Moral Accounting

Roles: debt, credit, balance, ledger, repayment, moral-agent

The conceptualization of moral life through bookkeeping metaphors — debts owed, credits earned, balances maintained, and accounts settled. Moral accounting treats good and bad acts as entries in a ledger, where justice means the books eventually balance. As a target domain it absorbs metaphors from agriculture (reaping what you sow), commerce (paying your dues), and law (settling accounts).