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summary of business ethics
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- Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
Summary of 37 pages for the course Business And Consumer Ethics at VUB (idk)
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Business and Consumer EthicsLecture notes plus parts from the book ‘For Business Ethics’ plus the slides (2022)
INTRODUCTION
- Cf. Le Petit Prince:
Is there such thing as a sheep in the box? It's about raising questions and discussing
➔ raising dialogue
Is there such thing as an ethics theory? Ethics is mainly about a sheep in the box but we can reflect
about it, imagine and discuss what ethics are. It is about human life itself, everyone who claims to be
a human being. Ethics also deal with other kinds of life like animals or plants.
The nature of ethics
(1) What is ethics about?
- "it's about what is right and wrong, what we should and shouldn't do" By giving such an
answer you haven't really given an answer.
What does right and wrong actually mean? The terms are broad and thus we introduce normativity,
humanity, and individuality.
➢ Normativity:
The technical more correct answer to that question (1) is: It's about normativity.
What we ought to do as human beings. It is the transfer from 'what is' to 'what is ought to be'.
What should we do? How should we act and what is expected from us? Who has the measure
of the expectations? What is the norm of what we are doing?
There are boundaries to the freedom of your acts. The ethics explores the limits of our
freedom. can we dispose of our life and is there something that forces us to act in a certain
way? That last question is a crucial question in the study of ethics. Is there something that
forces us to act in a certain way? And If so, what forces us?
➢ Humanity:
We reflect upon our own actions and are the only beings that do this. We are questions to
ourselves and question our acts and being. We speak about concrete beings like you and me,
not abstract beings. It’s an important concept to grasp as it often comes back to this in ethics.
➢ Individuality:
You cannot speak about humanity if you’re not speaking about individuality. Everybody
reflects in its own way. No human being is the same and asks themselves the same questions.
• Question asked in class about animals that are also individuals: Abyssal difference between
humans and animals. humans have a broken relationship with their own existence and
animals don't have that. We don’t know what is going on in their minds. It is less difficult to
imagine yourself as a god than to imagine yourself as an animal. They seem to just accept the
situation and not reflect about it. There is a layer on their consciousness that they can't break
out of. Humans are symbolic beings and use symbols whereas animals don't.
,In relation with those ethical terms we German philosopher Heidegger introduced ‘geworfenheit’ and
‘jemeinigkeit’.
➢ Geworfenheit:
Translates to ‘thrown-ness’ (NL: geworpenheid). We were thrown in this world and life
without a choice and without the ability to speak or think. Nobody has asked coming into
being. Somehow we've received life of a person that didn't specifically chose YOU to be born.
(meaning that they couldn’t control the sex, character, behavior etc.) Somehow we are always
thrown in life.
➢ Jemeinigkeit:
It doesn’t really have a translation as Heidegger came up with it but it roughly means ‘mine-
ness’ or ‘each-their-own-ness’. We are individuals and cannot replace somebody else. We all
have to die one day but we cannot die in somebody else’s place. You are yourself but you can't
share that aspect: you can exchange ideas and passions but you can't change lives. We all
have to live our own life.
"Human beings are always about jemeinigkeit"
Obligation/ethical demand or claim
What does it mean that there is an ethical obligation? is there something like obligation in life, that
we are forced to do, or that we are refrained from doing?
➔ Well yes and there is a threefold characteristic about that ethical demand:
➢ Singular character of the ethical demand:
What we do with our life is not indifferent. At each point in life we can take our life or stop a
life. It is always a reflection in the first person: What should I do; we are individuals who reflect
in an individual way. So that demand is always singular because in the first instance we are
speaking about ourselves. We speak about it in a singular way. Given the fact we are thrown
into life we have to take into account that ethics is about being thrown and we are always
already there to start reflecting. We don't have the choice of 'not being there'.
e.g. In the climate change situation people have different obligations: persons who use the
car and fly often don't have the same obligations as people who don't use a car. That demand
has a silent character: we cannot share our individuality, we live our lives as individuals.
➢ Absolute character of the ethical demand:
It has to do with us being human. It means that the ethical obligation is put on our shoulders
by way of our existence itself. You cannot possibly think that we are FIRST COME and THEN
choosing/earning our ethical demand → it’s the wrong way of looking at ethical obligation.
Ethics is nothing but reflecting upon our actions. By being thrown we are ethical beings and
whenever we reflect upon the ethical demand it is already there, it's not possible to escape
that because otherwise you're trying to escape 'being human'. Saying our lives is not under
obligation is the same as saying you’re an animal without the capability of reflecting on itself.
