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Summary Business and Consumer Ethics
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- Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
Summary of Business and Consumer Ethics for BA3 Business Economics at the VUB.
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BUSINESS AND CONSUMERS ETHICSBUSINESS AND CONSUMERS ETHICS
For Business Ethics
1. Introduction: against business ethics
2. Common sense business ethics
3. ‘Business ethics’ I: consequences
4. ‘Business ethics’ II: intentions
5. ‘Business ethics’ III: virtues
6. The meaning of ethics
7. Denying ethics I: bureaucracy
8. Denying ethics II: global capital
Conclusion: for business ethics
THE ETHICAL DEMAND P8-28 & P123-142
DOES THE RICHNESS OF THE FEW BENEFITS US ALL?
EXAM:
2 QUESTIONS
1. THEORETICAL QUESTION ABOUT A NOTION
a. Example: explain commodity fetishism
2. ARGUMENTATE A BROADER ASPECT
a. Making links
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,BUSINESS AND CONSUMERS ETHICS
Introduction: What is Applied Ethics?
“What does it mean to be a human being?”
What is the problem with business ethics? One way of expressing it would be to say something like
the following. It is simply a matter of getting let down. Business ethics holds a great promise, in that it
promises ethics and speaks of justice. But at the same time, it seems compromised to its very core,
and seems to resist the very thing that it advances. Part of the problem, then, is that business ethics
promises far more than it delivers. And this delivery problem is due to the way that business ethics
has taken what we would call a narrow or restricted version of business and ethics. While business
ethics claims to be open and critical, we feel it to be narrow and uncritical. We will do our best to
outline an argument for a broadened or expanded business ethics. Which is perhaps doing little more
than taking business ethics seriously, more seriously than it takes itself.
Normativity / Humanity / Individuality
- “Geworfenheit”, “Jemeinigkeit” (Heidegger), obligation/ethical demand or claim
§ “Geworfenheit” = throwness = individual existence being thrown into the world
§ “Jemeinigkeit” Each of us, each of any human being on earth is singular, or at least that you
cannot possibly share what it means to be you.
• The only one around here who is me, is me, you cannot possible share your personal
resistant, such as suffering, being born, dying, all things that you have to do on your
own, which is highly personal.
§ Is there a limit to our freedom, are we free at all, can we dispose of our life, or is there
something that obligates us to act in a certain way?
• All ethics is about that certain question
• IS what we ought to do for everybody the same? Is it mediate or something that can be
made universal?
• As you would ask if there would be ethical obligations, you would receive different
answers, because there are different ethical theory, that everyone has tried to deal in
their own way to answer the question if there are ethical obligations
• Of course, also in this course, we will have to deal with these ethical theories and
traditions.
• Before we start the question, about business ethical question, we have to relate
to theories that already came up with answers.
• Whether there Is obligations is related with our personality, individual way of
looking at it will matter, therefore before we start to look at traditions and ethical
question in the sphere of business. He will draw the attention of the essential
characteristics of the basic ethics
§ The professor believes that there is some kind of obligation that has to be
taken into account à otherwise no ethics.
§ These characteristics (Normativity / Humanity / Individuality) will set the
tone, for anything the professor will say later on.
The threefold characteristic of the ethical demand
Characteristic of the ethical demand (the 3fold ethical demand characteristic)
§ This is what the prof things what the ethical obligation is about
Singular: “silent character” of the demand
- He does not mean more than what he has been saying so far about our human nature
§ It is typical of human being that there are all individuals, no copy of me in the universe, but
everyone is highly individual
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• If we take that to be true, it somehow would have meant that somehow the ethical
demand takes into account the very fact that we are individuals, it penetrates our whole
being as a singular person
§ It will also mean, that what is ask of you in an ethical respect (ask of you not to kill or lie for
example), then it will mean that it is always asked of you as a singular person, if the claim is
on your shoulders, you cannot possibly share that obligation, it is asked of you and of you
alone.
§ You alone is responsible of what is asked of you
§ You have that duty to respect the individuality or singularity of the ethical demand, you
cannot possibly shove off, putt aside that obligation.
- Climate change for example, is ask of you to be careful and not leave it for the other generation
- It is very difficult to universalize the ethical demand, if it always demands…
- If you lock up the ethical demand in the universal claim than something must go lost somehow.
- The silent character about the ethical demand means that each one decides on its personal
situation what the demand is actually about
§ Prof says it is a dangerous thing to say, it could lead to the idea that the demand is somehow
arbitrarily, somehow relative to everyone’s situations
• People could think I do enough I leave the action to the next generation
• It could lead to the wrong conclusion of being arbitrary, which it is not!!!
