This paper argues that Quaker business ethics can be understood as a MacIntyrean tradition. To do so, it draws on three key MacIntyrean concepts: community, compartmentalisation, and the critique of management. The emphasis in Quaker business ethics on finding unity, as well as the emphasis that Quaker businesses have placed on serving their local areas, accords with MacIntyre’s claim that small-scale community is essential to human flourishing. The emphasis on integrity in Quaker business ethics means practitioners are well-placed to resist (...) the compartmentalising pressures of contemporary work. Quaker business ethics is also highly critical of the manipulative forms of management that MacIntyre regards as dominant. As such, Quaker business ethics provides evidence that more morally ameliorative forms of running business organisations is possible, even if they remain difficult to achieve. (shrink)

This book explores how the distinctive "Quaker" approach to responsible business is based on honesty, truth and integrity. It analyzes how networks, family and succession are at its heart, and how much this approach offers to current debates on corporate social responsibility, as well as to managers and practitioners in an increasingly complex business world. The contributions in this volume assess the factors that explain the success and prosperity of many Quaker businesses throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, discussing the (...) lessons learned from their disappearance from prominence. By drawing upon examples that illustrate the Quaker ethic, it also considers what so-called “Quakernomics” can contribute to contemporary responsible business theory and practice. (shrink)

Quaker Epistemology analyzes a distinctive 'Inward Light' theory of knowledge. This expanded experiential empiricism integrates spiritual and religious knowledge with an ethically grounded vision of scientific knowledge.

In a recent study of 1 Corinthians 12:7 11, the Hong Kong Monthly Meeting explored how Quakers might interpret Paul’s presentation of nine “spiritual gifts” (or “manifestations” phanerosis in Greek] of God’s spirit). The nine gifts can be neatly grouped into three categories, using Matthew 7:7 (“Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you”) as a basis: the three “vocal” gifts (the spirit’s manifestation in response to (...) our asking) are tongues, interpretation, and prophecy; the three “visual” gifts (the spirit’s manifestation in response to our seeking) are knowledge, wisdom, and discernment; and the three “victorious” gifts (the spirit’s manifestation in response to our knocking) are faith, miracles, and healing. In a series of three post Meeting discussions, we examined how Quakers might recover some of the meaningfulness of these classical distinctions, which have often been merely cast aside as a result of the overly literal way they are often interpreted in some Christian denominations. During the Meeting for Worship prior to the first discussion, one participant read the whole of Acts 2 as a voice ministry. During the discussion, we came to realize that this chapter, where the gift of speaking in tongues is first mentioned in the Bible, is a profound statement of our need to express the language of love . This is where the church begins. Speaking in tongues has the effect of universalizing God’s Word by opening it up to all cultures and peoples. The gift breaks through the boundaries of human language, making “that of God in each of us” a living reality. Sadly, some Christians use this gift as a divisive tool to isolate and alienate one “special” group of believers (those who “know how to speak in tongues”) from all others. To do this is to miss the point. It is no accident that Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 reminds us that “whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (verse 21): asking is the doorway to spiritual understanding. Asking for guidance from God is often difficult because of our pride, and so the gift of a language we do not own or even understand can have the beneficial effect of humbling us.. (shrink)

Many Liberal Quakers have taken Buddhism into their spiritual lives, drawing primarily upon its meditation methods and its philosophy. How does this fit with Quakerism’s Christian foundations? Buddhist meditation methods are used to help Quakers touch a spiritual depth, but between Buddhist and Quaker religious experience a question arises: are meditative/mystical states natural, or do they require an Other, God, as agent? This issue is related to contemporary Liberal Quaker ambiguous feelings about “God” language and frequent preference for (...) words like “Light” and “Spirit.” Buddha Nature and Inner Light both represent the immanence of the transcendent, but how similar are these concepts? Nondualistic Buddhist philosophy is a resource for those Quakers who find that “God” language does not adequately capture their spiritual experience. (shrink)

