| Introduction | 6 |
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| Contents | 8 |
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| Contributors | 10 |
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| Part I: The Image of the Merchant Contemplated Across Times | 11 |
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| Chapter 1: The Merchant from Patristics to the Honnête Homme in the Writings of Savary | 12 |
| 1.1 The Negative Image of the Merchant | 12 |
| 1.2 The Change in the Evaluation of the Merchant | 15 |
| 1.2.1 Plato and the Patristics | 16 |
| 1.2.2 Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle | 17 |
| 1.2.3 The Merchant and Trade in the Works of Aristotle | 18 |
| 1.3 The Appraisal of the Merchant: Nanteser und Savary | 20 |
| Works Cited | 25 |
| Chapter 2: The Honorable Merchant and the Corporate Social Responsibility Movement | 27 |
| 2.1 Introduction | 27 |
| 2.2 Order Ethics: Pre-modern and Modern | 28 |
| 2.3 Ethics in Competition | 30 |
| 2.4 Morality in a Company: Corporate Social Responsibility | 33 |
| 2.5 Corporate Social Responsibility and the Honorable Merchant | 33 |
| 2.6 Conclusion | 34 |
| Literature | 35 |
| Chapter 3: The Legend of Excellent Businessman. A Neuroethical Perspective | 37 |
| 3.1 The Business Entrepreneurial Spirit | 37 |
| 3.2 Telling Stories and Not Just Giving Accounts | 39 |
| 3.3 We Live from Stories and in Stories | 40 |
| 3.4 In Spain the Businessman Is Not a Moral Ideal | 42 |
| 3.5 The Meaning of Business Activity | 44 |
| 3.6 From Statements to Actions. True Stories | 46 |
| Chapter 4: The Honest Businessperson: Cosmopolitan Theory and Cultural Praxis (The Example of Denmark and Scandinavia) | 48 |
| 4.1 Cosmopolitan Theory of the Honest Businessperson | 48 |
| 4.2 Cultural Practice of the Honorable Businessperson: Perspectives from Scandinavia | 55 |
| References | 59 |
| Chapter 5: Voluntary Business Regulation for Sustainability: Intends, Norms and Motivations of Building Public Trust of Corporate Managers | 61 |
| 5.1 From Stockholm to Paris: Failures of International Environmental Treaty-Making | 61 |
| 5.2 Voluntary Business Regulation for Sustainability: Objections and Approvals | 67 |
| References | 75 |
| Part II: The Image of the Merchant in Europe from Late Middle Ages Until Early Modern Times | 80 |
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| Chapter 6: The Honest Merchant Before Adam Smith: The Genesis and Rise of a Literary Prototype in Britain | 81 |
| 6.1 Adam Smith’s Homo Oeconomicus as Point of Reference | 81 |
| 6.2 Rejection of Commercial Life in the Middle Ages | 84 |
| 6.3 The Merchant in the Elizabethan Age (c. 1600): Elevating a Still Ambivalent Character | 86 |
| 6.4 Individualism vs. the Common Good in Elizabethan Drama | 88 |
| 6.5 Different Perspectives of the Seventeenth Century | 90 |
| 6.6 The Paradoxical Nature of Puritanism as a Driving Force Behind Commercial Life | 92 |
| 6.7 The Rise of the Merchant after the Glorious Revolution | 92 |
| Primary Literature | 94 |
| Secondary Literature | 95 |
| Part III: The Image of the Merchant in Europe from Early Modern Times Until Nineteenth Century | 97 |
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| Chapter 7: The Long Journey from “Deceiver and Conman” to “Honorable Merchant.” The Image of the Merchant in Spanish Literature and Its Contexts from the Sixteenth to the End of the Eighteenth Century | 98 |
| 7.1 Preliminary Thoughts on the Negative Image of the Merchant in the Spanish Literature and the Mindset of El Siglo de Oro | 99 |
| 7.2 The Historical Dignification and Theological Legitimation of the Merchant in the Reality of the Spanish Sixteenth Century | 103 |
| 7.3 The Long Journey to the Secularization of the Image o
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