There has been much talk about Ordoliberalism recently. Scholars and the press identify it as the dominant economic instruction sheet for Germany’s European crisis politics. However, by analyzing Ordoliberalism only as an economic theory, the debate downplays that Ordoliberalism is also an ethical theory, with strong roots in Protestant social thought. It is this rooting in Protestant social thought that makes Ordoliberalism so incompatible with the socio economic ethics of most of the European crisis countries, because their ethics originate in Catholic and Orthodox social thought. This paper argues that it is the divergence and incompatibility of Ordoliberal and southern European social ethics is what makes the European rescue policies so conflictual, and will ultimately render them redundant.
