This article applies the Kantian doctrine of respect for persons to the problem of sweatshops. We argue that multinational enterprises are properly regarded as responsible for the practices of their subcontractors and suppliers. We then argue that multinationalenterprises have the following duties in their off-shore manufacturing facilities: to ensure that local labor laws are followed; to refrain from coercion; to meet minimum safety standards; and to provide a living wage for employees. Finally, we consider and reply to the objection that (...) improving health and safety conditions and providing a living wage will cause greater harm than good. (shrink)

Agency and identity -- Necessitation -- Acts and actions -- Aristotle and Kant -- Agency and practical identity -- The metaphysics of normativity -- Constitutive standards -- The constitution of life -- In defense of teleology -- The paradox of self-constitution -- Formal and substantive principles of reason -- Formal versus substantive -- Testing versus weighing -- Maximizing and prudence -- Practical reason and the unity of the will -- The empiricist account of normativity -- The rationalist account of normativity (...) -- Kant on the hypothetical imperative -- Against particularistic willing -- Deciding and predicting -- Autonomy and efficacy -- The function of action -- The possibility of agency -- Non-rational action -- Action -- Attribution -- The psychology of action -- Expulsion from the garden : the transition to humanity -- Instinct, emotion, intelligence, and reason -- The parts of the soul -- Inside or outside -- Pull yourself together -- The constitutional model -- Models of the soul -- The city and the soul -- Platonic virtues -- Justice : substantive, procedural, and platonic -- Kant and the constitutional model -- Defective action -- The problem of bad action -- Being governed by the wrong law -- Or five bad constitutions -- Conceptions of evil -- Degrees of action -- Integrity and interaction -- Deciding to be bad -- The ordinary cases -- Dealing with the disunified -- Kant's theory of interaction -- My reasons -- Deciding to treat someone as an end in himself -- Interacting with yourself -- How to be a person -- What's left of me? (shrink)

Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals ranks alongside Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as one of the most profound and influential works in moral philosophy ever written. In Kant's own words its aim is to search for and establish the supreme principle of morality, the categorical imperative. Kant argues that every human being is an end in himself or herself, never to be used as a means by others, and that moral obligation is an expression of the (...) human capacity for autonomy or self-government. This edition presents the acclaimed translation of the text by Mary Gregor, together with an introduction by Christine M. Korsgaard that examines and explains Kant's argument. (shrink)

In this classic text, Kant sets out to articulate and defend the Categorical Imperative - the fundamental principle that underlies moral reasoning - and to lay the foundation for a comprehensive account of justice and human virtues. This new edition and translation of Kant's work is designed especially for students. An extensive and comprehensive introduction explains the central concepts of Groundwork and looks at Kant's main lines of argument. Detailed notes aim to clarify Kant's thoughts and to correct some common (...) misunderstandings of his doctrines. (shrink)

Two centuries after they were published, Kant's ethical writings are as much admired and imitated as they have ever been, yet serious and long-standing accusations of internal incoherence remain unresolved. Onora O'Neill traces the alleged incoherences to attempts to assimilate Kant's ethical writings to modern conceptions of rationality, action and rights. When the temptation to assimilate is resisted, a strikingly different and more cohesive account of reason and morality emerges. Kant offers a "constructivist" vindication of reason and a moral vision (...) in which obligations are prior to rights and in which justice and virtue are linked. O'Neill begins by reconsidering Kant's conceptions of philosophical method, reason, freedom, autonomy and action. She then moves on to the more familiar terrain of interpretation of the Categorical Imperative, while in the last section she emphasizes differences between Kant's ethics and recent "Kantian" ethics, including the work of John Rawls and other contemporary liberal political philosophers. (shrink)

Kant begins the First Section of the Groundwork with a statement that is one of the most memorable in all his writings: “There is nothing it is possible to think of anywhere in the world, or indeed anything at all outside it, that can be held to be good without limitation, excepting only a good will” (Ak 4:393).[i] Due to the textual prominence of this claim, readers of the Groundwork have usually proceeded to read that work, and Kant’s other ethical (...) works as well, on the assumption that the truth of that assertion, and therefore the conception of the good will, both occupy a fundamental place in Kantian ethics. The assumption, however, becomes increasingly hard to sustain as we gain more familiarity with Kant’s ethical writings and better understanding of his ethical theory.[ii] As for the concept of the good will, Kant does avow the intention of “developing” it (Ak 4:397), and he goes on to thematize concepts that he thinks of as related to the good will (the moral worth of an action, acting from duty). But he never provides an explicit account of what he takes a ‘good will’ to be.[iii]. (shrink)

