Abstract

Here we explore a deep ambivalence concerning money and the world of business felt not only by philosophers but anyone who aspires to values other than the materialistic. Money is only a tool like the wheel. However, human beings have invested money with a power which transforms the very meaning of our lives. Business people are not especially greedy. They aspire to excellence and virtue, no less than the philosopher. Yet the arena in which they practice their profession is defined by the principle of maximization of profit—the principle of greed. In the business arena, the ethics of altruism is suspended in order to allow for competition and the possibility of winning or losing. There is no room for saints, only heroes. The desire to excel in a world defined by the profit motive, combined with the everpresent risk and fear of failure, presents a particular challenge to the philosophical consultant, all the more so because the quest for philosophical understanding is in its very nature opposed to materialist values and the profit motive. In responding to the challenge of the business arena, we do not have the option to repudiate money and take refuge in dreams of a socialist utopia. Nor can we accept the dominant capitalist ideology which identifies the business arena with the world. Nor indeed is it acceptable to split the ‘good‘ world of ethics from the ‘bad‘ world of business; grudgingly recognizing the necessity of the business arena while at the same time stigmatizing it as a necessary evil. Accepting that a degree of tension between the two worlds is unavoidable, an enlightened philosophy of business offers positive celebration of the business arena alongside recognition that we are not merely players in the business arena but ethical beings at one and the same time