Perspectives on philosophy of management and business ethics including a special section on business
Including a Special Section on Business and Human Rights 1st Edition
Jacob Dahl Rendtorff (Eds.)
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Advances in Human Factors, Business Management and Leadership: Proceedings of the AHFE 2019 International Conference on Human Factors, Business Management and Society, and the AHFE International Conference on Human Factors in Management and Leadership, Ju Jussi Ilari Kantola
Perspectives on Philosophy of Management and Business Ethics
Including a Special Section on Business and Human Rights
Ethical Economy. Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy
Volume 51
Series Editors
Alexander Brink, University of Bayreuth
Jacob Dahl Rendtorff, Roskilde University
Editorial Board
John Boatright, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA
George Brenkert, Georgetown University, Washington D.C., USA
James M. Buchanan†, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA
Allan K.K. Chan, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong
Christopher Cowton, University of Huddersfield Business School, Huddersfield, United Kingdom
Richard T. DeGeorge, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, USA
Thomas Donaldson, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Jon Elster, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA
Amitai Etzioni, George Washington University, Washington D.C., USA
Michaela Haase, Free University Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Carlos Hoevel, Catholic University of Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Ingo Pies, University of Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, Germany
Yuichi Shionoya, Hitotsubashi University, Kunitachi, Tokyo, Japan
Philippe Van Parijs, University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Deon Rossouw, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
Josef Wieland, HTWG - University of Applied Sciences, Konstanz, Germany
Ethical Economy describes the theory of the ethical preconditions of the economy and of business as well as the theory of the ethical foundations of economic systems. It analyzes the impact of rules, virtues, and goods or values on economic action and management. Ethical Economy understands ethics as a means to increase trust and to reduce transaction costs. It forms a foundational theory for business ethics and business culture.
The Series Ethical Economy. Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy is devoted to the investigation of interdisciplinary issues concerning economics, management, ethics, and philosophy. These issues fall in the categories of economic ethics, business ethics, management theory, economic culture, and economic philosophy, the latter including the epistemology and ontology of economics. Economic culture comprises cultural and hermeneutic studies of the economy.
One goal of the series is to extend the discussion of the philosophical, ethical, and cultural foundations of economics and economic systems. The series is intended to serve as an international forum for scholarly publications, such as monographs, conference proceedings, and collections of essays. Primary emphasis is placed on originality, clarity, and interdisciplinary synthesis of elements from economics, management theory, ethics, and philosophy.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/2881
Jacob Dahl Rendtorff
Editor
Perspectives on Philosophy of Management and Business Ethics
Including a Special Section on Business and Human Rights
Editor Jacob Dahl Rendtorff Department of Social Sciences & Business Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
ISSN 2211-2707
Ethical Economy
ISSN 2211-2723 (electronic)
ISBN 978-3-319-46972-0 ISBN 978-3-319-46973-7 (eBook)
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Preface
Welcome to the proceedings from the 2015 EBEN (European Business Ethics Network) Research Conference. The EBEN conferences have been going on each year since year 2000, and I am happy that CBS was able to host one of these conferences. This conference was organized as a cooperative project between Copenhagen Business School, Roskilde University, and EBEN Scandinavia (the Scandinavian Chapter of the European Business Ethics Network). Inside CBS the conference is also a result of a collective work cooperation between the Center for Corporate Social Responsibility at the Department of Intercultural Communication and Management and the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy. “Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics” is an important topic for Copenhagen Business School and Roskilde University. CBS values research on business ethics and philosophy of management, and we find it important to ask the fundamental questions of the foundations of business ethics and of the ethical economy. The research at Roskilde University is based on an interdisciplinary approach to responsibility, ethics, and legitimacy of corporations. The role of philosophy in management and leadership is important for developing good managers and reflective leaders. Topics like philosophy of management, leadership philosophy, business ethics, corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate governance and ethics, business, law and human rights, and cultural conditioning of business ethics are essential for developing good leaders in a complex society today.
Therefore, the proceedings with the papers from the conference fit very well with the series Ethical Economy: Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy at Springer Publishers. It is important that many people will get access to the results of the conference. In this context the topic of the conference of business ethics is in close connection with the strategy of teaching business at Roskilde University and Copenhagen Business School. The vision of liberal education with focus on humanities and social sciences as foundation of knowledge of good management has been considered as an essential part of the ethical vision of management education. The education in business ethics is an important part of this program, and theories and practices of ethical accounting, values-driven leadership, business ethics and virtues, normative leadership philosophy, business ethics and spirituality, as well as
critical concepts of business ethics coming from critical management studies as well as from systems theory have emerged from this research environment.