The Herald of Free Enterprise, a ferry operating in the English Channel, sank on March 6, 1987, drowning nearly two hundred people. The official inquiry found that the company running the ferry was extremely sloppy, with poor routines of checking and management. “From top to bottom the body corporate was infected with the disease of sloppiness.”1 But the courts did not penalize anyone in what might seem to be an appropriate measure, failing to identify individuals in the company or on (...) the ship itself who were seriously enough at fault. As one commentator put it, “The primary requirement of finding an individual who was liable . . . stood in the way of attaching any significance to the organizational sloppiness that had been found by the official inquiry.”2 In a case like this it can make good sense to hold that while the individuals involved may not bear a high degree of personal responsibility, together as a corporate enterprise they should carry full responsibility for what occurred. Although the members may not fully satisfy the conditions for being held personally responsible—although there are mitigating circumstances that excuse them in some mea-. (shrink)

I analyze a well-known and moving passage from John Steinbeck''s novelThe Grapes of Wrath. This passage provides an excellent illustration of one of the central questions about corporate moral agency: Is corporate moral agency anything over and above the agency of individual human beings? The passage in question is a debate about whether or not the actions of a particular company are anything over and above the actions of individual human beings.

This paper examines whether or not senior corporate executives are morally responsible for disasters which result from corporate activities. The discussion is limited to the case in which the information needed to prevent the disaster is present within the corporation, but fails to reach senior executives. The failure of information to reach executives is usually a result of negative information blockage, a phenomenon caused by the differing roles of constraints and goals within corporations. Executives should be held professionally responsible not (...) only for trying to prevent negative information blockage, but for succeeding. It is concluded that executives are professionally responsible for fulfilling their moral obligation to prevent disasters. (shrink)

This article applies the Kantian doctrine of respect for persons to the problem of sweatshops. We argue that multinational enterprises are properly regarded as responsible for the practices of their subcontractors and suppliers. We then argue that multinationalenterprises have the following duties in their off-shore manufacturing facilities: to ensure that local labor laws are followed; to refrain from coercion; to meet minimum safety standards; and to provide a living wage for employees. Finally, we consider and reply to the objection that (...) improving health and safety conditions and providing a living wage will cause greater harm than good. (shrink)

Most shoppers like bargains. Do bargains come at the expense of workers in sweatshops around the world? The authors argue that many large multinational corporations are running the moral equivalents of sweatshops and are not properly respecting the rights of persons. They list a set of minimum standards of safety and decency that they claim all corporations should meet (and that many are not). Finally, they defend their call for improved working conditions by replying to objections that meeting improved conditions (...) will cause greater harm than good, even to the workers themselves. They consider many specifi c corporations and name names and point the finger at various forms of disrespect for persons, along the way. (shrink)

In his new book the eminent Kant scholar Henry Allison provides an innovative and comprehensive interpretation of Kant's concept of freedom. The author analyzes the concept and discusses the role it plays in Kant's moral philosophy and psychology. He also considers in full detail the critical literature on the subject from Kant's own time to the present day. In the first part Professor Allison argues that at the centre of the Critique of Pure Reason there is the foundation for a (...) coherent general theory of rational agency. The second part employs this account of rational agency as a key to understanding Kant's concept of moral agency and associated moral psychology. The third part focuses on Kant's attempt to ground both moral law and freedom in the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason. This is a major contribution to the interpretation of Kant which will be of special interest to scholars and graduate students of Kant's moral theory. (shrink)

This book follows hard upon Korsgaard's The Sources of Normativity. Both present the author's influential version of a Kantian theory of normative ethics and metaethics. Whereas The Sources of Normativity was a systematic investigation of "normativity" written as a single unit, the present volume is a collection of previously published papers, some of them already well known and much discussed, dating between 1983 and 1993. By the nature of the case, one might expect less thematic unity in this book than (...) in the other one, but the present book is a deeper and more wide ranging presentation of the author's views. Korsgaard's historical focus in The Sources of Normativity is less on Kant and more on the British moralists. Creating the Kingdom of Ends deals quite explicitly with the interpretation of Kant's moral philosophy. The papers in this book contain, in my judgment, the heart of Korsgaard's work: a variety of fresh and illuminating insights into Kant's moral theory and its relation to contemporary ethical theory which have helped to reshape the image of Kant's ethics and to refocus the issues dealt with in current moral philosophy. Or to make claims less grand but of more immediate relevance to this review, there is no question that some of the papers in this book have helped to reshape both the present writer's image of Kant's ethics and his conception of the way questions of ethical theory should be addressed. I hope below to say something both about where I think Korsgaard has gotten these matters right, and where I find her position either unclear or dubious. (shrink)

