Abstract
We need a better way to understand the role of moral philosophy in contributing to our notion of the character of the manager. A Socratic approach to moral philosophy, which stands in contrast to a more widespread view of the professional philosopher, is proposed. One who uses a Socratic approach understands the philosopher’s tasks in terms of pursuing wisdom and cultivating virtues needed to pursue excellence in one’s social roles and as a human being. Alasdair MacIntyre takes this sort of Socratic approach. The book’s purpose is to apply this approach to moral philosophy to engage, criticize, and extend MacIntyre’s work on the manager as a character.
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Notes
Joseph Sachs points out that ancient warriors, at least as depicted by Homer, also engaged in persuasive speaking. See the editor’s “Introduction” in J. Sachs (2009) Plato’s Gorgias and Aristotle’s Rhetoric: Translation, Glossary and Introductory Essay (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing), 2–3.
Plato, Theaetetus 174. In general, the references that I make in this book to ancient and medieval texts do not rely on a specific translation. For that reason, I have provided the Stephanus pagination widely used in modern translations for references to Plato’s dialogues, while I typically have drawn from (1961) The Collected Dialogues of Plato ed. E. Hamilton and H. Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
For summaries of business ethics as an academic field, see G. Enderle (1996) “Towards Business Ethics as an Academic Discipline,” Business Ethics Quarterly, 6, 43–65.
P. Werhane and R. Freeman (1999) “Business Ethics: The State of the Art,” International Journal of Management Review, 1, 1–16.
C. Cowton (2008) “On Setting the Agenda for Business Ethics Research,” in C. Cowton and M. Haase (eds) Trends in Business and Economic Ethics (New York: Springer), 11–30.
R. Hare (1992) “One Philosopher’s Approach to Business and Professional Ethics,” Business and Professional Ethics Journal, 11, 3, 3–19, emphasis in the original.
For examples of moral philosophers in business ethics who see their task in similar terms, see R. DeGeorge (1982) Business Ethics (New York: MacMillan).
M. Velasquez (1982) Business Ethics: Concepts and Cases (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall).
N. Bowie (1999) Business Ethics: A Kantian Perspective (Oxford: Blackwell).
T. Donaldson and T.W. Dunfee (1999) Ties that Bind: A Social Contracts Approach to Business Ethics (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press)
In contrast, for an approach to ethics and business management that places less emphasis on debates about principles and their application and more emphasis on character and culture, see K. Goodpaster (2006) Conscience and Corporate Culture (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell).
G. Marino (2001) “Avoiding Moral Choices: Call in the Ethics Experts,” Commonweal, March 23, 11–15.
R. Rorty (1979) Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 365–372.
R. Rorty (1998) Achieving Our Country (Boston: Harvard University Press).
M. Horkheimer (1992, originally 1939) “The Social Function of Philosophy,” in Critical Theory. Selected Essays (New York: Continuum), 264.
See J. Nicholas (2012) Reason, Tradition, and the Good: MacIntyre’s Tradition Constituted Reason and Frankfurt School Critical Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press).
P. Hadot (1995) Philosophy as a Way of Life trans. M. Chase (Oxford: Blackwell), 265.
A. Whitehead (1979) Process and Reality (New York: Free Press), 39.
G. Press (2007) Plato: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum), 5.
For a very helpful account of Plato’s dialogues, see J. Sallis (1996) Being and Logos: Reading the Platonic Dialogues. Third edition (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). For a chart summarizing a range of forms of life, from hunters and anglers to merchants, sophists, and the philosopher, see 470–471.
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© 2013 Gregory R. Beabout
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Beabout, G.R. (2013). Moral Philosophy and the Manager. In: The Character of the Manager. Humanism in Business Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304063_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304063_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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