This is a major work in moral philosophy, the long-awaited follow-up to Parfit's 1984 classic Reasons and Persons, a landmark of twentieth-century philosophy. Parfit now presents a powerful new treatment of reasons and a critical examination of the most prominent systematic moral theories, leading to his own ground-breaking conclusion.

In this book, T. M. Scanlon offers new answers to these questions, as they apply to the central part of morality that concerns what we owe to each other.

One of the most influential of the Victorian philosophers, Henry Sidgwick also made important contributions to fields such as economics, political theory, and classics. An active promoter of higher education for women, he founded Cambridge's Newnham College in 1871. He attended Rugby School and then Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained his whole career. In 1859 he took up a lectureship in classics, and held this post for ten years. In 1869, he moved to a lectureship in moral philosophy, the (...) subject where he left arguably his greatest mark when he produced this work, regarded as his masterpiece. Published in 1874, the book argues the utilitarian approach to ethics, and a systematic and historically sensitive approach to ethical research that influenced utilitarian philosophers well into the twentieth century. It remains a valuable introduction to the philosophy, practice and history of ethics. This reissue includes the 1877 supplement. (shrink)

Bentham's best-known book stands as a classic of both philosophy and jurisprudence. The 1789 work articulates an important statement of the foundations of utilitarian philosophy — it also represents a pioneering study of crime and punishment. Bentham's reasoning remains central to contemporary debates in moral and political philosophy, economics, and legal theory.

Aristotle maintains that every man has, or should have, a single end, a target at which he aims. The doctrine is stated in E.N. I 2. ‘If, then, there is some end of the things we do which we desire for its own sake, and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else, clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall (...) we not, like archers who have a mark to aim t, be more likely to hit upon what is right?’. Aristotle does not here prove, nor need we understand him as claiming to prove, that there is only one end which is desired for itself. He points out correctly that, if there are objects which are desired but not desired for themselves, there must be some object which is desired for itself. The passage further suggests that, if there were one such object and one only, this fact would be important and helpful for the conduct of life. (shrink)

From the ethicist the_ New Yorker_ calls “the most influential living philosopher,” a new way of thinking about living ethically.

Drawing on conceptual works by Murphy (1999) and Solomon (1999), we develop a virtue ethics scale. Other ethics scales, which are grounded in deontological and teleological principles, may be used to classify people according to their beliefs about (1) the criteria they use to make ethical decisions, or (2) the ethicality of those decisions. We suggest augmenting these scales with our virtue ethics scale, which may be used to classify people according to their beliefs about the virtuous qualities of businesspeople.

This study represents an improvement in the ethics scales inventory published in a 1988 Journal of Business Ethics article. The article presents the distillation and validation process whereby the original 33 item inventory was reduced to eight items. These eight items comprise the following ethical dimensions: a moral equity dimension, a relativism dimension, and a contractualism dimension. The multidimensional ethics scale demonstrates significant predictive ability.

This book originated as lectures for a course on political philosophy that Rawls taught regularly at Harvard in the 1980s.

A resurgence of interest in virtue ethics has engendered new insight into the fundamental link between selfhood and morality. In contradistinction to the currently ascendant justice-reasoning research paradigm, it appears that a virtue ethics approach to moral psychology provides a theoretical framework which is amenable to the empirical investigation of the nature and formation of the moral self. Six primary features of virtue ethics are delineated with a unifying emphasis throughout on the inextricable link between virtue and moral selfhood. Questions (...) and issues concerning the possibility of a psychology of virtue ethics are directly addressed throughout. (shrink)

Management theory and practice are facing unprecedented challenges. The lack of sustainability, the increasing inequity, and the continuous decline in societal trust pose a threat to ‘business as usual’. Capitalism is at a crossroad and scholars, practitioners, and policy makers are called to rethink business strategy in light of major external changes. In the following, we review an alternative view of human beings that is based on a renewed Darwinian theory developed by Lawrence and Nohria. We label this alternative view (...) ‘humanistic’ and draw distinctions to current ‘economistic’ conceptions. We then develop the consequences that this humanistic view has for business organizations, examining business strategy, governance structures, leadership forms, and organizational culture. Afterward, we outline the influences of humanism on management in the past and the present, and suggest options for humanism to shape the future of management. In this manner, we will contribute to the discussion of alternative management paradigms that help solve the current crises. (shrink)

