Personalism and Existentialism: Their View on Business Ethics, Organizations, and Institutions

Rendtorff, Jacob Dahl

doi:10.1007/978-94-017-8845-8_3

Jacob Dahl Rendtorff⁴

Part of the book series: Ethical Economy ((SEEP,volume 49))

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Abstract

This chapter presents personalism and existentialism with their view on business ethics, organizations, and institutions? Personalism, which is marked by a Catholic point of view combined with the patriotism of the French Republic, characterized many business people and traditional French directors of business from the First World War through the 1960s Indeed, the Catholic personalist and existentialist philosophies of Emmanuel Mounier and Gabriel Marcel relate to this tradition although they both make remarkable criticisms of traditional personalism in their social philosophies. This criticism of the traditional bourgeois figure is further developed with the emergence of atheistic existentialist philosophy after the Second World War. Philosophers and novelists like Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus radically questioned the bourgeoisie as a class in society. Not only did they challenge Catholic norms, values, and the paternalist tradition of hierarchical relations in firms, but they also criticized the meaning of work in society through their deeper questioning of the meaning of life and of human existence. This existentialist approach has significant potentialities for analysis of contemporary political economy and capitalism.

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Notes

1.
Frderick Copleston, S.J.: Volume IX. Modern Philosophy. From the French Revolution to Sartre, Camus and Lévi-Strauss, Image Books, New York (1974), 1993, p. 250ff.
2.
Ibid., p. 254ff.
3.
Jean Wahl: Vers le concret: études d’histoire de la philosophie contemporaine. – Paris, 1932.
4.
J. Lacroix: Panorama de la philosophie française contemporaine, PUF, Paris 1968, p. 9.
5.
Ibid., p. 15.
6.
Gabriel Marcel: “L’Etre incarné comme repère central de la reflexion métaphysique, in Gabriel Marcel: Du refus à l’invocation, Gallimard 1940.
7.
Paul Ricœur: Gabriel Marcel et Karl Jaspers, Philosophie de mystére et philosophie de paradoxe, Le temps présent, Paris 1948, p. 301ff.
8.
Helen Alford: “The practical wisdom of Personalism”, Journal of Management Development, Vol. 29 No. 7/8, 2010, pp. 697–705.
9.
Gilbert Lenssen: “Practical wisdom for turbulent times: exegesis beyond historical and canonical concerns”, Journal of Management Development, Vol. 29, No. 7/8, 2010, pp. 686–696.
10.
Emmanuel Mounier: Revolution personnaliste et communautaire, Paris 1935.
11.
Emmanuel Mounier: Traité du caractère, Editions du Seuil, Paris 1946.
12.
Emmanuel Mounier: “Refaire la renaissance”, Esprit, 1932.
13.
Emmanuel Mounier: Introduction aux existentialismes, Paris 1947.
14.
Emmanuel Mounier: Révolution personnaliste et communautaire, Paris 1935.
15.
Emmanuel Mounier: “Propriété capitaliste à la propriété humaine”, Esprit, Avril 1934.
16.
Ibid.
17.
Helen Alford: “The practical wisdom of Personalism”, Journal of Management Development, Vol. 29 No. 7/8, 2010, pp. 697–705.
18.
Bernard Henri Lévy: Sartre: Le Siècle de Sartre, Grasset, Paris 2000.
19.
Alain Renaut: Sartre: Le dernier philosophe, Grasset, Paris 1993.
20.
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21.
Jean-Paul Sartre: Les mots, Gallimard, Paris 1964.
22.
Jean-Paul Sartre: L’Être et le Néant, Gallimard, Paris 1943.
23.
Alain Renaut: Sartre: Le dernier philosophe, Grasset, Paris 1993, p. 30ff.
24.
Ibid., p. 125, Simone de Beauvoir: La force de l’âge, Gallimard, Paris 1960.
25.
Jean-Paul Sartre: Essai sur la transcendance de l’ego, Gallimard, Paris 1937.
26.
Jean-Paul Sartre: La nausée, Gallimard, Paris 1938.
27.
Ibid., p. 16.
28.
Ibid., p. 181ff.
29.
Ibid., p. 247.
30.
Jean-Paul Sartre: L’Être et le Néant, Gallimard, Paris 1943, p. 61.
31.
Ibid., p. 52ff.
32.
Ibid., p. 82.
33.
Jean-Paul Sartre: Le Mur, Gallimard, Paris 1939.
34.
Jean-Paul Sartre: L’Être et le Néant, Gallimard, Paris 1943, p. 591.
35.
Ibid., p. 57.
36.
Ibid., p. 129.
37.
Ibid., p. 708.
38.
Ibid., p. 307.
39.
Ibid., p. 276.
40.
Ibid., p. 326.
41.
Ibid., p. 567.
42.
Ibid., p. 512.
43.
Ibid., p. 531.
44.
Ibid., p. 720.
45.
Jean Paul Sartre: L’Existentialisme est un humanisme, Nagel, Paris 1946, p. 26.
46.
Ibid., p. 36.
47.
Ibid., p. 84.
48.
Jean-Paul Sartre: L’Être et le Néant, Gallimard, Paris 1943, p. 82.