For many Christian ethicists the language of individualism serves as a philosophical short-hand for an atomistic and anti-social existence which refuses the invitation of a common life with others. Is this negative description deserved? This article undertakes a close reading of the categories of the individual and the person in order to formulate a theologically affirmative account of certain liberal strands of social and political individualism. In an effort to ground this project, dialogue is initiated with the Quaker theological tradition. (...) Through a close engagement with early Quaker accounts of community, selfhood and conversion, the discussion retrieves a social and teleological model of individuality which challenges key suppositions of individualism’s contemporary critics. This article concludes by considering ways in which Quaker formations of the individual can assist the Church in the task of faithfully engaging with liberal societies. (shrink)

The following exploration of the fundamentals of the Religious Society of Friends called Quakers will focus upon a lesser known tradition of the Quakers, namely that of the "Free Friends of Philadelphia" and their modern progeny, the Free Quakers of Indiana These Free Quakers, as they are called, are those who chose to exercise their free right to follow their conscience in all things, a tradition reaching back to the 18 th century in Philadelphia when a (...) contingent of Friends chose to support the war against Britain. A great deal is known about the programmed and unprogrammed traditions of the Religious Society of Friends, the former electing to have recorded ministers and formalized worship and the latter opting for no clergy and a preference for the mystical tradition of silent worship. Much less is known about the Free Quakers of Revolutionary Pennsylvania and the subsequent modern day Friends, their ideological progeny. In this brief essay, we intend to correct this common oversight in Quaker history. (shrink)

England in the 1650s was the scene of a long series of prophetic and protest exhibitions of naked men and women in public places (streets, churches, universities...), causing scandal and misunderstanding among most of the public. These women and men went naked “as a sign”, thus renewing an episode of the Old Testament (Isaiah 20.2-3) by which they denounced the spiritual “nudity”, of those before whom they were exhibiting themselves. This practice sought to demonstrate what God was about to inflict (...) on them : a laying bare, a complete stripping of all their possessions, powers and social prerogatives. A gendered approach to these exhibitions of nudity reveals the theological-political and social stakes of a phenomenon that accompanied the birth and development of the Quaker movement and spread as far as New England. (shrink)

Dans cet article, on articule les pensées de Hegel et de Weber à partir de la figure du Quaker et de la tolérance étatique qu’elle implique. L’on montre que Hegel pense la tolérance comme l’épreuve par l’État du négatif préservé dans sa négativité, insoluble dans l’unité rationnelle étatique, et que Weber renverse la perspective pour penser la tolérance à partir des intérêts communautaires de la secte. Une telle comparaison autorise une étude phénoménologique de la communauté sectaire comme espace normatif normé (...) par les regards, où chacun est sous le regard de chacun et fond sa subjectivité dans la communauté tout entière, sans qu’il soit besoin d’une transcendance normative autre que la secte elle-même. Nous montrons qu’un tel mode d’existence, caractéristique de la modernité, est expérience de la séparation, et in fine de la mort de dieu. (shrink)

In the final years of legal apartheid, the small community of Quakers in Cape Town, South Africa sought to apply their tradition of political and theological nonviolence to the systematic injustice...

Moral identity and moral dissonance in business ethics have explored tensions relating to moral self-identity and the pressures for identity compartmentalization in the workplace. Yet, the connection between these streams of scholarship, spirituality at work, and business ethics is under-theorized. In this paper, we examine the Quaker tradition to explore how Quakers’ interpret moral identity and negotiate the moral dissonance associated with a divided self in work organizations. Specifically, our study illuminates that while Quakers’ share a tradition-specific conception (...) of “Quaker morality” grounded in Quaker theology and the Quaker testimonies to truth, integrity, peace, equality, and simplicity, they often foreground the pursuit of an undivided self through seeking work that enables an expression of Quaker moral identity, or by resigning from work organizations that do not. In most cases, however, Quakers’ face moral dissonance at work and engage in either identity compartmentalization and draw upon the metaphor of a ‘spiritual journey’ as a form of self-justification, or reframe, compartmentalize and engage in work tasks that are both subjectively moral and meaningful. We present a model that elaborates these negotiation processes and invite further research that examines how the spiritual traditions influence moral identity construction at work. (shrink)

