Alasdair Macintyre’s Aristotelian Business Ethics: A Critique

This paper begins by summarizing and distilling MacIntyre’s sweeping critique of modern business. It identifies the crux of MacIntyre’s critique as centering on the fundamental Aristotelian concepts of internal goods and practices. MacIntyre essentially follows Aristotle in arguing that by privilegi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Dobson, John (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2009
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2009, Volume: 86, Issue: 1, Pages: 43-50
Further subjects:B Virtue
B MacIntyre
B Capitalism
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Description
Summary:This paper begins by summarizing and distilling MacIntyre’s sweeping critique of modern business. It identifies the crux of MacIntyre’s critique as centering on the fundamental Aristotelian concepts of internal goods and practices. MacIntyre essentially follows Aristotle in arguing that by privileging external goods over internal goods, business activity – and certainly modern capitalistic business activity – corrupts practices. Thus, from the perspective of virtue ethics, business is morally indefensible. The paper continues with an evaluation of MacIntyre’s arguments. The conclusion is drawn that MacIntyre’s critique, although partially valid, does not vitiate modern business as he claims. In short, modern business need not of necessity be antithetical to individuals’ pursuit of internal goods within practices.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-008-9792-2