In Denmark and Scandinavia, this research and teaching in business ethics and philosophy of management have contributed to a higher level of ethical knowledge and ethical formulation competency among managers in private and public organizations. The focus on the importance of ethics is increasing in a society where the Protestant ethics is challenged by new societal problems, including concern for transformation to sustainability and development of more consciousness of ethical dilemmas of management at the national and global level.
We are therefore happy in section I with the title “Business Ethics, Philosophy of Management, and Theory of Leadership” to present some of the contributions to the Copenhagen Conference in this volume of proceedings from the EBEN Research Conference, October 1–3, 2015. Indeed, we would like to express our gratitude to members of the Scandinavian Chapter of EBEN; EBEN; the Center for Corporate Social Responsibility at CBS; the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at CBS; and Roskilde University for the help with organizing this conference.
Also in this book in section II with the title “Business and Human Rights”, we have in addition to three papers on business and human rights from the EBEN Research Conference five other papers on business and human rights. The papers on business and human rights are some of the contributions to the conference on The Power of Human Rights in Economics and Ethics in 2013. This conference was initiated by the German Philosophical Society’s Research Group on Philosophy, Ethics and Economics organized together with the Scandinavian Chapter of EBEN in Copenhagen at Copenhagen Business School and Roskilde University, November 29 and 30, 2013. These articles contribute to develop the field of business and human rights in relation to business ethics. These contributions fit very well with the general theme of the publication, which is business ethics and philosophy of management. The issue of business and human rights entered the global policy agenda in the 1990s, reflecting the dramatic worldwide expansion of the private sector at the time and a corresponding rise in transnational economic activity. These developments heightened social awareness of the impact of economic activity on human rights and also attracted the attention of the United Nations.
The role of human rights in the world of commerce is officially being promoted since 2008 in a framework that consists of three normative imperatives – protect, respect, and remedy. The UN Human Rights Council has specified the role of these normative imperatives as “guiding principles”: The first principle is the duty of states to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including business enterprises, through appropriate policies, regulation, and adjudication. The second is the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, which means that business enterprises should act with due diligence to avoid infringing the rights of others and to address negative impacts. The third is the need for greater access by victims to effective remedy, both judicial and nonjudicial. The (1) duty to protect lies at the very core of the international human rights regime, with states as the principal actors, whereas the principal bearers of (2) the responsibility to respect are corporate
actors, this responsibility being the basic expectation society has of business in relation to human rights, and (3) access to remedy is important because even the most concerted efforts cannot prevent all abuse.
From the perspective of business ethics and philosophy of management, we can mention theoretically interesting and probably also practically important shortcomings in the framework at its present stage. The following are to highlight some of the points that stand in need of philosophical discussion and elaboration: (1) The semantics of human rights is barely connected to business ethics discourse and to ethical discourses about the foundations of human rights in human dignity. (2) The key notion of CSR which, according to the framework, should absorb the normative responsibility to protect human rights lacks conceptual, and specifically business ethical, clarification. (3) There is a tendency in the framework to collapse the conception of human rights into a narrowly legal conception, omitting the polynormative character of human rights. (4) Not enough attention is paid to problems of integrating recognition of human rights into the rationality constraints under which the strategic management of corporate commercial actors has to operate in order to adapt to the forces of competition in globally integrated capitalist markets. (5) Too little attention is paid to the need to construct plausible narratives that would explain the importance and justify to skeptics from within the entrepreneurial world view the possible burdens of making human rights the business of business.
With this collection of articles from the 2015 EBEN Research Conference at Copenhagen Business School and the meeting of the German Philosophical Society’s Research Group on Philosophy, Ethics and Economics, organized together with the Scandinavian Chapter of EBEN in Copenhagen at Copenhagen Business School and Roskilde University in 2013, we hope to give a picture of the state of the art in the fields of business ethics and philosophy of management and business and human rights. Moreover, we also hope that this initiates future research in these fields. We wish the reader happy reading and great joy with all these exiting articles.