• Then you would say that there is no ethical demand resting on your shoulders,
you are denying the idea that there is a demand
- There is a claim upon our humanity, but it is singular, each decides in his own situation, people
who have no means for living do as much as people who are rich.
§ The people who have the biggest ecological footprint à the demand on their ethical
shoulder is bigger than someone who as a smaller ecological footprint
§ Nobody can decide in your place what the demand is about, everybody can say I have done
enough, or I think I have done enough, has to do with the ethical demand too.
- Also means that the ethical demand somehow has to do with separation,
§ Understanding what ethics is about, start with the idea that you will have to accept and
understand that as an individual human being you are separated from others. Linked to
Jemeinigkeit.
• Understanding that each of us stands alone in the sense that it is on our individual
shoulders, on our shoulders as individuals
§ The prof means this with separations
§ Of course, we live in a society, of course social claim matters
§ We are always in the possibility to say no to societal habits
• Ex.: Extreme example imagine that you were born in Germany in the 1920s, if you were
born in Germany in that time, it was a very difficult to thing to say no to what Germans
or at least some ideology though that was ok, you all know Nazi ideology, it was very
difficult to say no at this point to what most people were thinking and pretending to
think what has to be done with certain types of society and people.
• What people think about the way to tackle immigrants.
• You can say society matters, but you cannot think about ethics that you are always in a
position to reflect what is happening in society
Absolute: life is a gift
- The ethical demand is absolute
- Absolute means least of all that it is something that is higher than life itself, something that
dominates or penetrates anything else we are doing. Something that we are, something that fell
on us
- The idea that life is a gift, controversial? No
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, BUSINESS AND CONSUMERS ETHICS
§ Basic idea about life: it has been given to us, we have not asked to be born, nobody could
meaningfully claim that he or she asked to be born, life as we know it is something that befell
us.
• Life is coming over us, falling over us. Life befalls us, something is there we haven’t
asked for it, couldn’t deny it. It doesn’t mean that you can take your life (another
question) at the moment you were born (that you came into being) that is something in
your permission was not asked
- That is what is meant when philosophers are saying that it is a gift, it has been given to us without
our consent. It means that being a human being is a gift, whether you are happy with it or not, it
means that something is bigger than us, let’s call that something life. Somehow it transcendent
our individuality, something that came before us, that is older than us.
- If you decide to fight like animals do, if you decide to live like a pig, something about the very idea
that you are a human being is going lost.
- Absolute character of the ethical demand –> ethics and ethical demand and human existence are
one and the same, they are co-original, we are born with the claim of being human being, if we
throw that away, we throw away a piece of gift that we are a human being
- We are always already responsible of everything we do.
- In every breath you take the absolute demand of ethics is present.
- If life is a gift, where is the giver?
§ If you receive a gift, then somebody is giving you that present, your best friend or your wife
or your lover or whatever…
§ How about life? Where does it come from? Is there a giver? Is there such a being that is
giving life to a human?
• The answer is not the prof’s problem, the only thing that you can see and that is
impossible to deny, that you have being giving life, by the parents? Yes, because they
came together, but are the parents then the giver of your life, yes and no, whatever
they did, they did not choose to have this typical child, as a boy or girl. They do not
decide everything. Whoever is giving life, whoever is the occasion of life, whoever is the
occasion for the fact that I am who I am à Religion belief that there is a divine being
that puts individual creatures on earth.
Infinite: “life is lived forward and understood backwards” (Kierkegaard)
- Is linked to the singular character
- It’s 3 characteristics are one,
- HE means with it that we have never done enough when it comes to the ethical demand, it is not
something that you can fulfill,
- It is infinite that you have never really fulfilled the obligation that you have fulfilled the ethical
demand
- An essential characteristic of what we are doing is that we are always striving that we are heeding
to our goal, but that there is no such thing as an overall goal of life…
§ Is there no such thing that once you have attained it life is over?
§ Human beings are always striving beings, you cannot possibly say when life is fulfilled
§ You can say that particular tasks are fulfilled (ex. obtained degree or the job you’ve wanted,
that is another thing.
§ When we live, we are always heading forward, but we never really understand what we were
as a person, until life has finished
• You cannot say what your life is about, you can change as a human being to make some
choices and changes your choices. Not until your life is finished you can understand
what your life is about.
• I have been racists for some years in my life, no I have changed my life for the
better, this is a little fulfillment, but your life is not completely fulfilled. You
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