"... reason accepts no
authority above itself and
is necessarily subversive."
- Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
(1987), p. 258.
Business and Management
BAM321 Business Ethics and
Social Responsibility
Session 8
Agenda for today
• Your issues
• “Stop living ethically”
• A bit more on Rawls
• Virtues
John Rawls
• Suppose a completely new society is
about to be constructed.
• Suppose you don’t know what your
position will be in the new society.
• What features would you want that
society to have?
• We diamond mined and got a lot of
emphasis on democracy and equal
opportunity
John Rawls
1. Each person is to have an equal right to the
most extensive total system of basic
liberties compatible with a similar system of
liberty for all.
2. Social and economic inequalities are to be
arranged so that they are both
a) to the greatest benefit of the least
advantaged, and
b) attached to offices and positions open to all
under conditions of fair equality of
opportunity.
John Rawls
•
Rawls offers a ranking of his
principles
•
Liberty is top priority and is not to be
restricted for the sake of anything
else
•
So a reduced liberty for some must
lead to a greater overall system of
liberty for all, and must be
acceptable to those with reduced
liberty
John Rawls
•
Rawls offers a ranking of his
principles
•
Liberty is top priority and is not to be
restricted for the sake of anything
else
•
Equality of opportunity is more
important than anything but liberty
John Rawls
•
The difference principle
•
An inequality is unjust unless it is a
necessary means to improving the
position of the worst off members of
society
•
If we accept this, what do we think of
multi-million pound salaries?
John Rawls
•
The original position is designed by
Rawls and so is not original in the
sense of something preceding
human society
•
To get the results – the principles –
that Rawls gets we have to be a very
particular type of people
– egoistic and risk-averse (cautious)
John Rawls
•
There is a paradox in that if people
were egoists then many would
refuse to take part in Rawls’s
thought experiment…
•
and if Rawls had been an egoist he
would not have designed it
John Rawls
•
So Rawls’s theory of justice does not
necessarily reflect what people
choose to do when they take part in
his thought experiment
•
It reflects his own values, rather as
Kant’s theory reflects his
•
Kant valued human reason and
rationality
•
What did Rawls value?
I think, therefore I am
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
Existentialism
• Live life authentically!
• Human beings must make their
own meaning of the world
• Existence precedes any
meanings
– Being precedes thinking
• Contrast this with Kant and Rand
Robert Solomon’s virtue ethics
• Human nature is not
individualistic, self-interested
and competitive.
• Human identity is formed from
our membership of communities
which have practices, rules,
ideals etc.
Solomon’s virtue ethics
• Business is a practice and a
community constituted by the
broader social community.
• The broader community gives
business both rights and
responsibilities.
Solomon’s virtue ethics
Corporations “have the right to
pursue their own interests, which
may among other things include
profits rather than happiness, but this
right has all sorts of preconditions
and limitations that include but are
not limited to the prohibition against
harming others…” (Solomon (1993) Ethics and Excellence)
Solomon’s virtue ethics
“…business is also a social practice
based on human relationships in
which individuality and personal
autonomy are by no means denied or
compromised, but rather given a
context in which to be meaningful.”
(Solomon (1993) Ethics and Excellence)
The Corporation by Joel Bakan
•
Bakan (Canadian academic lawyer)
argues that the corporation is
psychopathic.
•
We need to remember that
corporations exist only because we
grant them the right to exist.
– The state is more powerful than the
corporation!
The Corporation by Joel Bakan
•
The US government could have
broken up Microsoft.
•
In the US most corporations are
incorporated by the states – most by
Delaware.
– The states make money out of it!
Directed tasks
• Complete assessment task 1
• Read the pre-reading material for
assessment task 2
• Keep alert to the news and events in
your life that raise ethical questions