Group agents are able to act but are not literally agents. Some group agents, e.g., we-mode groups and corporations, can, however, be regarded as functional group agents that do not have “intrinsic” mental states and phenomenal features comparable to what their individual members on biological and psychological grounds have. But they can have “extrinsic” mental states, states collectively attributed to them—primarily by their members. In this paper, we discuss the responsibility of such group agents. We defend the view that if (...) the group members have accepted the group agent’s attitudes and are committed to them, we can favorably compare the situation with the case of individual human agents and a group agent can be regarded as morally responsible for its intentional activities. (shrink)

This is a major new study of Kant's ethics that will transform the way students and scholars approach the subject in future. Allen Wood argues that Kant's ethical vision is grounded in the idea of the dignity of the rational nature of every human being. Undergoing both natural competitiveness and social antagonism the human species, according to Kant, develops the rational capacity to struggle against its impulses towards a human community in which the ends of all are to harmonize and (...) coincide. The distinctive features of the book are twofold. First, it focuses for the first time on the central role played in Kant's ethical theory by the value of rational nature as an end itself. Second, it shows the importance of Kant's systematic theory of human nature and history, and its implications for the structure, formulation, and application of Kant's moral principles. This comprehensive study will be of critical importance to students of moral philosophy, the history of ideas, political theory, and religious studies. (shrink)

Kant’s _Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals_, first published in 1785, is still one of the most widely read and influential works of moral philosophy. This Broadview edition combines a newly revised version of T.K. Abbott’s respected translation with material crucial for placing the _Groundwork_ in the context of Kant’s broader moral thought. A varied selection of other ethical writings by Kant on subjects including our moral duties, fundamental principles of justice, the concept of happiness, and the relation of morality (...) to religion are included, along with important criticisms of Kant’s ethics by Fichte, Schiller, Hegel, and Sidgwick. (shrink)

A survey of various candidates shows that there is no defensible moral principle that shows that individuals have an obligation to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

This section aims to summarize and conclude Part I in the form of a taxonomy of legitimate and illegitimate corporate moral responsibility attributions. I believe we can categorise four types of corporate moral responsibility attributions two of which are legitimate and two which are illegitimate with regard to our concept of moral agency and our moral intuition of fairness.

Ethical problems in business include not only genuine moral dilemmas and compliance problems but also problems arising from the distinctive characteristics of imperfect duties. Collective action by business to perfect imperfect duties can yield significant benefits. Sucharrrangements can (1) reduce temptations to moral laxity, (2) achieve greater efficiency by eliminating redundancies and gaps that plague uncoordinated individual efforts, (3) reap economies of scale and achieve success where benefits can be provided only if a certain threshold of resources can be brought (...) to bear on a social problem; (4) solve assurance problems where voluntary compliance by some parties depends upon their perception that competitors are doing their fair share, and (5) produce higher levels of contribution than would occur through independent action in response to imperfect duties, stimulated by the perception that there is a fair distribution of burdens of contribution among all parties involved. (shrink)

Properly speaking, the corporation, considered as an entity distinct from its members, cannot be morally responsible for wrongful corporate acts. Setting aside (in this abstract) acts brought about through negligence or omissions, we may say that moral responsibility for an act attaches to that agent (or agents) in whom the act "originates" in this sense: (1) the agent formed the (mental) intention or plan to bring about that act (possibly with the help of others) and (2) the act was intentionally (...) brought about through bodily movements over which that agent had direct control (i.e. the kind of direct mental control that I have over the body I refer to as "my" body) and through which the agent carried out his (mental) intention or plan. Corporate acts do not thus originate in some corporate entity distinct from its members because the corporation has neither a mind to form intentions nor a body it directly controls: it lacks the proper mind/body unity. Instead, corporate acts originate in individual autonomous human beings who make up the corporation and who intentionally bring about corporate acts through their own bodily movements. Such human individuals, and not "the corporation," are morally responsible for corporate acts. Moreover, to say that an entity is "morally responsible" for a wrongful act is to say that the entity is liable to blame and punishment. But it is not possible to impose blame and punishment on a corporation without inflicting it on corporate members. Thus, to say that a corporation (as an entity distinct from its members) is "morally responsible" for a wrongful corporate act is to imply that a (possibly innocent) corporate member legitimately may be punished for something for which another entity was morally responsible. This violates the moral principles that underlie blame and punishment. To hold that the corporation can be morally responsible for its acts is to adopt a dangerous organicism. (shrink)