, This idea connects with the philosophy that life is a gift: we have been given life as it is.
But who is the giver, what do I owe that giver? (It's preferable by the professor that life befalls
on us, because we don't know who the giver is and by reflecting on that question it becomes
a never ending debate of the existence of a god.) At the end life eludes us: we all die in the
end → it shows we don't control life. Life is bigger than us, it transcends us.
- Just like ethics does.
➢ Infinite character of the ethical demand:
The ethical obligation is never fulfilled, we have never done enough because it is always in the
making. We are always in a process of becoming, you can't put it on hold and take a break
from life until we die.
“life is lived forward but understood backwards” (Kierkegaard) → we don't know what is
going on in life until we reached the end of it. Everything can change in a second/moment.
you never know who you truly are until your life ends. Life is constantly in the making . If your
life is in the making then also your actions have an endless characteristic thus the ethical goal
can never be a finite goal. You can't say “I’m done” and take a break, it’s always resting on
your shoulders and never really know if you're living according the ethical demand.
The disruptive nature of ethics
“A person can never be sure that he or she acted in the right manner. Our uncertainty is our guilt.”
~ (Løgstrup)
➔ We don't possess the nature of ethics, we can’t master it because it is bigger than us. We
cannot say we know an answer otherwise we tell we hold our life in our hands, which
contradicts the threefold characteristic. There is an existential guilt to being human. We’ll
never know whether we did the right thing or not. It’s not about the criminal guilt: it’s about
the fact we'll never do enough.
Question asked in class: Can we judge someone that isn’t living a very ethical life?
The uncertainty is at stake. You don't know if you're acting in an ethical way (singular characteristic)
so how would you be able to know if someone else is acting in an ethical way? Yet we always reflect
on the ethical demand. What is there more to be said? Who are we to say things about ethics? In the
end we have reflected upon it but the problem is still there.
What is applied ethics?
Ethics as we know it is firstly an offspring of western thought, but there are other cultures and societies
that may not have the same visions of ethics.
etymological roots → Greek roots: ETHOS
morals, morality and ethics have the same roots actually but don’t exactly mean the same thing.
Morals = derived from Latin word
Ethics = derived from Greek word
, Twofold way of ethos: éthos vs èthos
➢ Éthos = shelter/residence place for animals (used in the book Iliad & Odysee)
There is custom and habit, it becomes clear how members of such a group should act/behave
when assembled in a shelter. e.g. picking order with chickens.
There is a place where living beings gather where rules, customs and habits are rising and
opportunities to grow.
Cicero: "O tempora, o mores!" (translates to: “oh the times, oh the customs!”)
used as an exclamation of despair at prevailing social or political norms
éthos of Athens at the time: justice, courage, temperance, gentleness, prudence, liberality
→ morals expected of a good citizen of Athens
éthos of Sparta at the time: physical education could have been more stressed.
The customs vary according to the place/shelter the people gathered in.
➢ Èthos = is more about the reflection upon your activities.
morality: conscious/deliberate actions. it seems like we are consciously dealing with those
morals and reflecting on them. e.g. people who eat meat vs people who don't. you start
reflecting on an inner dialogue with a voice in you telling what you should do.
Morality comes about when reflecting on morals. So when ethics comes, there is an extra
dimension to it. We reflect on the reflection of morals in ethics. What means that reflection?
Well that has to do with the threefold characteristic of the ethical demand.
We connect with morality and reflection by the voice in our head
what do we discuss when we discuss ethics? It’s trying to bring together all kinds of moral voices and
is on the level of science in the manner that it’s trying to give a sense of moral reflection.
→ a systematical and critical reflection on morals and morality
there are no issues in ethics that cannot be discussed or be under discussion which makes that the
CRUCIAL difference between religion and ethics
When we look at religion in the west and go way back to the founding father Abraham – who
sacrifices his son by a divine command to show his loyalty – we see that there’s always
reference to divine commands, i.e. dogmas: They’re quite clear, you cannot deny them, and
dogmas do not care about what plays on Earth. Dogmas are always right and no second
thought is given to them.
So, whenever we then speak about ethics we cannot speak about dogmas, because in ethics
everything has to be reviewed and criticized. Criticism is at the heart of ethics and everything has to
be put into question and be reflected upon.
• RE-flection: re-submitting something under discussion.
What does ethics offer? It seems to be after consensus. It can bring people together (éthos) and
provides us with common grounds. Are we always after a majority to know what is right and wrong?
No, there is no absolute paradigm (disruptive nature of ethics)
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