Abstract
Individuals held responsible for managing enormous sums of money intended for the good of others-and for policy formulations on complex issues related thereto—are understandably restive when asked to consider the usefulness of an inquiry rooted in a form of moral reasoning. Moral reasoning, unlike financial analysis, draws its substance from philosophy, a discipline recently distinguished more by methodological virtuosity than by substantive solidity. Today’s men of affairs would applaud Callicles, the friend of Socrates, when he said that philosophy was a “pretty thing” for youths to study but is the “ruin of man” if continued into adult life: “In a word, they are completely without experience of men’s character. And so when they enter upon any activity, public or private, they appear ridiculous, just as public men, I suppose, appear ridiculous when they take part in your discussions and arguments.”1
Excerpt from “Pension Funds and Social Investments: A Tale of Two Cities” in Social Investing, ed. Dan M. McGill, Richard D. Irwin, Inc., Homewood, IL, 1984.
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Notes
Plato, Gorgias, in Great Books of the Western World, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins, (Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1952), p. 272.
“Private Pensions and Public Policies: A Symposium with William Greenough, Dan M. McGill and Robert Tilove.” Employee Benefits Journal (1977), pp. 2–13, 26–27.
Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1942), p. 137.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Collected Legal Papers (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1920), pp. 380–381.
John Ruskin, Unto This Last, vol. 13, (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1866), p. 25. See also Thomas Carlisle’s seminal essay, “Signs of the Times.” in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1866). For an excellent analysis of British social thinking of this period consult Peter Gay The Enlightenment: An Interpretation.
Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 535–7.
George Will, “Just a Little Crisis, But ….” The Washington Post, April 8, 1982, p. 27.
Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).
“Private Pensions and Public Policies,” pp. 7–8.
Report of the President: 1967–68 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 38.
Report of the Kalven Committee on the University’s Role in Political and Social Action (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1967). See also The Austin Committee Report (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1971), and the later statement for Harvard President Derek Bok, Beyond the Ivory Tower: Social Responsibilities of the Modern University Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).
Peter Landau, “Do Institutional Investors Have a Social Responsibility?” Institutional Investor, July 1970, p. 83.
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Walton, C. (1998). A Tale of Two Cities: Finance and Morals. In: Duska, R.F. (eds) Education, Leadership and Business Ethics. Issues in Business Ethics, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-585-27624-3_21
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