Abstract:The purpose of this paper is to present an understanding of business ethics based on a theory of internal social criticism. Internal social criticism focuses on how members of a business organization debate the meanings of their shared traditions for the purpose of locating and correcting hypocrisy. Organizations have thick moral cultures that allow them to be self-governing moral communities. By considering organizations as interpretive moral communities, I challenge the conventional notion that moral criticism is based primarily on exogenous moral (...) principles delivered by outside critics. I describe an interpretive process of business ethics and develop a theoretical model of internal social criticism. I also propose that organizational identification serves as a mechanism for inducing ethical behavior. I conclude by calling for more research that understands the development and use of existing moral principles inside of organizations. (shrink)

Part of the debate on cost containment in healthcare systems may be characterized as applied political philosophy One might say that the current debate between competing theories of justice that started with Rawls' A Theory of Justice in 1971 has acquired a small sister debate in healthcare philosophy Major participants in the debate on social justice have become an important source of inspiration for bioethicists interested in a just distribution of healthcare resources. Thus Rawls' A Theory of Justice has been (...) remodeled for healthcare philosophy by Norman Daniels. Nozick's libertarian manifesto Anarchy, State, and Utopia has been used for bioethical purposes by H.T. Engelhardt. The books of Daniel Callahan evidently belong to a family of communitarian theories, though Callahan cannot be said to follow one or another communitarian thinker in particular. In the next two sections of this article I will give a very brief sketch of the debate on social justice in political philosophy and then discuss the sister debate on social justice in healthcare. (shrink)

It is a commonplace amongst communitarians, socialists and feminists alike that liberalism is to be rejected for its excessive ‘individualism’ or ‘atomism,’ for ignoring the manifest ways in which we are ‘embedded’ or ‘situated’ in various social roles and communal relationships. The effect of these theoretical flaws is that liberalism, in a misguided attempt to protect and promote the dignity and autonomy of the individual, has undermined the associations and communities which alone can nurture human flourishing.My plan is to examine (...) the resources available to liberalism to meet these objections. My primary concern is with what liberals can say in response, not with what particular liberals actually have said in the past. Still, as a way of acknowledging intellectual debts, if nothing else, I hope to show how my arguments are related to the political morality of modem liberals from J.S. Mill through to Rawls and Dworkin. The term ‘liberal’ has been applied to many different theories in many different fields, but I’m using it in this fairly restricted sense. First, I’m dealing with a political morality, a set of moral arguments about the justification of political action and political institutions. Second, my concern is with this modem liberalism, not seventeenth-century liberalism, and I want to leave entirely open what the relationship is between the two. It might be that the developments initiated by the ‘new liberals’ are really an abandonment of what was definitive of classical liberalism. G.A. Cohen, for example, says that since they rejected the principle of ‘self-ownership’ which was definitive of classical liberalism, these new liberals should instead be called ‘social democrats.’My concern is to defend their political morality, whatever the proper label. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar uma reconstrução da teoria da justiça de Michael Walzer a partir de sua obra Esferas da justiça: uma defesa do pluralismo e da igualdade, que enfatiza apenas o pluralismo, destacando-se também o papel essencial da cidadania democrática na obtenção da igualdade. Para isto, será feita uma apresentação dos conceitos básicos daquele livro: a teoria pluralista dos bens, a autonomia das esferas da justiça a partir do significado social dos bens, as noções negativas de predomínio (...) e dominação e o ideal de igualdade complexa supostamente resultante daquela autonomia. Após, será analisada a crítica que aponta a insuficiência das esferas autônomas para a realização do projeto igualitário de Walzer e o risco de desigualdade a que ele se expõe, sustentando a necessidade da cidadania democrática para superá-lo. Finalmente, será mostrado como o próprio Walzer sempre adotou, ainda que sem desenvolvê-la, a ideia da cidadania democrática como o outro bastião indispensável da igualdade. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar uma reconstrução da teoria da justiça de Michael Walzer a partir de sua obra Esferas da justiça: uma defesa do pluralismo e da igualdade, que enfatiza apenas o pluralismo, destacando-se também o papel essencial da cidadania democrática na obtenção da igualdade. Para isto, será feita uma apresentação dos conceitos básicos daquele livro: a teoria pluralista dos bens, a autonomia das esferas da justiça a partir do significado social dos bens, as noções negativas de predomínio (...) e dominação e o ideal de igualdade complexa supostamente resultante daquela autonomia. Após, será analisada a crítica que aponta a insuficiência das esferas autônomas para a realização do projeto igualitário de Walzer e o risco de desigualdade a que ele se expõe, sustentando a necessidade da cidadania democrática para superá-lo. Finalmente, será mostrado como o próprio Walzer sempre adotou, ainda que sem desenvolvê-la, a ideia da cidadania democrática como o outro bastião indispensável da igualdade. (shrink)