This chapter contains sections titled: Background The self‐defeating nature of immoral actions Treating stakeholders as persons The business firm as a moral community The purity of motive Kant's cosmopolitanism and international business.

Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have found in the original book. Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition--justice as fairness--and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the (...) social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. "Each person," writes Rawls, "possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override." Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Lincoln, Rawls's theory is as powerful today as it was when first published. (shrink)

Difficult moral issues in economic life, such as evaluating the impact of hostile takeovers and plant relocations or determining the obligations of business to the environment, constitute the raison d'etre of business ethics. Yet, while the ultimate resolution of such issues clearly requires detailed, normative analysis, a shortcoming of business ethics is that to date it has failed to develop an adequate normative theory.1 The failing is especially acute when it results in an inability to provide a basis for fine-grained (...) analyses of issues. Both general moral theories and stakeholder theory seem incapable of expressing the moral complexity necessary to provide practical normative guidance for many business ethics contexts. (shrink)

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.

In der 1785 veröffentlichten Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten formuliert Kant erstmals die Prinzipien einer universalistischen Ethik der Autonomie, deren Einfluß bis heute ungebrochen ist. Schon beim Übergang von der gemeinen zur philosophischen Vernunfterkenntnis findet man die Hauptgedanken: In der Ethik geht es nicht primär um das gute Leben und das Glück, und es geht auch zunächst nicht darum, welche Handlungserfolge erzielt werden; Gegenstand moralischer Hochschätzung sind vielmehr Intentionen und Maximen. Gut ist, was für alle vernünftigen Wesen gilt, weil es (...) von ihnen als autonomen und vernünftigen Wesen gewollt wird. Die Schrift ist kurz, einfach gegliedert und verständlich geschrieben. Sie eignet sich daher als Einführung in Kants Ethik, enthält aber zugleich als Grundlegung alle wesentlichen Gedanken seiner praktischen Philosophie. Auf der Grundlage der Originalausgabe von 1785/86 wurde der Text völlig neu erstellt. Eines der wichtigsten Bücher der Philosophiegeschichte liegt damit in einer zuverlässigen und preisgünstigen Neuausgabe vor. (shrink)

'Foot stands out among contemporary ethical theorists because of her conviction that virtues and vices are more central ethical notions than rights, duties, justice, or consequences - the primary focus of most other contemporary theorists. This volume brings together a dozen essays published between 1957 and 1977, and includes two new ones as well. In the first, Foot argues explicitly for an ethic of virtue, and in the next five discusses abortion, euthanasia, free will/determination, and the ethics of Hume and (...) Nietzsche. The final eight essays chart her growing disenchantment with emotivism and prescriptivism and their account of moral arguments. All the essays embody to some extent her commitment to an ethics of virtue... Foot's style is straightforward and readable, her arguments subtle, ingenious, and some of them important.' Choice. (shrink)

This book continues and revises the ideas of justice as fairness that John Rawls presented in _A Theory of Justice_ but changes its philosophical interpretation in a fundamental way. That previous work assumed what Rawls calls a "well-ordered society," one that is stable and relatively homogenous in its basic moral beliefs and in which there is broad agreement about what constitutes the good life. Yet in modern democratic society a plurality of incompatible and irreconcilable doctrines--religious, philosophical, and moral--coexist within the (...) framework of democratic institutions. Recognizing this as a permanent condition of democracy, Rawls asks how a stable and just society of free and equal citizens can live in concord when divided by reasonable but incompatible doctrines? This edition includes the essay "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," which outlines Rawls ' plans to revise _Political Liberalism,_ which were cut short by his death. "An extraordinary well-reasoned commentary on _A Theory of Justice_...a decisive turn towards political philosophy." --_Times Literary Supplement_. (shrink)

Consisting of two essays, this work by a Harvard professor offers his thoughts on the idea of a social contract regulating people's behavior toward one another.

In a series of articles specifically commossioned for this volume, some of today's most distinguished business ethicists survey the main areas of interest and ...