Roskilde, Denmark
Jacob Dahl Rendtorff August 2016
Contributors
Jörg Althammer Ingolstadt School of Management, Catholic University Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, Ingolstadt, Germany
Anona Armstrong Law and Justice College, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia
Anita Aufrecht German Graduate School of Management and Law (GGS), Heilbronn, Germany
Richard Blundel The Open University Business School, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
Johan Bouwer NHTV Breda International University of Applied Sciences, Breda, The Netherlands
Karin Buhmann Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Copenhagen, Denmark
Julian M. Clarke EBENI – European Business Ethics Network Ireland, Dublin, Ireland
Ghislain Deslandes ESCP Europe, Paris Campus, Paris, France
Giuseppe Franco Ingolstadt School of Management, Catholic University of Germany, Eichstätt, Germany
Magnus Frostenson Örebro University School of Business, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden
Friedrich Glauner Weltethos Institut, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
Nina Hasche Örebro University School of Business, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden
Sven Helin Örebro University School of Business, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden
Øjvind Larsen Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Copenhagen, Denmark
Ana-Maria Pascal Principal Lecturer, Faculty of Business and Management, Regent’s University London, London, UK
Frans Prenkert Örebro University School of Business, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden
Aloys Prinz Institute of Public Economics and Center for Economic Theory, University of Muenster, Muenster, Germany
Jacob Dahl Rendtorff Department of Social Sciences & Business, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
Germán Scalzo Business Ethics, Universidad Panamericana, Mexico City, Mexico
Anja Schaefer Department for Public Leadership and Social Enterprise, The Open University Business School, Milton Keynes, UK
Alan E. Singer Department of Management, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, USA
Willeke Slingerland School of Governance, Law & Urban Development, Saxion University of Applied Sciences, Enschede, The Netherlands
Marion Smit Faculty of Business and Economics, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Bitra Suyatno Law and Justice College, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia
Keith Thomas School of Business, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia
Aurora Voiculescu University of Westminster, London, UK
Johan Wempe VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Sarah Williams University of Bedfordshire Business School, Bedfordshire, UK
Part I
Business Ethics, Philosophy of Management and Theory of Leadership
Chapter 1 Business Ethics, Philosophy of Management, and Theory of Leadership
Jacob Dahl Rendtorff
Abstract This article presents the background of the discussions of the relation between business ethics and philosophy of management. The reason for the need for rethinking business ethics and philosophy of management is the many scandals and the crisis of business in contemporary society. The question is whether it is possible to overcome the oxymoron between ethics and business with the point of view that “good ethics is good business”. In order to answer this question we need to rethink business ethics with philosophy of management. From this perspective, the paper addresses the problem of moral blindness in organizations. The extended elements of moral blindness in organizations represent the basis for our need for business ethics. The state of the art of business ethics with utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, discourse ethics and recent approaches to philosophy of management within the analytical and continental traditions need to be aware of this need to rethink business ethics from the perspective of philosophy of management. On this basis the paper proposes a global philosophy of management with cosmopolitan business ethics as a foundation of the concept of the balanced company in international business. A case-study approach based on care evaluation of ethical decision-making and ethical dilemmas in particular companies may help to advance this approach.
The aim of this conference is to present the relation between business ethics and philosophy of management. Since the conference has been organized by the Scandinavian network we may say that it should have been a conference about business ethics in Scandinavia. However, in this presentation I will rather say something about the definition of business ethics in relation to theory or philosophy of management than in relation to a specific concept of business ethics in Denmark or more broadly in Scandinavia. However, we may say that there has been a lot of focus on business ethics in Scandinavia, in particular in relation to the institutionalization of corporate social responsibility (CSR) (Rendtorff 2011; Jensen et al. 2013), but
J.D. Rendtorff (*)
Department of Social Sciences & Business, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark
J.D. Rendtorff (ed.), Perspectives on Philosophy of Management and Business Ethics, Ethical Economy. Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy 51, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46973-7_1
indeed also in relation to philosophy of management or in particular theory of Leadership which has been the topic of many presentations for this conference.
1.1 Introduction
The topic of the conference can be said to be very important and urgent. We need to be rethinking business ethics and philosophy of management in the present lifecontext. It can be considered as disturbing that we face so many scandal and crisis situation in business today (Rendtorff 2014a, b, c). Just think about the recent case of the Volkswagen fraud with regard to CO2-emissions of diesel cars. Indeed the problem of sustainability and protection of the environment and to cope with climate change is important (Rendtorff 2015a). And we need to rethink business ethics after the financial crisis (Ims and Tynes Pedersen 2015). Or the accident caused by British Petroleum in the Mexican Gulf. Or go back some years to the financial crisis or the Enron and world.com scandals in the beginning of the twentieth Century. It is often mentioned that all these companies had well developed programs of ethics as a part of their risk and reputation management.
So even though we have had reflections on business ethics for many years we still seem to be confronted with the oxymoron of the incompatibility of ethics and business. It is a still a problem how we can overcome or face this oxymoron that business and ethics do not seem to mix very well together.
In contrast to the oxymoron we often hear that “good ethics is good business”, implying that there really is “no business without ethics” and that “business ethics is the license to operate of a business firm”. But what does this really mean? (Frederick 2002; Crane and Matten 2016) Should we still say that there is no business ethics without profits or should we rather argue that business ethics represents a much more fundamental reflection about the foundations of a business system? And what is the relation between business ethics, philosophy of management or theory of leadership?
