Anti-Capitalist Virtue: Tanner, Herdt, and Contemporary Finance-Capitalism

In this paper, I attempt to move Kathryn Tanner's work in Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism in a new direction by developing what I call anti-capitalist virtues: character traits that are developed over time and enable a person to live in ways that challenge and disrupt finance-capitalist structures and the forms of life that they seek to foster. I begin by giving an overview of the critique of finance-capitalism that Tanner develops in Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism. I then develop a brief theory of virtue in conversation with Jennifer Herdt’s Assuming Responsibility: Ecstatic Eudaimonism and the Call to Live Well. I conclude by bringing the two into conversation by explicitly articulating anti-capitalist virtues that allow one to resist the malforming effects of finance-capitalism.