Is morality rational? In this book Gauthier argues that moral principles are principles of rational choice. He proposes a principle whereby choice is made on an agreed basis of cooperation, rather than according to what would give an individual the greatest expectation of value. He shows that such a principle not only ensures mutual benefit and fairness, thus satisfying the standards of morality, but also that each person may actually expect greater utility by adhering to morality, even though the choice (...) did not have that end primarily in view. In resolving what may appear to be a paradox, the author establishes morals on the firm foundation of reason. Gauthier's argument includes an account of value, linking it to preference and utility; a discussion of the curcumstances in which morality is unnecessary; and an application of morals by agreement to relations between peoples at different levels of development and different generations. Finally, he reflects on the assumptions about individuality and community made by his account of rationality and morality. (shrink)

Societies function on the basis of rules. These rules, rather like the rules of the road, coordinate the activities of individuals who have a variety of goals and purposes. Whether the rules work well or ill, and how they can be made to work better, is a matter of major concern. Appropriately interpreted, the working of social rules is also the central subject matter of modern political economy. This book is about rules - what they are, how they work, and (...) how they can be properly analysed. The authors' objective is to understand the workings of alternative political institutions so that choices among such institutions can be more fully informed. Thus, broadly defined, the methodology of constitutional political economy is the subject matter of The Reason of Rules. The authors have examined how rules for political order work, how such rules might be chosen, and how normative criteria for such choices might be established. (shrink)

'Foot stands out among contemporary ethical theorists because of her conviction that virtues and vices are more central ethical notions than rights, duties, justice, or consequences - the primary focus of most other contemporary theorists. This volume brings together a dozen essays published between 1957 and 1977, and includes two new ones as well. In the first, Foot argues explicitly for an ethic of virtue, and in the next five discusses abortion, euthanasia, free will/determination, and the ethics of Hume and (...) Nietzsche. The final eight essays chart her growing disenchantment with emotivism and prescriptivism and their account of moral arguments. All the essays embody to some extent her commitment to an ethics of virtue... Foot's style is straightforward and readable, her arguments subtle, ingenious, and some of them important.' Choice. (shrink)

This presidential address to the Society for Business Ethics argues that business ethics rests upon the mistaken assumption thatteaching and research in the field ought to aim at the incorporation of ethics into managerial decision making. An alternative to this Moral Manager Model is a Moral Market Model, in which the aim is to develop markets that produce ethical outcomes. The differencesbetween the two models are discussed with reference to the themes of responsibility, participation, and relationships.

Employing the techniques of modern economic analysis, Professor Buchanan reveals the conceptual basis of an individual's social rights by examining the ...

Difficult moral issues in economic life, such as evaluating the impact of hostile takeovers and plant relocations or determining the obligations of business to the environment, constitute the raison d'etre of business ethics. Yet, while the ultimate resolution of such issues clearly requires detailed, normative analysis, a shortcoming of business ethics is that to date it has failed to develop an adequate normative theory.1 The failing is especially acute when it results in an inability to provide a basis for fine-grained (...) analyses of issues. Both general moral theories and stakeholder theory seem incapable of expressing the moral complexity necessary to provide practical normative guidance for many business ethics contexts. (shrink)

The 'Evolution of Cooperation' addresses a simple yet age-old question; If living things evolve through competition, how can cooperation ever emerge? Despite the abundant evidence of cooperation all around us, there existed no purely naturalistic answer to this question until 1979, when Robert Axelrod famously ran a computer tournament featuring a standard game-theory exercise called The Prisoner's Dilemma. To everyone's surprise, the program that won the tournament, named Tit for Tat, was not only the simplest but the most "cooperative" entrant. (...) This unexpected victory proved that cooperation - one might even say altruism - is mathematically possible and therefore needs no hidden hand or divine agent to create and sustain it. A great roadblock to the understanding of all sorts of behavior was at last removed. The updated edition includes an extensive new chapter on cooperation in cancer cells and among terrorist organizations. (shrink)