I address three topics. First, I argue that the issue of corporate moral responsibility is an important one for business ethics.Second, I examine a core argument for the claim that the corporate organization is a separate moral agent and show it is based on anunnoticed but elementary mistake deriving from the fallacy of division. Third, I examine the assumptions collectivists make about whatit means to say that organizations act and that they act intentionally and show that these assumptions are mistaken (...) in their failure to understand the nature of intentional causality and of “as-if” intentionality. In exposing these mistakes I set out my own view in the form oftwo theses, the first of which states that individual members of an organization are always causally responsible for any corporate act,and the second of which states that attributions of intentions to corporations are always either descriptive or prescriptive attributionsof “as if” intentionality. (shrink)

I apply stigma-management strategies to corporate scandals and expand on past research by (a) describing a particular type ofstigma management strategy that involves accepting responsibility while denying it, (b) delineating types of stigma that occur in scandals (demographic versus character), and (c) considering the moral implications of shifting stigmas that arise from scandals. By emphasizing the distinction between character and demographic stigma, I make progress in evaluating the moral implications of shifting different types of stigma.

The relationship between Employer and Employees is a central one in the world of business. While an important relationship, it is one that is often a source of tension for the workplace. Employers are seemingly in constant mistrust of workers, while workers often look upon their bosses as "less than competent". In the American world of business today, should this "adversarial" relationship continue or should the Employer–Employee Relationship be governed by different rules. Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative offers some insights into (...) the way this relationship should be viewed. Also, the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead has some important points to add to the discussion of this crucial business relationship. A look at the case involving Malden Mills Textile Plant and its CEO Aaron Feuerstein will be used to launch this discussion. (shrink)

Incorporated groups include businesses, universities, churches and the like. Organized to act as single centers of agency, they also routinely satisfy the three conditions that make an agent fit to be held responsible: they face significant choices, can recognize the relative value of different options, and are able to choose in sensitivity to such values. But is it redundant to hold a corporate agent responsible for something, when certain members are also held responsible for the individual parts they play? No (...) it is not, for it is often possible for a corporate entity to be fully fit to be held responsible, when this is not true of the individual members; they may be able to make excuses that are not available at the corporate level. Does the case made for corporate responsibility extend to unincorporated collectivities like nations or religions? Not strictly but it does explain why it may be sensible to treat those collectivities as if they had corporate responsibility in certain domains. (shrink)

I apply stigma-management strategies to corporate scandals and expand on past research by (a) describing a particular type ofstigma management strategy that involves accepting responsibility while denying it, (b) delineating types of stigma that occur in scandals (demographic versus character), and (c) considering the moral implications of shifting stigmas that arise from scandals. By emphasizing the distinction between character and demographic stigma, I make progress in evaluating the moral implications of shifting different types of stigma.

Christine Korsgaard has become one of the leading interpreters of Kant's moral philosophy. She is identified with a small group of philosophers who are intent on producing a version of Kant's moral philosophy that is at once sensitive to its historical roots while revealing its particular relevance to contemporary problems. She rejects the traditional picture of Kant's ethics as a cold vision of the moral life which emphasises duty at the expense of love and value. Rather, Kant's work is seen (...) as providing a resource for addressing not only the metaphysics of morals, but also for tackling practical questions about personal relations, politics, and everyday human interaction. This collection contains some of the finest current work on Kant's ethics and will command the attention of all those involved in teaching and studying moral theory. (shrink)

