Aristotle and business: An inescapable tension

Abstract

This chapter attempts to assess the availability of Aristotle to the field of business ethics. It does so by reviewing some of the scholarly work which has dealt with this possibility against the backdrop of certain key themes in Aristotle's thought. The chapter begins by first outlining the controversial nature of the claim that Aristotle is integral to the business ethics field. It then explains how such controversy is only natural given what Aristotle has to say about the relationship of wealth acquisition to the natural ends of man. The chapter goes through the arguments made by various scholars, some of whom seek to bring Aristotle to the business ethics table, and others who do not feel he deserves an invitation, while attempting to place the debate in the context of Aristotle's radical "communitarianism" on the one hand and his radical "individualism" on the other. This is the obvious procedure because Aristotle maintains at one and the same time that the individual both belongs "body and soul" to the civic community and yet is able with the aid of philosophy to transcend the horizon of that community completely. Hence, it is that Aristotle is difficult to adjust to any moral context where the individual is in a middle state of being both in possession of certain rights against the community, and yet under certain social obligations to that community as part of an exchange for the sake of individual freedom. Aristotle's paradoxical communitarian-individualism or individualist- communitarianism is difficult to "privatize" to the level of an independent, profit-seeking commercial organization and also to "socialize" to the level of simple concern with the general welfare as distinguished from the individual pursuit of transcendence made possible by philosophic contemplation.