The great American pragmatist Richard Rorty infamously argued that “there is nothing business ethics can learn from philosophy” (Rorty 2006). What he meant by that may be considered as an interpretation of the oxymoron saying that there cannot be a close link between philosophy and business ethics since they present two different spheres of life and therefore cannot be combined. This may also be what the sociologist Niklas Luhmann thinks about when he argues that “there is business and there is ethics, but there is no business ethics” (Luhmann 1993). With this Luhmann also defends a kind of separation thesis where business and ethics are basically different from each other because they belong to two different social systems. In contrast to Luhmann, however, I would like to defend a point of view of a holistic and hermeneutic approach following the philosopher Paul Ricoeur, stating that we should hope that they all have a “little part of the truth” (Ricoeur 1955).
But even with this charity approach to the knowledge provided by business ethics, it is possible to criticize the inefficiency of the business ethics movement. The
J.D. Rendtorff
problem is that there has been little progress in business ethics the last 40 years, which is indicated by the crisis of BP and the Mexican Gulf, the Enron case and the recent Volkswagen case. This is disturbing and a good argument for rethinking business ethics with philosophy of management.
1.2 The Topic of the Conference: Business Ethics and Philosophy of Management
So this is the topic of this conference which we have tried to justify by the fact that up to recently there has been little discussion of the relation between business ethics and philosophy of management. In fact, we can say that despite the general interest in corporate social responsibility and business ethics, the contemporary discussion rarely touches upon the normative core and philosophical foundations of business (Rendtorff 2012, 2013a, b, c, d, e). Even though the actions and activities of business may be discussed from a moral perspective, not least in the media, the judgments and opinions relating to business and management often lack deeper moral reflection and consistency.
Partly for this reason, business ethicists are constantly challenged to provide such moral and philosophical foundations, and also to communicate them in an understandable manner. Such a challenge is also of scientific kind. Positions and opinions in the academic field need to be substantiated by thorough moral and theoretical reflection to underpin normative approaches. Far too often, business ethicists may agree on matters which they approach from different and sometimes irreconcilable philosophical standpoints, resulting in superficial agreement but deeper-lying disagreement. In other cases, it may be of high relevance to identify philosophical standpoints that may, despite conflicting fundamentals, arrive at conclusions acceptable to everyone.
The EBEN Research Conference 2015 therefore decided to focus on the theoretical foundations of business ethics, and in particular on the philosophy of management. This implied identifying and discussing conflicts as well as agreement with regard to the philosophical and other foundations of business and management.
A number of general questions related to the theme of the conference, for example: What is the relation between business ethics and philosophy of management? What is the role of philosophy in management and leadership? And how does this relate to ethics and corporate social responsibility? Do cultural differences in approaches to business ethics and corporate social responsibility also involve philosophical disagreement? Moreover, what is the role of normativity in business ethics and how do we define normative approaches to business ethics? What does the last decade’s specialization in normative approaches to business ethics means for management and leadership strategies? Could well-founded disagreement be a way to cope with such a modern challenge or should modern discourses head for rational agreement along a route of procedure and rules?
J.D. Rendtorff
1.3 Moral Blindness and the Need for Business Ethics
One important reason for the need for business ethics is presented by the concept of moral blindness in institutions and organizations. But what is the concept of moral blindness? Following Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of responsibility and judgment proposed in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem. Essay on the Banality of Evil (1963) we can define moral blindness as the incapacity of the administrator or manager to integrate ethical thinking and moral imagination in decision-making (Arendt 1963). Like the Nazi-SS-officer Adolf Eichmann the administrator and bureaucrat is just following orders as a part of an organizational bureaucracy without questioning the moral and ethical basis of such actions. Following Hannah Arendt’s philosophy interpretations of moral blindness, power and domination following from the concept of systemic action in, e.g. Stanley Milgram (obedience under authority), Zygmunt Bauman (Modernity and the Holocaust), Philip Zimbardo (The Lucifer effect) have been focusing on the lack of moral concern by individuals when they act in conformity with systems of obedience, technological rationality or internalized social roles based on group thinking. Moral blindness is the dark side of action in organizational systems and it manifests the need to move towards ethical principles, judgment and ethical recognition in management and administration (Rendtorff 2014a).
