This paper argues that Mencius is a eudaimonist, and that his eudaimonism plays an architectonic role in his thought. Mencius maintains that the most satisfying life for a human being is the life of benevolence, rightness, wisdom, and ritual propriety, and that such a life fulfills essential desires and capacities of the human heart. He also repeatedly appeals both to these and to morally neutral desires in his efforts to persuade others to develop and exercise the virtues. Classical Greek eudaimonists (...) similarly regarded the life of virtue as both objectively good and subjectively desirable, and appealed to the desire for eudaimonia or happiness to motivate a commitment to the virtues. Mencius offers a carefully crafted, teleological account of human nature that appears designed in part to support his eudaimonism. In contrast with proposals by other scholars, I argue that Mencius’ notion of happiness, analogous to the Greek eudaimonia, is expressed by the construction jìn xìng 盡性, “fulfilling human nature” or the nearly equivalent jìn xīn 盡心, “fulfilling one’s heart.”. (shrink)

Virtue ethics (VE), due to its eudaimonistic character, is very anthropocentric; thus the application of VE to environmental ethics (EE) seems to be in contradiction with EE’s critical opinion of human centeredness. In the paper, I prove the claim that there is a possibility of elaborating an environmental virtue ethics (EVE) that involves others (including nonhuman beings). I prove that claim through analyzing Ronald Sandler’s EVE, especially his concept of pluralistic virtue and a pluralistic approach to the aim of ethical (...) endeavor which is not only focused on personal flourishing but also helps others (including nonhumans) to flourish. I start my analysis with a close look at the application of anthropocentrism in VE, beginning by discerning the three types of anthropocentrism that are most often used in discussion on EE and EVE, namely ontological, epistemological, and ethical. Subsequently, I analyze the concept of personal flourishing, which is responsible for the anthropocentric/egoistic nature of VE, proving that VE is anthropocentric/egoistic only formally, not in its content, and as such is only a rational theory, not a moral one. (shrink)

This paper explains how middle managers might enlist ethically engaged employees into the production of reliable, sustainable CSR. An accompanying model illustrates how those managers can encounter employee engagement in CSR and channel their enthusiasm effectively. It presents factors scaffolding organizational support for employee engagement and how they relate to the intensity of that engagement. It introduces the importance of employee voice and illustrates how associated signals might be captured.

The article focuses on a currently hot debate in contemporary ethics that takes place between so-called situationists and the advocates of virtue ethics. The fundamental assumption made by virtue ethics is that developing and perfecting one’s moral character or moral virtues warrants one’s morally good action. Situationists claim that this assumption contradicts the results of the latest empirical studies. From this observation, they conclude that virtue ethics is based on an empirically inadequate moral psychology.In the first part of the article, (...) I present the conceptions of virtue and moral character developed in response to the situationist criticism. I show to which degree these conceptions differ from the classical, so-called global approach in virtue ethics In the second part, based on the references to the latest empirical studies in social and cognitive psychology, I argue, against the situationist objection, that the classical notion of virtue meets the requirement of empirical adequacy. I mainly resort to the interactionist theory of personality by W. Mischel, R. Baumeister’s studies over self-control, D. Kahneman's conception of two-processual mind, and the studies over automatized processes by J. Bargh. (shrink)

Drawing upon the theory of virtue ethics, this study builds a decision tree predictive model to explore the anticipated impact of good traits on socially responsible consumption. Using R statistical software, we generate a classification tree and cross-validate the model on two independent datasets. The results indicate that the virtuous traits of self-efficacy, courage, and self-control, as well as the personality traits of openness and conscientiousness, predict socially responsible purchase and disposal behavior. Remarkably, the largest segment of socially responsible consumers (...) in the study scored high in self-efficacy and openness. This result suggests that marketers should focus on these good traits when creating advertisements to encourage sustainable consumption. Our study contributes to enhancing knowledge about the social and psychological aspects of the sustainability movement and provides a new analytical approach to predicting socially responsible consumption. (shrink)