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re:publica 18 - Alle Sessions Podcast
Private Vice, Public Virtue: Can you ever do Do Business and Be Good?

Private Vice, Public Virtue: Can you ever do Do Business and Be Good?

re:publica 18 - Alle Sessions vor 8 Jahren

Our economic models place “self-interested” right at their centre – in direct opposition to nearly all moral traditions. How do we respond when reality cannot prove true the promise of private vice delivering public virtue? We compromise, compartmentalisa

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Jenny Imhoff As humans we have a natural, if not unconflicted,
drive to be good. How can this be true for companies,
organisations that have become more than an aggregate of their
individuals, that we don’t know how to think about
in ethically terms? When we do business we might be
decent and honest, but are we “being good”? Often, we see commerce
and being good as opposites. This is not just knee-jerk cynicism,
but deeply rooted in our understanding of both. We will
explore if political philosophers, as theorists of human
interaction, could hold the key to a more human future of work.
From historic corporations to the ancient polis, the original
Academy, the Corporation of London or the East-India Company,
historically there are good reasons why political
philosophers and supra-nationals should have a lot more
to say to each other than we think. In the second half, we’ll talk
about how we’ve personally responded to the conflicting demands of
economics and ethics. Who can we be in such an incoherent
world? We may choose to compromise (the “Nice Guy”, seeking
solace from harsh commerce in CSR), or compartmentalise (the
“Volunteers-at-weekends loan shark”). We might reject the moral
critique of the markets (the “Libertarian” stereotype),
or reject commerce entirely (the “Drop-out”, secretly financed
by mum and dad). How do we think our own behavior corresponds to
these personas? Are we Mr. Softly one day, Ms
Leave-it-all-at-the-office another, with some fleeting, illicit
flirtations with the runaway hippie or hardened cynic along the
way? Is any of it satisfactory? Today, we often fear powerful
corporations eclipsing the role and influence of states. But what
if this resemblance was not just something to be feared, but also
an opportunity to invest in them the same aspirations as in our
political communities? If we were citizens of our work, how would
that change the way we talk and think about this subject? What
demands will we make of an enlightened enterprise?