Quakers express their faith by refraining from war, often actively opposing it. In modern Quakerism, this is known as the ‘Peace Testimony’. This commonly has a negative and positive construal: it is seen as a testimony against war, and as a testimony to the possibility and goodness of peaceful lives. This paper offers an account of how these aspects of the Peace Testimony are unified in and grounded on a corporate experience of being led by God into a way (...) of life that renders war unthinkable. My goal is to make sense of Friends’ activism in light of their religious experience and to introduce some ideas from Quaker practical theology to philosophers and theologians more generally. I begin by considering the role of what Rachel Muers calls ‘negative testimony’ in Quaker peace work, arguing that we risk misunderstanding this work if we do not see the unity of the Peace Testimony’s negativity and Friends’ positive peace-making endeavors. I then turn to the Testimony’s ground, which I claim can be nothing other than an experience of direct revelation. I conclude by arguing that prominent objections to pacifism, such as Elizabeth Anscombe’s, hold little weight against the Peace Testimony. (shrink)

Two functions are performed by this very enlightening book. First, it gives the most detailed picture we have of the backgrounds and methods of controversy of the first Quakers. In this the author is especially successful in portraying the similarities and differences between the Quakers and their neighbors and in illustrating the type of religious controversy in which the Quakers and their adversaries engaged. Second, it describes the way in which relations between Quakers and non-Quakers (...) have changed since the seventeenth century, ending with a contrast of original and contemporary Quaker experience.—J. J. (shrink)

Chapter 1 is an introduction. I will examine the writings about Quakers of More, Locke, Leibniz and Hume, whether or not the writings are themselves philosophy. I explain why, except for what I say about them in chapter 1, Anne Conway, Princess Elisabeth and Spinoza are not otherwise within the scope of the thesis. Chapter 2 examines More’s three criticisms of Quakers: (1) Quaking is not a guide to divine inspiration or truth. He was right about this, but (...) the objection became less important as Quakers stopped quaking. (2) By ignoring reason and conscience, Quakers leave themselves open to supposed inspirations which are contrary to reason and good manners. Quakers behave badly, which is evidence that their supposed inspirations are not genuine. This is essentially the same objection as is made by Locke and Leibniz, whose writings we examine in chapter 2. (3) The Quakers’ emphasis on Christ within (the light within) leads them to deny Christ without, the external, historical man who died, was resurrected, and is now in heaven. They deny what More considers to be essential to Christian faith. More’s interpretation of the early Quakers was correct, as his example of William Smith’s Quaker primer for children proves. Keith sought to answer More’s objection in an appendix to the second edition of his Immediate Revelation. As the Quakers’ thinking developed and (in the case of Smith) was posthumously ‘clarified’ i.e. corrected, they and More came to agree on the necessity of both Christ within and Christ without. So this objection also became less important. Chapter 3 examines the writings of Locke and Leibniz, including their correspondence, relating to Quakers. Did Quakers really believe that their inspirations should be accepted without any check or test involving reason or scripture? Yes, as Barclay’s discussion of his second proposition in the Apology shows. Both Locke and Leibniz studied works by Barclay. Locke became very close friends with the Quaker, Benjamin Furly, but his consistent position was that Quakers were enthusiasts and, because of their refusal to test apparent inspirations using reason, vulnerable to delusions. Leibniz expressed the same position most clearly in a short piece on apologetic work drafted, perhaps, in 1685. Locke’s views were most fully expressed in Book four, chapter 19 (‘Of Enthusiasm’) of the 1700 edition of his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, with which Leibniz agreed in this New Essays. More, Locke and Leibniz were each Christians, and each was concerned to defend Christianity from Quaker enthusiasm. Chapter 4 examines Hume’s writings about Quakers in his essay “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm”, his History and a letter to the Quaker Elizabeth Shackleton. His portrait of early Quaker enthusiasm is very similar to that of his predecessors: the early Quakers were deluded enthusiasts whose pride led them to think they communicated directly with God. But his discussion serves quite a different purpose. Hume’s criticism of early Quaker excesses implies that they were foolish to follow biblical precepts. His discussion of the Quakers also implies that in a religious body in which belief is no longer supported by either superstition and priests, or the fires of enthusiasm, only reason remains, and belief in Christianity will fall away, leaving only something like deism or Confucianism. (shrink)