This is the approach that we find in Frederick Bruce Bird’s book The Muted Conscience. Moral Silence and Practice of Ethics in Business (1996). This book provides the most comprehensive recent attempts to define the application of the concept of moral blindness in business ethics, but it can also be applied to administration. In fact Bird extends the concept of moral blindness to include moral muteness and moral deafness. Moral muteness is defined as the inability of people to defend their ideas and ideals (Rendtorff 2014a).
Following these different definitions of moral blindness we can emphasize the following elements of moral blindness (Rendtorff 2014a): “(1) Moral blindness implies that the administrator or judge has no capacity of moral thinking. (2) The administrator or judge only follows orders and justifies his or her actions by reference to the technical goal-rationality of the organizational system. (3) The administrator or judge is strongly influenced by the ideology, principles or instrumental values of the organization. (4) This attachment includes an abstraction from concrete human needs and concerns in the legal or administrative system. (5) In many cases the moral blindness strangely enough includes collaborations from the victims of the harm. (6) The victims follow the rationality of the system and they identify with their roles either motivated by pure obedience or rather motivated by an attempt to minimize a greater harm. (7) Moral blindness contains a dehumanization of the victims and people or stakeholders implied in the process. They are considered not as human beings but as elements, things or functions of the system. (8) Moral blindness relies on total obedience by the administrators of the system. (9) Technology and instrumental rationality is an essential element in the administration of the organization or legal system. (10) Each participant in the organization is accomplishing
a specific work function with a specific task but he or she has now general overview of the organizational system. (11) Judges or administrators may behave opportunistically to follow their own interest with regard to the main goal of the instrumental system. (12) Judges or administrators may act irrationally beyond common human understandings of morality in order to serve the instrumental rationality of the organizational system. (13) The administrative obedience to realize the organizational aim becomes the central interest of the administrators of the organization. (14) Obedience, role identification and task commitment remains the central and ultimate virtue of the commitment of members of the organization to the organizational system. (15) Each member or administrator of the organizational system commits themselves to the values of the organizational goal of the system.”
So this definition of moral blindness contributes to understanding the need for philosophical analysis of the foundations of business ethics (Rendtorff 2014a, b). The danger of moral blindness challenges definitions of business ethics and in this context philosophical reflections are important in order to understand the foundations of our concepts of ethics in business.
1.4 State of the Art of Business Ethics
This importance of philosophical reflection is documented by the state of the art of business ethics in contemporary societies. In fact, the lack of progress in business ethics may be considered as an inefficiency of the prevailing theories of business ethics in the tradition of business ethics research in the Anglo-Saxon countries and mainly in the United States (Rendtorff 2009).
In business ethics the ethics of utilitarianism and consequentialism has been very dominating (Velasquez 2011). This ethical approach is practical and utility-oriented and therefore it corresponds well to the pragmatism of business. However, there is often a problem of respect of humanity involved in utilitarianism since the weakest and vulnerable are sacrificed for the greater good. Also, there is little sense of collective responsibility in economic utilitarianism since it often focusses on maximization of individual economic interest. At the same time there is potential in utilitarianism to move beyond individual maximization and focus on the collective good as maximization of the greatest good for the greatest number. Utilitarianism faces important problems of utility namely the problem of how to measure interests, utility and consequences.
This is a characteristic of utilitarian business ethics, which defines the right action as the action, which is most useful and has the best consequences for the firm. We can say that business economics is built on the idea of the firm as a practical utility maximizing unit dominating (Velasquez 2011). In relation to utilitarian business ethics, we face the tension between individual utility maximization and social welfare utility maximization. Here, we need to move beyond the individualist conception of utility towards a more socially oriented conception of economic utility for the firm.
Even though it is important to think utility-oriented and pragmatic in business, this approach cannot stand alone. The utility concept ignores human dignity and it is blind to the complexity of the ethical dilemmas of business. Utility is an important concern and it represents the economic perspective on ethics, focusing on economic rationality of preference maximizing, but on its own terms this approach is insufficient and sometimes even dangerous, leading to unintended moral blindness. Accordingly, we need to evaluate the utility ethics in terms of other ethical theories and approaches.
In contrast to utility ethics and consequentialism virtue ethics looks at the importance of virtue and moral character of the business man (Solomon 1992). Virtue is about the capacity of judgment and action according to individual moral dispositions by the business man. In virtue ethics the focus has been rather on individuals and not so much on the market place or the involved organizational systems. This may be a problem of virtue ethics since it cannot really capture the system, organization and market dimensions of ethics but rests on the level of respect for individual virtue and integrity as the most important concept of business ethics.
