True, Fair and Beautiful: evaluative paradigms between the encyclical letter Laudato Sì and Keynes

Friedrich Schumacher, a pioneer in the so-called “sustainable development”, called for an evolution of the economic thinking and a departure from the laissezfaire’s materialism. According to these assumptions, a man has to aim at satisfying his own needs through the fair use of resources in order to achieve self-affirmation. He has too move the goal from the maximization of consumptions and profit, typical of the traditional economy, towards the achievement of people’s well-being. This theory shares many similarities with the introduction, in Bhutan, of the Gross National Happiness index, which should integrate the traditional Gross Domestic Product. In fact, when Bhutan is ranked in accordance to the Gross Domestic Product, it underachieves but, if the Gross National Happiness index is used, it would reach the highest positions. Several institutional researches proposed other alternative indexes that assess the “well-being” of a nation, such as the UN’s Human Development Index (1990), the New Economic Foundation’s Happy Planet Index (2006) and the more recent Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Report, drawn up in 2009. This contribution starts with the acceptance of the inadequacy of the GPD index for the appraisal of the “fairness”. Then it investigates the relationship between economics and religion, mostly focusing on the content of Pope Francis’s encyclical, “Laudato Si”. It proposes the new evaluative paradigm of “true, fair and beautiful”, trying to reduce the large number of technics developed by the scientific community to a more structured vision.