Teaching Business Ethics: Student Exercise: Reading Aristotle

A basic rationale for Virtue Ethics may include the following:

1. The insufficiency of Kantian and Utilitarian theories. The inflexibility of Kant's dictum, "never lie," and the ambiguity of the utilitarian core concepts of interest, welfare, or happiness are usually cited as reasons for this insufficiency.

2. Kantian and Utilitarian theories are based on what may be called "extreme other-regard." That is, an over-emphasis on self-sacrifice and the welfare of others, perhaps to the detriment of the flourishing and welfare of one's self.

3. Kantian and Utilitarian theories do not provide motivations: "Principle-based ethics leaves us with an unbridgeable motivational gap between the applied principle and the action" (DesJardins 97). We need a context in which motivation toward personal moral goals can be justified.?

Suggested Exercise:?

1. Give students a quick sketch of Aristotle's Golden Mean idea and then have students read Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics sections relating to the virtues suggested by Bragues as being most directly related to business:?courage, self-control (temperance), liberality,?magnificence, magnanimity (pride, in the Ross translation), sociability (Aristotle's unnamed virtue, similar to friendliness), and?justice. (Justice might well be omitted, since it rather complicated in Aristotle's text and involves political and economic concerns.)

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2. Ask students to provide a defense of how one virtue applies to contemporary business. Ask for examples of situations in which this virtue is called for and of persons who exemplify this virtue. Encourage students to be creative in their interpretations, while trying to stay true to the basic ideas behind Aristotle's examples and descriptions.

3. Consolidate the findings of the class through discussion. Create a picture of an Aristotelian Business model for our times.?

4. Compare the student-generated model to the way that Bragues interpreted Aristotle's text. I think Bragues's ideas may benefit his broader reading of the text, but it's a virtual certainty that students will provide many creative and useful interpretations of the virtues. This should be a fun, idea-generating exercise for students.

Bragues, George. "Seek the Good Life, not Money:?The Aristotelian Approach to Business?Ethics."?Journal of Business Ethics?(2006):?67:341?357.

DesJardins, Joseph. "Virtues and Business Ethics." W. Michael Hoffman, Jennifer Mills Moore, and David A Fredo, eds. Corporate Governance and Institutionalizing Ethics. D. C. Heath and Company, 1984. William Shaw and Vincent Barry. Moral Issues in Business, 9th edition. Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 2004. 96-100. Print.

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