Lucian Blaga was the creator of a speculative and metaphoric philosophical system that placed mystery at its very core. Mystery, according to Blaga, veils existence and represents both a stimulus and a brake for human knowledge. His articulation of this view is strongly indebted to Kant, whose transcendental philosophy he sought to extend by critically examining the forms of sensibility and categories of the understanding, not so much in relation to consciousness, but as they are duplicated, or doubled, in the (...) unconscious. The result is Blaga's stylistic apriorism, according to which the unconscious always manages consciousness through abyssal categories in terms of which different regions and peoples at once reveal and remain isolated from mystery. (shrink)

The freedom (or its lack) of employees within large corporations has been the topic of considerable attention. Various discussions have invoked utilitarian appeals, social contract arguments, rights to meaningful jobs and analogies between corporations and state government. After briefly reviewing and rejecting these approaches, this paper contends that the legitimate exercise of corporate authority requires its accountability to a relevant group. It is then argued that the rnost relevant group are the employees over whom such power is exercised and that (...) the form such accountability must take is that of recognizing the right of employees to participate in corporate decisions and actions. Recognition of this right to participation, it is contended, constitutes respect for the freedom of corporate employees. (shrink)

Though this paper acknowledges the progress made in business ethics over the past several decades, it focuses on the challenges and limits of global business ethics. It maintains that business ethicists have provided important contributions regarding the Evaluative, Embodiment, and Enforcement aspects of business ethics. Nevertheless, they have not sufficiently considered a fourth part of a theory of moral change, an Enactment theory, whereby the principles and values business ethicists have identified might actually be followed. Enactment theory argues that appeals (...) to ethical leadership, moral imagination, and communicative participation have been insufficient to the task of closing the gap between what businesses do and what they ought to be doing. To address this problem, a theory of moral change focusing on the relations of power within which individuals and businesses operate needs to be developed. Drawing on the work of John Gaventa, the paper sketches some directions in which business ethics should proceed to help diminish this gap. The upshot is that business ethics needs greater connection with economic, social, and political theories. It also suggests that there are important limits to fostering the ethics of global business. (shrink)

Review of Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge by Georg G. Iggers.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

PowerMaster was a malt liquor which Heileman Brewing Company sought to market to inner-city blacks in the early 1990s. Due to widespread opposition, Heileman ceased its marketing of PowerMaster. This paper begins by exploring the moral objections of moral illusion, moral insensitivity and unfair advantage brought against Heileman’s marketing campaign. Within the current market system, it is argued that none of these criticism was clearly justified. Heileman might plausibly claim it was fulfilling its individual moralresponsibilities.Instead, Heileman’s marketing program must be (...) viewed as part of a group of marketing programs which all targeted inner-city blacks. It is argued that those marketers who target this particular market segment constitute a group which is collectively responsible for theharms imposed by their products on inner-city blacks. This responsibility is reducible neither to individual responsibility nor to a shared responsibility. It constitutes a dimension of moral responsibility to which marketers must pay attention. (shrink)

Stolen Legacy by George G.M. James refutes the Euro-centric myth that the origin of Western philosophy is Greek. First published in 1954, this book was seminal in leading to a radical reappraisal of a philosophical system long thought to be of European origin. It is an essential work in the syllabus for the study of Western philosophy.

Marketing Ethics addresses head-on the ethical questions, misunderstandings and challenges that marketing raises while defining marketing as a moral activity. A substantial introduction to the ethics of marketing, exploring the integral relations of marketing and morality Identifies and discusses a series of ethical tools and the marketing framework they constitute that are required for moral marketing Considers broader meanings and background assumptions of marketing infrequently included in other marketing literature Adds direction and meaning to problems in marketing ethics through reflection (...) on concepts such as individual choice, freedom and responsibility, desire satisfaction, noncoercive exchanges, and instrumental efficiency. (shrink)

One of the most important and challenging issues of business ethics—or indeed of ethics more generally—is that of “moralresponsibility.” And though this problem has been with us from the outset of reflection on ethics and business, the followingdevelopments in the late twentieth century have exacerbated its difficulty: the increased mobility among people, the development of increasingly complex technologies with ever more significant consequences, the extension of the distance between people’s actions and the effects of their actions, the extended distance between (...) the manufacturers of products and the consequences of those products, the expanded possibilities for anonymous actions, and the collapse of many customary forms of restraints between both individuals and organizations. As a consequence, I believe, we are in the midst of rethinking and developing new and creative ways of extending our notion of responsibility. (shrink)

