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The Role of the Business Ethicist The Role of the Business Ethicist Nicholas Capaldi Loyola University, New Orleans ABSTRACT. The place of contemporary commerce within human experience is intertwined with the Technological Project (TP), the attempt of the Scientific Revolution to master and possess nature. The TP works best within the frame- work of the modern free market, which encourages competition and innovation. A free market economy requires a government characterized by the rule of law, which acts as a constraint on government and which safeguards the freedom of autonomous persons. This historically-based and non-technical account of the place of the political economy within human experience is attested in the works of major philosophers, and has the further advantage of not being based on the understanding of hidden and timeless laws. Nevertheless, Business Ethics is currently dominated by a scientism that views commerce according to a-histori- cal and objective norms discovered through various competing sciences in which theory precedes practice. However, the role of Business Ethics is not to say in advance what ought to be the case and then to re-fashion practice accord- ingly, but rather to explicate what is actually the case, and thus to make explicit the underlying and contingent norms from historically attested phenomena. Such an approach to Business Ethics is firmly rooted in the philosophical and humanistic traditions, and escapes the dangers of ideological generalization inherent in today’s democratic socialism. KEYWORDS. Business ethics, Technological Project, free market economy, explication, ideology, scientism. INTRODUCTION he role of the business ethicist is twofold. The first task of the busi- Tness ethicist is philosophical, namely, to locate the role of commer- cial activity on the map of our total experience or, in other words, to pro- vide a big picture within which commerce functions. The second task of ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ETHICS NETWORK 12, no. 3 (2005): 371-383. Doi: 10.2143/EP.12.3.2004488 © 2005 by European Centre for Ethics, K.U.Leuven. All rights reserved. ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – SEPTEMBER 2005 the business ethicist is practical, namely to explicate the norms inherent in current business practice. 1. PHILOSOPHICAL TASK I shall begin with a positive exposition and then indicate some mistaken and misguided conceptions of the philosophical task. How does commerce relate to other areas of human experience? Since the Renaissance,1 commerce has played an increasingly significant role in our lives.2 Its increasing importance can be explained by reference to the Technological Project (TP). By the Technological Project3 I mean the program identified by Bacon, Descartes, and Locke. In his Discourse on Method, Descartes proclaimed that what we seek is to make ourselves the “masters and possessors of nature.” Instead of seeing nature as an organ- ic process to which we as individuals conform, Descartes proclaimed the modern vision of controlling nature for human benefit. It is the same project that Bacon had in mind when he observed that knowledge is power. In Locke’s version, “God, who has given the world to men in common, has also given them reason to make use of it to the best advan- tage of life, and convenience….it cannot be supposed He meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the Industrious and Rational…not to the Fancy or Covetousness of the Quarrelsome and Contentious….for it is labour indeed that puts the dif- ference of value on every thing….of the products of the earth useful to the life of man nine tenths are the effects of labor…”4 The Technological Project is not just a new way of engaging the world, it is also a new way of understanding ourselves. Modern science, and the Technological Project that emerges from it, is different from classical science. Classical science was a matter of careful observation. For example, an agricultural economy needs a calendar and observational astronomy is the basis of the calendar. Modern science requires two very —372— CAPALDI – THE ROLE OF THE BUSINESS ETHICST different activities in addition to observation. Modern science requires hypothetical modeling of what we hypothesise as the hidden structure of the world (e.g., molecular theory of gases, atomic theory, germ theory, etc.). It also requires experimentation, that is, the deliberate manipulation of the world to test for results or to confirm the hypotheses. Both the for- mulation of hypotheses and experimental design require inner-directed individuals (autonomy) cooperating to produce innovative ideas (scientif- ic and technical thinking) for understanding and controlling natural processes. Descartes’ Discourse on Method provides and advocates a method, a self-imposed form of inner discipline, for promoting this kind of independent thinking. We do not look for an external structure or pattern; rather we formulate models. As Kant was to put it later, in what he called the “Copernican Revolution in philosophy,” structure is what we project onto the world not what we find given to us in experience. The TP operates most efficiently within a modern market economy. A (free) market economy is a system for the exchange of goods and servic- es wherein there is no central allocation of such goods and services. The goods and services are privately owned (i.e. private property). A market economy provides two advantages for the pursuit of the TP. The first is that it promotes competition. Since resources are privately owned and since there is no central command over what people should be doing with those resources, owners of resources are free to experiment and to consider using those resources in novel ways. Innovation cannot, by definition, be planned. To the extent that property is privately owned and not centrally controlled, and to the extent that a free market economy is competitive, there is a greater possibility for innovation. Markets also reward successful innovators and entrepreneurs. Finally, since labour is itself now a commodity, imaginative and creative inner-directed individuals can sell their services to the highest bidder. The second advantage of a market economy, as identified by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations, is that it encourages innovation. It is innova- tive because the division of labour leads to specialisation and specialisation leads to innovation (labour saving devices, etc.) as well as greater —373— ETHICAL PERSPECTIVES – SEPTEMBER 2005 productivity. All of this has been confirmed by the implosion of the Soviet Empire and the nascent capitalism of China. In order for a free market economy to function, it requires a limited government known as a commercial republic.5 The government provides the legal context for maintaining law and order and for enforcing contracts. It requires in addition that the government performing this service understands that it should not interfere with the competitive and innovative process of the market. The government exists to protect the (negative) rights of individuals who pursue their own individual interests. It does not exist to further a collective good (which does not exist any- way) or to serve the bureaucracy or to serve a particular faction (Madison in Federalist 10 – a faction is an interest group that seeks to subordinate all other interests to itself6). This is the sense in which the government is limited or subordinate to the requirements of commerce. A Republic is not a democracy, for a democracy involves majority rule and not consti- tutional rule. Where there are democratic procedures, the procedures operate negatively to block factional domination; the procedures are not designed to operate positively to determine any alleged common good. Such a government is characterised by the rule of law. The rule of law is a characteristic of a legal system that constrains government. It stands in contrast to despotic rule. The rule of law typically divides the powers of government among separate branches, has an independent judiciary, entrenches individual rights (notably due process and the equal protection of the law) behind constitutional walls, and provides for the orderly trans- fer of political power through fair elections. It is a system of rules designed to allow individuals to pursue their self-interests without interfering with that same pursuit on the part of others. The rule of law provides the rules of the game without determining the outcome of the game.7 The common good does not consist of any substantive norms but of a set of procedur- al norms (this is the proper meaning of liberal neutrality). In order for a government to remain limited and not become either authoritarian-totalitarian or subject to mob-rule (i.e. democracy), it is —374— CAPALDI – THE ROLE OF THE BUSINESS ETHICST necessary that the citizens of that government be special kinds of people; they must be autonomous people. Autonomous people are those who rule themselves (i.e. they impose order on their lives through self-discipline in order to achieve goals that they have set for themselves). Autonomous people are inner-directed and therefore capable of participating in the TP in a creative and constructive way. In fact, the ultimate purpose of the TP is not to create wealth but to allow autonomous people to express their freedom. Wealth is a means to achievement and freedom, not an end in itself. In this sense, the technological project is the spiritual quest of modernity. Autonomous people want to run their own lives, and they do not want the government or any other institution to control them. They are jealous of their liberties and want the government to be restricted to its proper spheres. They are focused on taking care of themselves and not looking for others to take care of them. Autonomous people want recog- nition of their autonomy. This recognition can only come from other autonomous people who understand what self-discipline requires.
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