To use Kantian ethics in an applied context, decision makers typically try to determine whether the “maxim” of their possible action conforms to Kant’s supreme principle of morality: “I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law” (4:402). The action’s maxim is a way of expressing the decision maker’s (a) putative action and (b) conditions that prompt the action in a (c) preposition of a form that (...) will allow her to perform (d) tests, specified by Kant’s moral principle, which determine the action’s moral permissibility. Despite the clear importance of crafting this maxim—e.g., so it meets standards (a)-(d)—for using Kantian ethics to answer real and pressing ethical questions, existing accounts do not offer sustained guidance about maxim crafting. This paper offers such guidance. The paper also shows that properly crafting maxims, using guidelines that Kant implies but does not himself set forth, allows Kantian ethics to defeat classic objections. Both projects contribute to the aim of showing that Kantian ethics should play a role both in debating current ethical challenges and in teaching ethics. (shrink)

This book provides essential reading for anyone with an academic or professional interest in business ethics today.

_Kant and Applied Ethics_ makes an important contribution to Kant scholarship, illuminating the vital moral parameters of key ethical debates. Offers a critical analysis of Kant’s ethics, interrogating the theoretical bases of his theory and evaluating their strengths and weaknesses Examines the controversies surrounding the most important ethical discussions taking place today, including abortion, the death penalty, and same-sex marriage Joins innovative thinkers in contemporary Kantian scholarship, including Christine Korsgaard, Allen Wood, and Barbara Herman, in taking Kant’s philosophy in new (...) and interesting directions Clarifies Kant’s legacy for applied ethics, helping us to understand how these debates have been structured historically and providing us with the philosophical tools to address them. (shrink)

This article draws on the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant to explore whether a corporate ‘duty of beneficence’ to non-shareholders is consistent with the orthodox ‘shareholder theory’ of the firm. It examines the ethical framework of Milton Friedman’s argument and asks whether it necessarily rules out the well-being of non-shareholders as a corporate objective. The article examines Kant’s distinction between ‘duties of right’ and ‘duties of virtue’ (the latter including the duty of beneficence) and investigates their consistency with the shareholder (...) theory. The article concludes that it is possible within the ethical framework of shareholder theory for managers to pursue directly the happiness of non-shareholders. Furthermore, shareholders have a duty to hold management to account for the moral consequences of the firm’s activities on non-shareholding stakeholders. (shrink)

The academic debate over the propriety of attributing moral responsibility to corporations is decades old and ongoing. The conventional approach to this debate is to identify the sufficient conditions for moral agency and then attempt to determine whether corporations possess them. This article recommends abandoning the conventional approach in favor of an examination of the practical consequences of corporate moral responsibility. The article’s thesis is that such an examination reveals that attributing moral responsibility to corporations is ethically acceptable only if (...) it does not authorize the punishment of corporations as collective entities, and further, that this renders the debate over corporate moral responsibility virtually pointless. (shrink)

The question of corporate moral responsibility – whether corporate bodies can be held morally responsible for their actions – has been debated by a number of writers since the 1970s. This discussion is intended to add to that debate, and focuses for that purpose on our understanding of the organisation. Though the integrity of the organisation has been called into question by the postmodern view of organisations, that view does not necessarily rule out the attribution of corporate agency, any more (...) than the postmodern view of the person rules out the attribution of individual agency. The postmodern view is opposed to a reifying, metaphysical view of corporate agency, but a semantic view of corporate agency would seem to sit more comfortably with it. A bigger problem for the idea of corporate moral responsibility arises from the fact that in Kantian terms organisations are not ends in themselves. In that sense they are not like persons, and this must limit their autonomy, and their responsibility. This aspect of organisations also limits their punishability. For these reasons corporate moral responsibility must be seen as more limited than the responsibility of persons. (shrink)

This article examines the role of maxims in Kantian ethics. Maxims are propositions that describe individual actions as instances of general rules. Because Kantian ethics evaluates the morality of actions by testing the actions’ maxims, it is important to formulate the maxim well. I begin by (1) investigating how maxims relate to actions. Next, I (2) review how Kantian ethics tests maxims, focusing on the Formula of Universal Law (FUL). I engage Kant’s conceptions of determining and reflecting judgment from the (...) Third Critique to illuminate the role of judgment in crafting and testing maxims. Then, I present (3) my interpretation of how to craft maxims in a Kantian context: In condition C, I do action A. I apply my interpretation to (4) several examples, including Kant’s own, Kant’s critics, and contemporary Kantians. I (5) consider several objections and (6) explain how this interpretation of crafting maxims has helped my applied ethics students. (shrink)