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2. Ancient and Modern Theories of Ethics, Virtue Ethics, Rights & Duties in the Business Context

Ethics from Antiquity to the Present 1

  • Ethics are the standards of behavior to which we hold ourselves accountable in our personal and professional lives.
  • Laws and regulations set the minimal standards by which society lives out those ethical norms.

2.1 The Concept of Ethical Business in Ancient Athens

  • Ethics, as a form of applied philosophy, was a major focus among the leaders of ancient Athens, particularly teachers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
  • Virtue Ethics:
    • It is an ethical system based upon the exercise of certain virtues (loyalty, honor, courage) emphasizing the formation of character.
    • It was developed by Aristotle(384-322 BCE) in his work Nicomachean Ethics.
  • Teleology:
    • It is from the Greek telos meaning goal or ai; it is the study of ends and the means directed toward ends that the one is designed to achieve.
    • The telo for humans is happiness or eudaimonia.
  • Two types of virtues, intellectual and moral:
    • Intellectual virtues are developed through education and learning: wisdom (Sofia), knowledge (Episteme), and Prudence (Phronesis, practical wisdom).
    • Moral virtues are developed through habit and practice: courage, self-control, liberality, magnificence, honor, patience, and amiability.
  • Justice:
    • Justice existed in three forms, as it does today: legal, commutative, and distributive.
    • Legal justice is the law of the land, city-state laws.
    • Commutative justice governs relationships among individuals. Courts attempted to correct harm inflicted and return what had been unlawfully taken away from the plaintiff.
    • Distributive justice governed the duty of the city-state to distribute benefits and burdens equitably among the people.

2.2 Ethical Advice for Nobles and Civil Servants in Ancient China

  • Confucius (551-479 BCE) and Mencius (372-289 BCE) were the two most influential Chinese philosophers.
  • In classical Confucianism:
    • The practice of virtue constitutes the essence of governance. Differing from Aristotelian virtue (arête), Confucian virtue emphasizes relationships.
    • Aristotle shows how a self-determining person might live well in society.
    • Confucius showed how a relationship-determining person can live well with others.
  • In this sense, li refers to doing those tasks in collaboration with others to achieve the mission of the organization.
  • Confucius stressed the virtuous life in his ethical system, to create a Junzi:
    • Junzi is a person who was gracious, magnanimous, and cultured: in other words, a flourishing human being.
    • A Junzi exhibited refinement, self-control, and balance in all things, acting neither rashly nor timidly.
    • Such a person was the opposite of a “small” individual, who spent his or her time embroiled in petty rivalries and for whom power was the ultimate measure of success.

2.3 Comparing the Virtue Ethics of East and West

  • Aristotle and Confucius each constructed an ethical system based on virtue, with Aristotle’s ultimate aim being happiness and Confucius’s being harmony.
  • For Aristotle, happiness consisted of the search for truth, which, in turn, required a centered, stable individual who could surmount misfortune or weak character.
  • Confucius looked to settle the soul of the Chinese people by creating a system that reflected the heavenly order on Earth.
  • Both systems rely on reasoned means to achieve reasoned ends.
  • A person could not act one way at home and a completely different way in public, especially civic leaders, merchants, teachers, and rulers.

2.4 Utilitarianism: The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number

  • Notable Utilitarians:
    • Jeremy Bentham (1748-1842) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873).
  • Given this historical context, it is understandable that Bentham used reason and science to explain human behavior.
  • His ethical system was an attempt to quantify happiness and the good so they would meet the conditions of the scientific method.
  • Ethics had to be empirical, quantifiable, verifiable, and reproducible across time and space.
  • Bentham rejected religious authority and wrote a rebuttal to the Declaration of Independence in which he railed against natural rights as “rhetorical nonsense, nonsense upon stilts.”
  • What is utility? Bentham’s fundamental axiom, which underlies utilitarianism, was that all social morals and government legislation should aim to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.
  • Utilitarianism, therefore, emphasizes the consequences or ultimate purpose of an act rather than the character of the actor, the actor’s motivation, or the particular circumstances surrounding the act.
  • It has these characteristics:
    1. (1) universality, because it applies to all acts of human behavior, even those that appear to be done from altruistic motives;
    2. (2) objectivity, meaning it operates beyond individual thought, desire, and perspective;
    3. (3) rationality, because it is not based on metaphysics or theology;
    4. (4) quantifiability in its reliance on utility.

