AC351 Business Ethics Lecture 3 Classical Ethical Philosophy

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AC351Business EthicsLecture 3Classical
Ethical Philosophy

• Samuel Mansell
• Essex Business School
• 2008/09

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Why Theory?

• An understanding of ethical theory is necessary
  to read B/E writings.
• Enables an issue to be examined from a variety of
  ethical perspectives.
• Helps develop awareness of different ethical
  viewpoints.
• Helps develop awareness of the history and
  partiality of our own ethical stances.
• Ethical theory as a necessary resource for the
  development of moral imagination (?)
• (See the debate between Rorty (2006) and Werhane,
  (2006))

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Traditional Ethical Theories I Virtue.

• The cosmos is a continuous process of
  teleological change
• Everything in the universe strives to exhibit its
  nature in the way it moves or behaves.
• Everything endeavours to fulfil its telos or
  end more perfectly.
• This end is potential within every natural
  thing.
• Human beings are unique in realising their nature
  through choice
• But what end does human activity naturally aim
  at? Eudaimonia a happy, satisfied life.
• The human eudaimonia to achieve the excellence
  that belongs to human nature through rational
  choice.
• This excellence is an activity or movement, not
  a possession or state of mind.

Aristotle
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Aristotles Virtue Ethics

• What does it mean to realise our nature through
  rational choice? How do we control our impulses
  and desires?
• By living in accordance with a rule. Choice must
  be governed by a rule or principle.
• What is this rule? A middle way a mean
  between extremes. The principle is to avoid
  excess. E.g. Bravery is a virtue that lies
  between excess confidence (which leads to
  rashness) and excess fear (which leads to
  cowardice).
• The virtuous person develops their character so
  that they aim at the mean by habit. Virtuous
  activity is experienced as a pleasure rather than
  as pain or frustration.
• What does a person require to live a virtuous
  life?
• External goods (food, shelter, etc) but also
  intellectual virtue phronesis (practical
  wisdom or prudence).
• Aims not at the scientific contemplation of
  universals but calculation of what is variable,
  contingent, particular. Experience of the
  day-to-day. Implication only fully grown adults
  can be virtuous.

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Traditional Ethical Theories II Utilitarianism.

• A scientific (18th century) view of man and
  nature
• Deep distrust of all metaphysics and theology.
  Nature has no purpose or telos (contrary to
  Aristotle).
• Man has no natural role to play in the
  universe. He is simply a combination of
  molecules played upon by the same physical forces
  that govern the rest of the world (Jeremy
  Benthams unsentimental attitude to life is on
  display two centuries after his own death
  http//www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/external/atanu/jb.html)
• Consequently, human societies, including the role
  of ethics, must be studied on the model of the
  natural sciences (like physics and biology).
• Utilitarian ethics a scientific explanation for
  all human action
• The desire for pleasure and avoidance of pain.
• The progress of the sciences will illuminate us
  on how to achieve the greatest quantity of
  pleasure taking into account the greatest number
  of people The greatest happiness for the
  greatest number the General Happiness
  Principle.

Jeremy Bentham
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Utilitarianism

• An ethics aimed at policy makers at the
  organisation of the good life
• The good is simply what leads to happiness for an
  individual person. Helvetius (1715-1771) in
  France believed in education as the means of
  bringing scientific knowledge to the people.
  Also, legislative planning and the control of
  experts to direct people towards pleasure and
  away from pain.
• Bentham (1748-1832) in England feared bullying
  interference and said every man is the best judge
  of his own happiness. Bentham thus promoted the
  free market and a minimal state.
• Bentham applies an exhaustive method to
  understanding pain pleasure. He discusses
  various dimensions of pleasure its intensity
  duration, security remoteness, the maximum
  quantity obtainable by a single person, etc.
  On this psychological basis, he offers practical
  proposals for maximising the total happiness in a
  given society.
• John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
• Argues that not all types of pleasure are the
  same. There are higher and lower pleasures.
• The importance of dignity It is better to be a
  human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.
• Mill favoured a society in which creative genius,
  eccentricity, and experiments in living could
  flourish, as only in such a society could the
  higher pleasures (poetry, philosophy, etc) be
  pursued. He was, therefore, a passionate
  defender of free speech and toleration for
  different ways of living.

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Traditional Ethical Theories III Deontology.

• A Copernican revolution in how our experience
  of the world is understood
• There is no reality or nature external to a
  persons experience of it. There is no object
  that cannot be experienced by a subject.
• The general rules we discover in nature (e.g.
  that 22 4, or that the shortest distance
  between two points is a straight line) are laws
  imposed by our brains on the world so that we are
  capable of experiencing it.
• The world is an appearance or representation
  created by our own minds. We have no access to
  things as they are in themselves.
• The human good life cannot be discovered by
  scientific observation or as part of the overall
  purpose of the universe.

Immanuel Kant
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Kantian ethics

• Where can ethics and the good be found?
• As there is no external reality, the moving
  principle of the universe is not to be found out
  there but in ourselves. Our ultimate purposes
  in life are not found but created. We are the
  author of our own values.
• But the ethical rules we follow are not
  arbitrary. Just as we impose a rational
  structure on the world (so that 22 does equal 4,
  and never 7 or 11) we recognise a duty to respect
  the rationality of every other human being. It
  would be contrary to our own nature to destroy
  the freedom of another person to choose his/her
  own ends at the same time that we choose our own.
  
• Kant is therefore opposed to the social
  engineering of the utilitarians, who wish to
  mould human beings into pursuing ends not
  chosen by them, but by the enlightened scientist
  or legislator. For Kant, this would mean
  treating human beings as children or docile
  sheep.
• Every rational being imposes on himself a
  categorical imperative
• So act that you use humanity, whether in your
  own person or in the person of any other, always
  at the same time as an end, never merely as a
  means (Kant, 1785). Every human being has a
  right to have their inner dignity respected.
• This is called by Kant the moral law to which
  we owe respect. We do not obey it because it
  makes us happy or we find it pleasurable. The
  duty is categorical and to be moral means doing
  our duty for no other reason than that it is the
  right thing to do.

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Bibliography

• Berlin, I. (2006) Political Ideas in the Romantic
  Age, Pimlico. (See Chapter 1 for discussion of
  Utilitarianism).
• Oakeshott, M. Lectures in the History of
  Political Thought, Imprint Academic. (see
  lectures 6 7 for Aristotle, and lecture 3 for
  the Greek image of the world).
• Rorty, R. (2006) Is philosophy relevant to
  applied ethics? Business Ethics Quarterly 16(3)
  369-380.
• Werhane, P. (2006) A place for philosophers in
  applied ethics and the role of moral reasoning in
  moral imagination a response to Richard Rorty
  Business Ethics Quarterly 16(3) 401-408.