In this paper I briefly summarize Pastin's views on the problem of good business thinking (GBT) and the solution (Perspectival Analysis) which he offers. In discussing Pastin's solution I offer a number criticisms which call for further elucidation on Pastin's part. Specifically, I challenge his vagueness on which perspectives a manager must consider, the manner in which the moral components of these perspectives are to be evaluated, and whether Pastin is not in the end committed simply to an economic account (...) of GBT. Finally, I contend that Pastin's account of GBT errors in being too intellectualistic and too individualistic. (shrink)

International business faces a host of difficult moral conflicts. It is tempting to think that these conflicts can be morally resolved if we gained full knowledge of the situations, were rational enough, and were sufficiently objective. This paper explores the view that there are situations in which people in business must confront the possibility that they must compromise some of their important principles or values in order to protect other ones. One particularly interesting case that captures this kind of situation (...) is that of Google and its operations in China. In this paper, I examine the situation Google faces as part of the larger issue of moral compromise and integrity in business. Though I look at Google, this paper is just as much about the underlying or background views Google faces that are at work in business ethics. In the process, I argue the following: First, the framework Google has used to respond to criticisms of its actions does not successfully or obviously address the important ethical issues it faces. Second, an alternative ethical account can be presented that better addresses these ethical and human rights questions. However, this different framework brings the issue of moral compromise to the fore. This is an approach filled with dangers, particularly since it is widely held that one ought never to compromise one’s moral principles. Nevertheless, I wish to propose that there may be a place for moral compromise in business under certain conditions, which I attempt to specify. (shrink)

The libertarian view of freedom has attracted considerable attention in the past three decades. It has also been subjected to numerous criticisms regarding its nature and effects on society. G. A. Cohen''s recent book, Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality, continues this attack by linking libertarian views on freedom to their view of self-ownership. This paper formulates and evaluates Cohen''s major arguments against libertarian freedom and self-ownership. It contends that his arguments against the libertarian rights definition of freedom are inadequate and need (...) modification. Similarly, Cohen''s defense of restrictions on self-ownership on behalf of autonomy are also found wanting. Finally, I argue that the thesis of self-ownership (whether in its full or partial version) ought to be rejected. (shrink)

What is the difference between entrepreneurship and altruism? This paper argues that the two differ only in degree, not in kind. Entrepreneurship, in its most generic form, is an expression of freedom in the economic realm and is therefore as deserving of zealous protection as is free speech. Furthermore, entrepreneurial success is as much the result of contingency as it is of design, and entrepreneurial failures vastly outnumber successes; these two issues point to the fairness of the entrepreneurial process.

Abstract:This paper argues that trust is one of the crucial bases for an international business morality. To defend this claim, it identifies three prominent senses of trust in the current literature and defends one of them, viz., what I term the “Attitudinal view.” Three different contexts in which such trust plays a role in business relationships are then described, as well as the conditions for the specific kinds of Attitudinal trust which appear in those contexts. Difficulties for the international development (...) of these forms of trust are briefly characterized and some of the possible responses are noted. Finally, the paper identifies morally important features of trust and some of their implications for an international business morality. (shrink)

Since Ranke, German historiography has been dominated by historicism. History defies conceptualism and systematic analysis; it requires empathetic understanding of the individualities which compose history, a narrative account of the intentions and actions of great individuals and states. Value judgments are to be suspended; military power and foreign policy are stressed. Defeat in World War I had little impact on German historical scholarship. Hintze's attempts at structural analysis and Kehr's efforts to study foreign policy within the framework of domestic history (...) met opposition. Traditional methodological and political assumptions remained important after 1945 in the work of G. Ritter, H. Rothfels, and others; at the same time these assumptions were increasingly questioned by a new generation of historians committed to democratic values who sought to integrate the methods of political science, sociology, and economics with those of history. (shrink)

