Beyond Self-Interest: Why the Market Rewards Those Who Reject It Format: Hardcover

At a time when people are questioning the fundamental assumptions of the free market, Beyond Self-Interest upends how we relate to capitalism. It does so not by rejecting the market, but by consigning it to its original function: as a tool of human development, rather than an end in itself. Krzysztof Pelc reminds us that commercial society was seen by its earliest theorists merely as a means of achieving our highest ends. It can still do this, if only we treat it once more as the tool it was originally conceived as. Prosperity is highly desirable, but only insofar as it contributes to human flourishing.

Krzysztof Pelc is Professor of Political Science at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He is the author of Making and Bending International Rules: The Design of Exceptions and Escape Clauses in Trade Law. He is also a regular contributor to magazines and newspapers in the US and Canada and a prize-winning essayist and short story writer. He was the 2019 CBC Short Story Prize winner. In 2021, he was the winner of the Financial Times Essay Prize held on the bicentenary of the Political Economy Club.