With this emphasis of individual virtue ethics is based on the concept of the good and it focusses on human capacities to develop integrity and character (Solomon 1992). Virtue ethics is based on Aristotle’s concept of ethics that emphasized human capacity of judgment and the doctrine of the mean. To find the mean in an action is to find the right middle between extremes. Here important concepts of virtue ethics in business ethics have been ideas of virtues and community, integrity and character, the good life, practical reason as well as concern for wisdom of action, integrity and decision-making (Rendtorff 2015c).
The tradition of Aristotelian Business Ethics is accordingly seeing business ethics as a function of personal integrity. What is important is the capacity of individuals to be honest and trustworthy when the act in business and economic markets. The basis of economic action is the good manager who has great capacity for leadership with integrity, as it is suggested by Robert Solomon in his development of an Aristotelian business ethics (Solomon 1992). Even though it is very important with the ability to act with integrity in business ethics the problem with this approach is the lack of concern for general and universal morality. Virtue ethics tends to be too concerned with moral character and often dismisses the rule-based and universal dimensions of business ethics. Moreover, as suggested there is little understanding of the organizational and institutional dimensions of business ethics. In order to take these dimensions into account we would have to move beyond virtue ethics towards a more rule-based and deontological approach.
Here Kantian business ethics has often been proposed as alternative teleological approaches like consequentialism and virtue ethics (Arnold and Harris 2012). The Kantian approach emphasizes the global and cosmopolitan dimensions of business ethics. This approach defends global corporate citizenship as the aim of business ethics. For Kantian business ethics it is essential in business to protect human dignity and human rights. In this sense the Kantian approach to business ethics has a strong focus on duty ethics (Bowie 1999).
From the point of view of duty ethics, ethics is dependent on the human capacity of having a rational will, to be self-legislating, to be governed by the free and good will independently to interest and pleasure. This foundation of ethics is the universal moral law, as defined by Immanuel Kant’s categorical Imperative with its three formulations going from the idea that is necessary for an action to be ethical that it can be accepted as a universal law that everybody can follow (Bowie 1999). Human beings should always act in a way that they consider humanity in their own person and in every person at the same time as a goal or aim in themselves and never only as a mean or instrument. The aim of ethics is to live the kingdom of ends where all human beings are respected as human beings with moral responsibility and autonomy. In this context the basis concepts of duty ethics in business ethics involve respect for the categorical imperative, personal responsibility and self-legislation on the basis of foundational rules and norms, respect for absolute human dignity and belief in humanity. In this sense duty ethics is based on a deep belief in rationality and reason in morality as the foundation of the universal moral law.
Norman Bowie has suggested a Kantian capitalism (Bowie 1999). He has argued that market norms for good business involve contracts based on trust and honesty (integrity). Here it is important to focus on transparency and openness on economic market where human freedom, universal respect for rights and fair inclusion of relevant parties represent conditions for just economic action. The Kantian approach in this sense greatly focused on the importance of just and fair economic institutions, respecting human dignity and human rights as the foundation of business ethics. However, even though this approach contributes to the understanding of the institutions of business, it can be argued that Kantian business ethics is too formalistic and is not able to capture the situational and paradoxical dilemmas of business ethics in action. It seems like we need to focus on the hermeneutic foundations of business ethics in order really to capture the ethical dimensions of business.
In contrast to these classical theories of ethics applied to business ethics, another approach to business ethics would be to apply the philosophical traditions of phenomenology and hermeneutics from philosophers like Husserl, Heidegger and Ricoeur to business ethics. This approach would focus on the study of business ethics as a kind of critical hermeneutics based on understanding the ethical dimensions of factual situations of sense-making in business organizations (Philips 2003; Rendtorff 2009). Here ethics emerge as an ethical reality of meaning that we would need to face in the real life of an organization. Critical hermeneutics of ethics in business life looks at the situation of business life and tries to understand the ethical dilemmas from this perspective. A major criticism of this phenomenological and hermeneutic approach is that it does not really deal with theory, but rather focusses on the specific issues of the business life as it is manifested in concrete reality.
Following the critical hermeneutics of Jürgen Habermas the position of Scherer and Palazzo has been extremely influential in the present debate on business ethics and corporate citizenship (Scherer and Palazzo 2011). This paradigm focusses on the concept of corporate citizenship as important for business ethics research. The corporate citizenship approach applies Habermas’ communicative ethics and republican philosophy of law to the reality of business (Habermas 1981, 1992). The
approach by Scherer and Palazzo is inspired by Horst Steinman who proposed the idea of social peace as the basis for his republican concept of business ethics. This concept of corporate citizenship has a great advantage by being based on the systemic and more holistic conception of business ethics that has been proposed by Jürgen Habermas (1981, 1993). In fact, we can find similarities between this systemic concept of corporate citizenship and the concept of ordoliberalism that has been very influential in German business ethics since the corporate citizenship paradigm also considers the systemic approach to business ethics as important. Here we can emphasize the great importance of integrating business ethics research not only from the point of view of individuals but seeing it in the broader framework of social systems and interactions in society.