There is growing concern that a global economic system fueled predominately by financial incentives may not maximize human flourishing and social welfare externalities. If so, this presents a challenge of how to get economic actors to adopt a more virtuous motivational mindset. Relying on historical, psychological, and philosophical research, we show how such a mindset can be instilled. First, we demonstrate that historically, financial self-interest has never in fact been the only guiding motive behind free markets, but that markets themselves (...) are representations of our individual and collective moral identities. Building on this understanding, we review the research on how economic incentives crowd out virtue-oriented concerns. We then introduce the concept of moral self-awareness (MSA), an evolving mindset informed by reflection on moral identity, namely what one’s actions say about oneself given the impacts on others or society that one’s action may effect. MSA comprises three fundamental aspects of virtue-oriented reasoning: pride, shame, and guilt. Finally, we offer a four-stage model anchored in systems theory, yielding ever more refined motivating strategies for maximizing human flourishing and social welfare externalities. (shrink)

In business ethics journals, Kant’s ethics is often portrayed as overly formalistic, devoid of substantial content, and without regard for the consequences of actions or questions of character. Hence, virtue ethicists ride happily to the rescue, offering to replace or complement Kant’s theory with their own. Before such efforts are undertaken, however, one should recognize that Kant himself wrote a “virtue theory” (Tugendlehre), wherein he discussed the questions of character as well as the teleological nature of human action. Numerous Kant (...) scholars argue that Kant already erected precisely the kind of integrative moral architecture that some of his modern interpreters (while aiming to supersede him) wish to construct. For business ethics, this divergence of scholarly opinion is of crucial importance. It shows first that the standard portrayals of Kant’s ethics in business ethics textbooks—as rigidly deontological, narrowly individualistic, and hence unsuitable for the specific demands of corporate agency—might have to be revised. Second, discussions in the business ethics literature on stakeholder-engagement and managerial decision-making likewise stand to gain from a more nuanced picture of Kant’s moral philosophy. Third, a reassessment of Kant’s ethics with regard to questions of personal character and moral sentiments might also lead to a more favorable view of the relevance of his ethics for managerial practice. Last, but not least, the many current attempts to reconcile Kant’s freedom-oriented philosophy with virtue theories stand to benefit considerably from a better understanding of how Kant himself conceived of one such synthesis between the formal and substantial aspects of morality. This, ultimately, could lead to an important overlapping consensus in the academic literature as to the role and relevance of virtuous conduct in business. (shrink)

Most economists are committed to some version of egoism. After distinguishing among the various sorts of egoistic claims, l cite the empirical literature against psychological egoism and show that attempts to account for this data make these economists' previous empirical claims tautological. Moreover, the assumption of egoism has undesirable consequences, especially for students; if people believe that others behave egoistically, they are more likely to behave egoistically themselves. As an alternative to egoism I recommend the commitment model of Robert Frank. (...) The equivalent of egoism at the organizational level is that business firms seek (should seek) to maximize profits. I present arguments to show that a conscious attempt by managers to maximize profits is likely to fail. A committed altruism is more likely to raise profits. I suggest that a firm should take as its primary purpose providing meaningful work for employees. (shrink)

This short theoretical paper elucidates a plausible theory about the Global Financial Crisis and the role of senior financial corporate directors in that crisis. The paper presents a theory of the Global Financial Crisis which argues that psychopaths working in corporations and in financial corporations, in particular, have had a major part in causing the crisis. This paper is thus a very short theoretical paper but is one that may be very important to the future of capitalism because it discusses (...) significant ways in which Corporate Psychopaths may have acted recently, to the detriment of many. Further research into this theory is called for. (shrink)

Introduction to one of the most important, controversial, and suggestive works of moral philosophy ever written.

This work grounds moral and poltical philosophy in the requirements of a well-functioning society, exploring the reasons an individual may have for helping to uphold such a society rather than looking to the morality of others. A work in the tradition of Hume, Smith, Mill, von Mises, Hayek and Hazlitt, it expounds a rules or indirect version of utilitarianism. It reviews criticisms of utilitarianism in detail, as well as alternative grounds of ethics including contractarianism, rights-based doctrines, and appeals to specific (...) intuitions. Yeager brings the insights of economics to bear on a field usually dominated by philosophers and theologians. (shrink)

Unpublished during Nietzsche's lifetime, presents the philosopher's exploration of the culture of the Greeks.

The thirty-five chapters in this book describe various judgmental heuristics and the biases they produce, not only in laboratory experiments but in important...

v. 1. Incipit Zarathustra/Incipit tragoedia: art, music, representation, and style -- v. 2. The world as will to power- - and nothing else? : metaphysics and epistemology -- v. 3. On morality -- v. 4. The last man and the overman: Nietzsche's politics.

We argue that attempts to extrapolate moral motives for non-egoistic behavior in organizational behavior often interpret results empathically or deontically, while leaving other moral motivational frames, such as the utilitarian and virtue ethical, under-examined. We encourage the creation of experimental measures to distinguish various philosophical frames.