert J. "Solidarity, From Dogma to Economic System: Juan Donoso Cortes and Heinrich Pesch, S. J." International Journal of Social Economics8 (5), 1981.
Ederer, Rupert J. "Heinrich Pesch's Solidarism and Boris Ischboldin's Scientific Reformism," International Journal of Social Economics8 (7), 1981.
Harris, Abram L. "The Scholastic Revival: The Economics of Heinrich Pesch," Journal of Political Economy54 (1), Feb., 1946.
Nell-Breuning, Oswald Von. "Peschian Interest Theory," Social Order1, April 1951.
Messner, Johannes. "Fifty Years After the Death of Heinrich Pesch," Review of Social Economy34 (2), October, 1976.
Montes, Guillermo. "The Scope of Economics and Related Questions: The Peschian View," Catholic Social Science Review2, 1997.
Mulcahy, Richard E. "The Welfare Economics of Heinrich Pesch," The Quarterly Journal of Economics63 (3), Aug., 1949.
Mulcahy, Richard E. "Economic Freedom in Pesch," Social Order1, April 1951.
Mulcahy, Richard E. The Economics of Heinrich Pesch. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1952.
Müller, Franz H. Heinrich Pesch and his Theory of Christian Solidarism, The College of St. Thomas, 1941.
Müller, Franz H. "The Principle of Solidarity in the Teachings of Father Henry Pesch, S. J.," Review of Social Economy4 (1), 1946.
Müller, Franz H. "Rejecting Right and Left: Heinrich Pesch and Solidarism," Thought26, December 1951.
Müller, Franz H. "Heinrich Pesch, SJ, 1854–1926: Social Economist in a Cassock", International Journal of Social Economics11, 1984.
Schuyler, J. B. "Pesch and Christian Solidarism," Catholic Mind42, June 1944.
Yenni, J. "Pesch's Goal of the Economy," Social Order1, April 1951.