This focus on the importance of systemic dimensions of business ethics also characterizes the approach to business ethics and philosophy of management from the point of view of French philosophy and social theory. Different social philosophies in the French-speaking world may contribute with important approaches to economics (Rendtorff 2014b). We can ask for the phenomenological, existentialist, Marxist or structuralist foundations of economics or we can apply post-structuralist philosophy from Foucault and Derrida to the study of economics and business ethics. Here these approaches would contribute with critical deconstruction of the ideology of different approaches to business ethics. Moreover, there are interesting critical potentialities in applying recent French sociology to the study of business ethics. Here Luc Boltanski’s and Eve Chiappello’s sociology has proposed the new spirit of capitalism, but there has also been a criticism of this approach in the sense that Bernard Stiegler has proposed that capitalism is exhausted rather than it has required a new spirit. Indeed, it is interesting to propose the postmodern criticism of the contemporary approach to business ethics (Rendtorff 2014b). Here, the philosophy of Gilles Lipovetsky is very enlightening. He proposes to talk about an ethics of virtue rather than duty considering postmodern business ethics as struggle for combining good ethics and good business (Rendtorff 2014b).
So we can find potentialities in new philosophical approaches to business ethics. This is needed when we look at the problems of dominating concepts of management in business. It may be argued that the new institutional economic approach to business ethics remains too consequentialistic. As suggested in new institutional economics the foundations of economics remain to be the rational utility maximizing individual and it seems there are problems with the concept of the acting individual in new institutional economics because in the end only economic rationality is important (Rendtorff 2009). The new institutional economics has little room for business ethics. Like it is the case with the concept of trust business ethics is considered as a useless not very rational concept. In fact, although it is becoming more and more popular we may also argue that stakeholder theory, as proposed by Edward Freeman and his followers is not sufficient for founding business ethics in contemporary society (Philips 2011; Bonnafous-Boucher and Rendtorff 2014). Like stakeholder theory, business ethics appears as too pragmatic and it seems that there is really no foundation for the ethical dimensions of stakeholder theory. In fact, it is a problem how we should justify the foundations of stakeholder theory. A similar
J.D. Rendtorff
criticism may be put forward in relation to the position of shared value-theory as proposed by Michael Porter (Porter and Kramer 2011). Here, it is proposed that business ethics involves proposing shared value for society and business. This is really to harvest the low hanging fruits in the activities of businesses so that business also serves the value for society. This criticism of this is that it does not really involves an ethical approach to business but rather implies a closure in relation to ethics. This is for example the criticism of strategic CSR which seems to ignore the ethical approach to business. As Mintzberg has said it was important that corporate social responsibility did not end up in becoming nothing but a new abbreviation, where the ethical dimensions of CSR are absorbed into strategic concepts of corporate social responsibility (Mintzberg 1983; Rendtorff 2009).
1.5 What Is Philosophy of Management?
With these embarrassments of the tradition of business ethics we can emphasize that it is important to rethink that whole tradition with the help from philosophy of management (Koslowski 2010; Luetge 2013). But what is philosophy of management? We can emphasize that philosophy of management involves philosophical reflections on the foundations of management. Here we can mention topics like interactions between management and philosophy; ontology, epistemology and philosophy of sciences in management; the political philosophy of the corporation in contemporary democratic societies; political, social and ethical legitimacy of corporations in economy and society; cultural practice and aesthetics of organizations. All these issues can be discussed within the debates about philosophy of management and business ethics. Moreover, these different approaches to philosophy of management must be integrated into a theory of ethical leadership (Koslowski 2010; Luetge 2013; Rendtorff 2013c, d).
This is indeed the case of many reflections about the philosophical foundations of management. Ethics of management is about the fiduciary duty of the manager towards the good of the firm. In the ethics of leadership, care, prudence and practical wisdom are important. Aesthetics of an organization is about management and cultural philosophy. This approach deals with institutionalization of values and respect for the human life-world in organizations.
Accordingly, philosophy of management needs to provide new foundations of business ethics. New concepts of philosophy of management should be based on the philosophical experience of thinking (Koslowski 2010; Luetge 2013). Here we can emphasize that traditional positions in management theory and philosophy of management may also be limited. These positions include Aristotelian Leadership; Radical normative leadership philosophy; Post-structuralism, Spiritual leadership, Social constructivism; Theories about power, relationships and decision-making; Theories about culture, change management and values-driven management. All very important positions but also positions that we need to rethink by looking at the
epistemological and ontological foundations of management by asking the deep philosophical questions about the foundations of our theories of management.