Business ethics has made important strides over the past decades, but it has also suffered significant failures as witnessed by the long line of business scandals in the past half century. This paper discusses different forms that business ethics has taken in relation to the goal of businesses acting ethically. In the end, it maintains that a major challenge current business ethics faces is the lack of an account of business organizations as they ethically develop and change both individually and (...) systemically within social and political conditions. Even if business ethicists can rationally defend what businesses should be doing, unless we can relate this to how businesses can come to operate in those ways, our normative arguments will lack power, persuasiveness, and effectiveness. Only if we are able to provide this analysis will our normative ethics fulfill the practical task it has taken upon itself. (shrink)

Contemporary marketing is commonly characterized by the marketing concept which enjoins marketers to determine the wants and needs of customers and then to try to satisfy them. This view is standardly developed, not surprisingly, in terms of normal or ordinary consumers. Much less frequently is attention given to the vulnerable customers whom marketers also target. Though marketing to normal consumers raises many moral questions, marketing to the vulnerable also raises many moral questions which are deserving of greater attention.This paper has (...) three objectives. First, it explores the notion of vulnerability which a target audience might have. I argue that we must distinguish those who are specially vulnerable from normal individuals, as well as the susceptible and the disadvantaged - two other groups often distinguished in marketing literature. Second, I contend that marketing to the specially vulnerable requires that marketing campaigns be designed to ensure that these individuals are not treated unfairly, and thus possibly harmed. Third, I maintain that marketing programs which violate this preceding injunction are unethical or unscrupulous whether or not those targeted are harmed in some further manner. Accordingly, social control over marketing to the vulnerable cannot simply look to consumer injury as the measure of unfair treatment of the vulnerable. (shrink)

This book examines the underlying theoretical issues concerning the nature of political freedom. Arguing that most previous discussions of such freedom have been too narrowly focused, it explores both conservativism from Edmund Burke to its present resurgence, the radical tradition of Karl Marx, as well as the orthodox liberal model of freedom of John Locke, John Stuart Mill and Isaiah Berlin. _Political Freedom_ argues that these three accounts of political freedom - conservative, liberal and radical - all have internal weaknesses (...) which render them unsatisfactory. In the second part of the book George Brenkert develops an alternative theory of political freedom. Using the guiding concept of empowerment, his model explores individual rights, democratic participation in government and workplace, and the need to provide the material and educational resources to allow individuals to effectively exercise their rights to self-determination. It is a clear and bold attack on the view that there is no link between freedom and power. (shrink)

The sharp separation of Eastern, and particularly Soviet and GDR, scholarship from the West is in part owing to ideological self-isolation, and part due to lack of interest or unwillingness to accept this scholarship in the West - The institutional framework within which historical studies take place in the GDR has placed severe limits on diversity within the historical profession. The official theoretical basis of historiography is represented by dialectical materialism, as a theory of reality, and historical materialism, as the (...) conception of historical development intertwined with it. The political historian is subject to much closer direction than in social or cultural history, while social history deals primarily with local or regional history, and has begun conducting empirical case studies. Interestingly, biographies have acquired a new significance as historical works in both the GDR and the Federal Republic. In dealing with the German past, there is a conscious attempt in the GDR, as there has been recently in the Federal Republic, to overcome the fixation on 1933 and to reestablish a sense of pride in the past. There has been a greater openness and commitment to understanding historical phenomena with the reevaluation of the course of German history. (shrink)

In a recent important book,The Ethics of International Business, Tom Donaldson argues that multinational corporations (as well as individuals and nationstates) must, at a minimum, respect international human rights. For a purported right to be such a fundamental right it must satisfy three conditions. Donaldson calls the third condition the fairness-affordability condition. The affordability part of this condition holds that moral agents must be capable of paying for the burdens and responsibilities that a proposed human right would impose. If this (...) is impossible, then the purported right is not an international human right.I argue that Donaldson''s affordability condition is subject to four objections which reveal its untenability as one of the conditions upon which identification of international human rights must rest. I offer another way of treating problems of affordability and capability when it comes to such rights that all moral agents must respect. (shrink)

At the forefront of international concerns about global legislation and regulation, a host of noted environmentalists and business ethicists examine ethical issues in consumption from the points of view of environmental sustainability, economic development, and free enterprise.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.