In this multi-disciplinary collection, we ask the question, 'What did, and do, Quakers think about good and evil?' There are no simple or straightforwardly uniform answers to this, but in this collection, we draw together contributions that for the first time look at historical and contemporary Quakerdom's approach to the ethical and theological problem of evil and good. Within Quakerism can be found Liberal, Conservative, and Evangelical forms. This book uncovers the complex development of metaethical thought by a religious (...) group that has evolved with an unusual degree of diversity. In doing so, it also points beyond the boundaries of the Religious Society of Friends to engage with the spectrum of thinking in the wider religious world. (shrink)

This book is about "the meaning of life" or “the spiritual quest”. It offers a selective and critical evaluation of some central strands of Western religious and philosophical thought over two and a half thousand years. It starts with Socrates' philosophy of life, and the Greek tradition of philosophy that he initiated. It gives its own “take” on the teaching of Jesus, and on the long and controversial history of Christianity. There is a chapter devoted to George Fox and the (...) beginning of the Quaker movement, suggesting some surprising parallels between the undogmatic spirituality of the Quakers and the heavyweight philosophy of Immanuel Kant. It recommends a non-literal interpretation of language about God, with some reference to Austin Farrer on “poetic truth”. It is intended for the intelligent general reader – it is accessible but not “dumbed down”, knowledgeable but not overburdened with detail, critically argumentative but not prejudiced. (shrink)

The article suggests that in a modern context, where value pluralism is a prevailing and possibly, even ethically desirable interaction condition, institutional economics provides a more viable business ethics than behavioural business ethics, such as Kantianism or religious ethics. The article explains how the institutional economic approach to business ethics analyses morality with regard to an interaction process, and favours non-behavioural, situational intervention with incentive structures and with capital exchange. The article argues that this approach may have to be prioritised (...) over behavioural business ethics, which tends to analyse morality at the level of the individual and favours behavioural intervention with the individual’s value, norm and belief system, e.g. through ethical pedagogy, communicative techniques, etc. Quaker ethics is taken as an example of behavioural ethics. The article concludes that through the conceptual grounding of behavioural ethics in the economic approach, theoretical and practical limitations of behavioural ethics, as encountered in a modern context, can be relaxed. Probably only then can behavioural ethics still contribute to raising moral standards in interactions amongst the members (stakeholders) of a single firm, and equally, amongst (the stakeholders of) different firms. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the philosophical and theological issues that arise when a ‘religious’ process of decision-making, which is normally taken to require specific theological commitments both for its successful use and for its coherent explanation, is transferred into ‘secular’ contexts in which such theological commitments are not shared. Using the example of Quaker Business Method, we show how such a move provokes new theological questions, as well as questions for management studies.

Three Quaker elders, all scholar activists, have just published two important works for anyone studying nonviolence, works that are framed very differently but which complement each other well. One is a new work by the estimable George Lakey, who has trained nonviolent resisters around the world in many countries for decades, and whose thinking has always been structural, strategic, and careful. The other work is by Alice and Staughton Lynd, two historians whose activism education stretches far back to teaching in (...) the Freedom Summer schools of Mississippi in 1964 and even earlier. The Lynds have just published the third edition of their Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History. (shrink)

