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Teaching Business Ethics, or the Challenge of a Socratic-Nietzschean Self-Transcendence for Teachers

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Teaching Business Ethics

Abstract

Business ethics courses often focus on the path toethical behaviour. This paper discusses why teachersask to themselves how to modify major aspects of thepersonality (values, virtues, moral principles) oftheir students. There are two basic motives behindsuch an obsession of results: (1) the claim that wecan modify the personal value systems of our students;(2) the desire and anxiety to be, as teachers,counter-cultural agents. We will use a philosophicalframework, and will define self-transcendence forteachers (as well as for students) as including botha Socratic radical doubt about reality and knowledge(the awareness of our illusory understanding ofreality, and the ability to question our mostcherished beliefs and values) and the Nietzschean``Overman’’ (the ability to assess things, people andevents in focusing on their ``worth for life’’, ingetting rid of our will to believe and our will totruth).

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Dion, M. Teaching Business Ethics, or the Challenge of a Socratic-Nietzschean Self-Transcendence for Teachers. Teaching Business Ethics 4, 307–324 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009873711063

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