49.
Bernard Henry Lévy: Bernard Henri Lévy: Sartre: Le Siècle de Sartre, Grasset, Paris 2000.
50.
Jean-Paul Sartre: Huis clos, Gallimard, Paris 1943.
51.
Jean-Paul Sartre: L’Être et le Néant, Gallimard, Paris 1943, p. 111 and p. 484.
52.
Jean-Paul Sartre: Cahiers pour une morale, Gallimard, Paris 1983, p. 12ff.
53.
Ibid., p. 499ff.
54.
Ibid., p. 515.
55.
Ibid., p. 293ff.
56.
Jean-Paul Sartre: Saint-Genet. Comédien et martyre, Gallimard, Paris 1952, p. 177.
57.
Ibid., p. 75.
58.
Ibid., p. 175.
59.
Jean-Paul Sartre: Critique de la raison dialectique, Gallimard, Paris 1960.
60.
Claude Lévi-Strauss: Anthropologie structurale, Gallimard, Paris 1958.
61.
John Lawler and Ian Ashman: “Theorizing leadership authenticity: A Sartrean perspective”, Leadership 2012 8: 327.
62.
J. Pine and J. Gilmore: The experience economy, Harvard Business School Press, Harvard 1999. J. Pine and J. Gilmore: Authenticity. What Consumers really want, Harvard Business School Press, Harvard 2007.
63.
J. Pine and J. Gilmore: The experience economy, Harvard Business School Press, Harvard 1999, p. x.
64.
Jean-Paul Sartre: L’idiot de la famillie, I–III, Gallimard, Paris 1972.
65.
Peggy Wallace: “Career stories of women professional accountants Examining the personal narratives of career using Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist existentialist philosophy as a theoretical framework”, Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, Vol. 4 No. 1, 2009, pp. 62–84.
66.
“Pyrrhus et Cinéas” in Simone de Beauvoir: Beauvoir, Simone de: Pour une morale de l’ambiguéité, Gallimard, (1947) Paris 1983, p. 257.
67.
Ibid., p. 276.
68.
Ibid., p. 302.
69.
Ibid., p. 313.
70.
Ibid., p. 325.
71.
Ibid., p. 354.
72.
Simone de Beauvoir: Pour une morale de l’ambiguité, (1947) Gallimard, Paris 1983, p. 17.
73.
Ibid., p. 25.
74.
Ibid., p. 102.
75.
Ibid., p. 104.
76.
Deirdre Bair: Simone de Beauvoir. A Biography, (1990) A Touchstone Book Edition, New York, 1991, p. 408.
77.
Simone de Beauvoir: Le Deuxième Sexe I. Les faits et les mythes, Gallimard, Paris 1949, p. 13ff.
78.
Ibid., p. 207.
79.
Simone de Beauvoir: Le deuxième Sexe II. L’expèrience vécue, Gallimard, Paris 1949.
80.
Jean Wahl: Le malheur de la conscience dans la philosophie Hégelienne, Paris 1929.
81.
Lundgren-Gothlin, Eva: Kön och existens: studier i Simone de Beauvoirs Le Deuxième Sexe. – Göteborg: Daidalos, 1991, p. 112ff.
82.
Ibid., p. 114ff.
83.
Simone de Beauvoir: Le Deuxième Sexe I. Les faits et les mythes, Gallimard, Paris 1949.
84.
Jean-Paul Sartre: L’Être et le Néant, Gallimard, Paris 1943, p. 448.
85.
Lundgren-Gothlin, Eva: Kön och existens: studier i Simone de Beauvoirs Le Deuxième Sexe. – Göteborg: Daidalos, 1991, p. 299ff.
86.
Simone de Beauvoir: La Veillesse, Gallimard, Paris 1970, p. 13.
87.
Ibid., p. 570.
88.
Ibid., pp. 510–513.
89.
Luce Irigaray: Être Deux, Grasset, Paris 1997, p. 53.
90.
Ibid., p. 97.
91.
Judith Butler: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, London 1990.
92.
Melissa Tyler: “Women in change management. Simone De Beauvoir and the co-optation of women’s Otherness” Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 18, No. 6, 2005, pp. 561–577.
93.
Christian Arnsperger: Critique de l’existence capitaliste. Pour une éthique existentialist de l’économie, Les éditions du Cerf, Paris 2005, p. 12.
94.
Ibid., p. 19.
95.
Ibid., p. 20.
96.
Ibid., p. 21–22.
97.
Ibid., p. 22.
98.
Ibid., p. 23.
99.
Ibid., p. 47.
100.
Ibid., p. 55.
101.
Ibid., p. 57ff.
102.
Ibid., p. 90.
103.
Ibid., p. 98.
104.
Ibid., p. 109.
105.
Ibid., p. 118.
106.
Ibid., p. 124.
107.
Ibid., p. 157.
108.
Ibid., p. 151.
109.
Ibid., p. 195.
110.
Ibid., p. 222.
111.
Christian Arnsperger: L’éthique de l’existence post-capitalist. Pour un militantisme existential, Editions de Cerf, Paris 2009, p. 30.

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Communication, Business and Information, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
Jacob Dahl Rendtorff

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Rendtorff, J.D. (2014). Personalism and Existentialism: Their View on Business Ethics, Organizations, and Institutions. In: French Philosophy and Social Theory. Ethical Economy, vol 49. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8845-8_3

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8845-8_3
Published: 23 April 2014
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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