2.5 Deontology: Ethics as Duty

  • Unlike Bentham and Mill, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was not concerned with the consequences of one’s actions or the harm caused to one’s individual interests.
  • Instead, he focused on motives and the willingness of individuals to act for the good of others, even though that action might result in personal loss. Doing something for the right reason was much more important to Kant than any particular outcome.
  • In its initial form, Kant described his concept of the categorical imperative as follows: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”.

2.6 A Theory of Justice

  • John Rawls (1921–2002) wanted to change the debate that prevailed throughout the 1960s and 1970s in the West about how to maximize wealth for everyone.
  • He sought not to maximize wealth, which was a utilitarian goal, but to establish justice as the criterion by which goods and services were distributed among the populace.
  • Justice, for Rawls, had to do with fairness—in fact, he frequently used the expression justice as fairness—and his concept of fairness was a political one that relied on the state to take care of the most disadvantaged.
  • In his justice theory, offered as an alternative to the dominant utilitarianism of the times, the idea of fairness applied beyond the individual to include the community as well as analysis of social injustice with remedies to correct it.
  • Rawls developed a theory of justice based on the Enlightenment ideas of thinkers like John Locke (1632–1704) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), who advocated social contract theory.
  • In A Theory of Justice (1971), Rawl introduced a universal system of fairness and a set of procedures for achieving it. He advocated a practical, empirically verifiable system of governance that would be political, social, and economic in its effects.
  • Rawls’s justice theory contains three principles and five procedural steps for achieving fairness.
  • Principles of justice:
      1. Original position:
      2. Similar to Hobbes’s state of nature, Rawls’s original position is a hypothetical situation in which n in which rational people can arrive at a contractual agreement about how resources are to be distributed fairly.
      3. This is a desired state, and it differs from reality.
      1. Veil of ignorance:
      2. It is a condition in which people arrive at the original position imagining they have no identity regarding age, sex, ethnicity, education, income, physical attractiveness, or other characteristics.
      3. This reduces their bias and self-interest.
      1. Unanimity of acceptance of the original position.
      2. It is the requirement that all agree to the contract before it goes into effect.
      3. Rawls hoped this justice theory would provide a minimum guarantee of rights and liberties for everyone; because no one would know, until the veil was lifted, whether they were male, female, rich, poor, tall, short, intelligent, a minority, Roman Catholic, disabled, a veteran, and so on.
  • Five procedural steps for achieving fairness:
      1. Entering into the contract.
      1. Agreeing to the contract.
      1. Including basic conditions in the contract, such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly.
      1. Maximizing the welfare of the most devastated persons.
      1. Ensuring stability and fairness in the contract.
  • The context of the situation matters, as opposed to just the consequences.

The Lives of Ethical Philosophers 2

The lives of ethical philosophers

Virtue Ethics as a Multi-Religious Consensus 3

  • Elements of multi-religious consensus:
    • All humans are radically relational.
    • All humans have dignity and worth.
  • Religions encourage people to unfold their dignity for the common good.
  • Principles for the common good:
    • Solidarity: the principle that we are all in this together, not just to close friends and family, but to all people.
    • Subsidiarity: the principle that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks that cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level.

