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Toward An Ethic of Exchange

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Daryl Koehn
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Abstract

Robert Solomon has suggested that we now have collectively moved beyond the point of treating the notion of “business ethics” as oxymoronic. If the possibility of business ethics were indeed a settled question, then there would be little point in offering yet another investigation into the character of business practice and norms. But if the “we” of this claim refers to philosophers, other writers and the community as a whole, then Solomon's claim appears false. For we remain very much concerned about the morality of business. Our doubts regarding business legitimacy have been brought into ever sharper focus by the trend of the past twenty years to assimilate business to the so-called “liberal” or “learned” professions of medicine, the ministry and the law. For, as Paul Camenisch has noted, while the three liberal professions all aim at readily identifiable goods and display an “atyptical moral commitment,” it is far from clear that the end of business is good. Since prof its can be made through the distribution of products many would regard as immoral, using labor practices of equally dubious morality (e.g., slave labor), it is hard to see how business can lay claim, like the other professions, to a legitimating moral commitment. Business legitimacy has been further undermined by research suggesting that business managers’ “expertise” creates more problems than it solves; and that the much-touted science of managerial effectiveness is a sham since no such science of controlling human behavior either does or can exist.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , July 1992 , pp. 341 - 355
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1992

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References

Notes

1 Robert, C. Solomon, “Corporate Roles, Personal Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach to Business Ethics,” Business Ethics Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 3 (1992), pp. 317–39.Google Scholar

2 Paul, Camenisch, Grounding Professions in a Pluralistic Society (New York: Haven Publishing Corp., 1983), pp. 5–7.Google Scholar

3 Donald, Schon, The Reflective Practitioner (New York: Basic Books, 1984), pp. 3–20.Google Scholar

4 Alasdair, Maclntyre, After Virtue (Norte Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), pp. 74–78.Google Scholar

5 Solomon, op cit.

6 Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics, 1137a 17-21.

7 Aristotle does not separate good from right actions or at least does not do so in any simple sense. For purposes of this argument, it is not necessary or desirable to separate the two notions and I will treat good and right as interchangeable.

8 NE 1132b21-1133b-30.

9 NE 1163b30-1164b23.

10 Amelie, Oksenberg Rorty, “The Place of Contemplation in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics” in Essays on Aristotles Ethics, ed. Amelie, Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 378–80.Google Scholar

11 Rorty, p. 389.

12 NE 1159a1-13.

13 Aristotle's entire discussion of desiring immortality for one's friends is permeated with a profound ambivalence as to what is good for beings like ourselves who are part divine. For a good discussion of why Aristotle may be trapped in this ambivalence see Ackrill, J. L., “Aristotle on Eudaimonia” in Rorty, p. 33.Google Scholar

14 A11 the parties to an exchange cited by Aristotle produce something—houses, shoes, food. SeeNE 1133a6-17; 1133b5-6.

15 NE 1133a2-5.

16 NE 1133bl8-21.

17 NE 1132b33-a3.

18 NE 1133a1-3.

19 Jeffrey, A. Barach and John, B. Elstrott, “The Transactional Ethic: The Ethical Foundations of Free Enterprise Reconsidered,” Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 7 (1988), pp. 545–51.Google Scholar

20 See NE 1164a23-b22 where Aristotle argues that contracts executed at the time of exchange can be enforced, although retroactive contracts cannot be binding apparently because parties will be prone to treat one another in bad faith.

21 Irwin, T.H., “Reason and Responsibility in Aristotle,” in Rorty, pp. 138–39.Google Scholar

22 NE 1140b8-10.

23 NE 1133b7-10.

24 Aristotle Politics, 1332a36-37.

25 NE 1164b2-7.