In this article, I explore how researchers’ metaphysical commitments can be conducive—or unconducive—to progress in animal cognition research. The methodological dictum known as Morgan’s Canon exhorts comparative psychologists to countenance the least mentalistic fair interpretation of animal actions. This exhortation has frequently been misread as a blanket condemnation of mentalistic interpretations of animal behaviors that could be interpreted behavioristically. But Morgan meant to demand only that researchers refrain from accepting default interpretations of (apparent) actions until other fair interpretations have been (...) duly considered. The Canon backfired largely because of Morgan’s background metaphysical commitment to a univocal, hierarchical, and anthropocentric account of cognitive architecture. I make the case that, going forward, comparative psychologists would do well to pair judicious use of Morgan’s Canon with an openness to the existence of non-humanlike animal minds comprising phenomena belonging to distinct cognitive and folk psychological ontologies. And I argue that this case gives us pragmatic reason to reconcile deep—e.g., psychofunctionalist—and superficial—e.g., dispositionalist—approaches to the metaphysics of belief. (shrink)

In this article, I explore how researchers’ metaphysical commitments can be conducive—or unconducive—to progress in animal cognition research. The methodological dictum known as Morgan's Canon exhorts comparative psychologists to countenance the least mentalistic fair interpretation of animal actions. This exhortation has frequently been misread as a blanket condemnation of mentalistic interpretations of animal behaviors that could be interpreted behavioristically. But Morgan meant to demand only that researchers refrain from accepting default interpretations of (apparent) actions until other fair interpretations have been (...) duly considered. The Canon backfired largely because of Morgan's background metaphysical commitment to a univocal, hierarchical, and anthropocentric account of cognitive architecture. I make the case that, going forward, comparative psychologists would do well to pair judicious use of Morgan's Canon with an openness to the existence of non-humanlike animal minds comprising phenomena belonging to distinct cognitive and folk psychological ontologies. And I argue that this case gives us pragmatic reason to reconcile deep—e.g., psychofunctionalist—and superficial—e.g., dispositionalist—approaches to the metaphysics of belief. (shrink)

This contribution to a symposium on quietism concerns what is known as the Quietist period of Quakerism in the eighteenth century. Dandelion addresses the key question of conflict between the quietist commitment of the Quaker faithful and the commitment of many among them to abolitionism and other pressing social causes. He reviews the scholarship on this issue, noting the recent tendency to look for mystical aspects to the social commitment of Quakers. Instead, however, he argues that the culture of (...) Friends during this period became self-enclosed to a remarkable degree, permitting some of the members to move about extramurally, as required by conscience, then return to their essentially quietist world. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates how British Quakers, between 1870 and 1914, attempted to understand and debate the issue of vivisection through the lens of the Quaker peace testimony. Drawing on primary source materials, the article argues that these Friends were able to agitate for radical legislative and social change using virtue ethics as their framework. The paper further suggests that the moral parameters of the Quaker testimony for peace expanded briefly in this period to include interspecies as well as intraspecies (...) engagement. Friends accomplished this by arguing that humans could not engage in vivisection—a “moral disease” just like slavery and war—without risking individual and social virtue. Friends were able to call for radical change in society without arguing for ethical egalitarianism. Hierarchy was implicit in their virtue ethic, but this did not hinder their creation of a forward-thinking stance on human-animal relations. (shrink)

During the Second World War, through innovations in officer selection and group therapy, the army psychiatrists John Rickman and Wilfred Bion changed our understanding of leadership. They showed how soldiers under stress could develop real authority through their attentiveness to each other. From contrasting experiences 25 years earlier each had seen how people in groups are moved by elemental forces that undermine judgement and thought. This article arose from my experiences as a trainee at the Tavistock Clinic, where the method (...) of reflective work discussion, giving individuals seated in a circle the choice to speak or to remain silent, seemed similar to a Quaker meeting. Many decades later I found that this association had a basis in fact. Among other influences on Bion — a childhood in India, distinguished service in the First World War, and a surgical apprenticeship with Wilfred Trotter — there is a little-acknowledged Quaker source, in John Rickman, for Bion’s radical work in the army that led to new methods of training and organizational consultancy in the postwar Tavistock. (shrink)