Debating CSR: Methods and Strategies 4

  • Rules for civil debate:
      1. Do not try to win the debate.
      1. Admit discomfort or emotionality.
      1. Listen respectfully and show that you have heard the other side.
  • Rules for logical and persuasive argument:
    • The structure of the debate: topic, argument, rebuttal or counterargument, and conclusion.
    • Topic:
      • Aka, proposition, claim, or thesis.
      • Take a side: Affirmative or negative.
      • The Affirmative side begins the debate.
      • Start with the strongest argument, then fall back to the weaker ones.
      • Ask for the vote, whenever you feel you are ahead; or when the debate concludes.
    • Argument:
      • Aka, evidence, proof, or support.
      • Provide evidence to support your claim; or your side of the debate.
    • Counterargument:
      • Aka, rebuttal, refutation, or opposition.
      • Provide evidence that denies the other side’s claim. Look for fallacies in the other side’s argument:
        • Arguing off-topic.
        • Drawing excessive or illogical conclusions from the evidence: correlation does not prove causation.
        • Ad Hominem: attacking the person, not the argument.
  • The Problem of Cognitive Bias:
    • It is coming to the debate preloaded with a belief and refusal to adopt the other side no matter how strong the evidence.
    • Such people only see what supports their beliefs in the evidence; they wear intellectual blinders.
    • Confirmation bias: the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories; and ignore evidence that contradicts them. Associated with depth learning: the more you know about a subject, the more you are likely to be biased.
    • Partisan bias: emerges from loyalty to a group, party, or ideology; where everything that comes out of that group is true, while ignoring anything else. Associated with Politics.
    • Availability bias: the tendency to adopt an argument because the evidence is easier to find or read, not because it is the best evidence; usually, unavailable evidence is ignored.
  • CSR: Potential Benefits:
    • Neglected social problems are addressed.
    • Corporate employees are more engaged, energized, and motivated.
    • Links between corporations, non-profits, and government are strengthened.
    • Corporate reputation is enhanced.
  • CSR: Potential Drawbacks:
    • Bad corporations can buy a positive image.
    • Greenwashing: The public is misled about the impact of a corporation’s activities.
    • Non-profits and charities can rely too heavily on corporate funding, or be co-opted by corporate interests.

To What Extent Are Small-Scale Coffee Producers in Latin America the Primary Beneficiaries of Fair Trade? 5

  • In 1981, the Dutch foreign-aid activists founded the world’s first fair trade cooperative, the Union of Indigenous Communities in the Isthmus Region (UCIRI), in the Oaxaca region of Mexico, to fight the root causes of persistent poverty among local coffee farmers.
  • The research conducted has shown that, although the fair trade mechanism is a valid method of promoting sustainable development in developing countries, its implementation in developing nations and marketing should be more thoroughly refined.

References

  1. Byars, S. M., & Stanberry, K. (2022). Business ethics. OpenStax College and Rice University. https://openstax.org/details/books/business-ethics?Book%20details. Chapter 2: Ethics from Antiquity to the Present. ↩

  2. Byars, S. M., & Stanberry, K. (2022). Business ethics. OpenStax College and Rice University. https://openstax.org/details/books/business-ethics?Book%20details. Appendix A: The Lives of Ethical Philosophers. ↩

  3. Virtue Ethics as a Multi-Religious Consensus - SDG Academy Library. (2019). Kaltura.com. https://sdgacademylibrary.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/Virtue+Ethics+as+a+Multi-Religious+Consensus/1_sw62u9y1. ↩

  4. Jimenez, G. C., & Pulos, E. (2016). Good Corporation, Bad Corporation: Corporate Social Responsibility in the Global Economy. Open SUNY Textbooks. Retrieved from: https://milnepublishing.geneseo.edu/good-corporation-bad-corporation. Unit 2: Debating CSR: Methods and Strategies. ↩

  5. Jimenez, G. C., & Pulos, E. (2016). Good Corporation, Bad Corporation: Corporate Social Responsibility in the Global Economy. Open SUNY Textbooks. Retrieved from: https://milnepublishing.geneseo.edu/good-corporation-bad-corporation. Appendix D: To What Extent Are Small-Scale Coffee Producers in Latin America the Primary Beneficiaries of Fair Trade? by Larissa Zemke. ↩