Indeed the ontological question to begin with is whether philosophy can inspire management? Yes! We can answer! Philosophers like Kant and Kierkegaard may give us direct inspiration for leadership that help us to be better managers (Koslowski 2010; Luetge 2013; Rendtorff 2013a, b, c, d). Indeed, we have to look for the search for truth in the philosophical theories. We might say that there is a basis for understanding the legitimacy of corporations present in the philosophical theories of leadership! Here we can say that it is important in philosophy of management to ask ontological questions? Like Plato asks the question about what is the good, the beautiful and the just, the philosophy of management asks the question of “What is?” and this question can be conceived as the foundation of the concept of legitimacy of leadership. The ontological question in management thus implies questions like What is? What is management? What is motivation? What is justice? What is responsibility? What are my foundational values? What is meaning? What is good leadership? With the help of Heidegger we can therefore ask the question “What is good management?”. Heidegger asks the question about what is important and meaningful. This could also be seen as a Socratic approach to leadership where philosophy of management asks the radical questions about “What is?”. So with this philosophy of management is a Socratic philosophy about good leadership! (Koslowski 2010; Luegte 2014).
1.6 Global Philosophy of Management: Cosmopolitan Business Ethics and the Balanced Company
With this ontological approach in philosophy of management I would like to propose a cosmopolitan and global perspective on international business ethics and corporate citizenship (Rendtorff 2009). This approach is based on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant that is applied as foundation for the analysis of the contemporary European and Anglo-American debate on business ethics in order to formulate a theory of global business ethics.
Cosmopolitan business ethics compares different concepts and schools of business ethics and philosophy of management and apply them to the contemporary debate on cosmopolitan and global business ethics. On this foundation we can address contemporary problems of sustainability, business and human rights, corporate social responsibility, stakeholder management, corporate governance in order to promote the cosmopolitan concept of business ethics and philosophy of management (Rendtorff 2010). Moreover, it is important to contribute with case-studies and propose a decision-making model for cosmopolitan business ethics to deal with the complexities of globalization. With cosmopolitan business ethics a global philosophy of management includes philosophical reflections about the values of integrity and responsibility as foundations of human rights and universal guidelines for
multinational corporations (Rendtorff 2015c). Applied to reflections about cosmopolitanism philosophy of management and leadership ask ontological questions about the foundations of corporate citizenship as global cosmopolitan citizenship. This involves reflections about the philosophical concept of cosmopolitanism (individual rights to free movement and governance of the world); the concept of cosmopolitanism as being defined as “world citizenship”; application of this concept to business corporations: “Global and world citizenship of business and corporations”. Accordingly, this cosmopolitan approach proposes Immanuel Kant’s philosophy as the basis for cosmopolitan business ethics.
Indeed, another important question for philosophy of management and business ethics is the question of the ethical economy. Here, I would like to combine business ethics with the ethical economy. As an ethical economy business ethics is addressing micro-meso and macrolevels of the economy simultaneously. Accordingly an ethical economy is the core of a European and cosmopolitan approach to business ethics. Peter Koslowski’s definition of the ethical economy illustrates this holistic approach to business ethics and philosophy of management:
“Economic ethics or ethical economy is, accordingly, on the one hand, an economic theory of the ethical and of economics and of ethical institutions and rules, and, on the other hand, the ethics of the economy. Like political economy, it has a double meaning. It is the theory of ethics that uses economic instruments of analysis, a theory of ethics oriented towards economics, just as political economy is a political theory that uses economic instruments of analysis. But ethical economy or economic ethics is also a theory of the ethical presuppositions of the cultural system of the economy, a theory of the ethical rules and attitudes that presuppose market coordination and the price system in order to function. The component of the ethical economy, which is more strongly oriented toward application, is called here “economic ethics” (Wirtschaftsethik), although the terms “ethical economy” and “economic ethics” merge and the present work also attempts to deal with fundamental and applied questions of ethical economy and economic ethics. The term “ethical economy” (Ethische Ökonomie) goes beyond the research objectives of economic ethics, understood as the ethics of the economy, to achieve an integration of ethical theory and economic theory. Ethical economy must be more than simply “economics and ethics” (Koslowski 2001, p. 3).
This approach documents that business ethics function as an institutional approach to the study of ethics in economy and society. However, in order to look deeper at the practical reality of business corporations we can benefit from the hermeneutics of case-studies applying different ethics approaches to particular cases and ethical dilemmas and problems in business corporations (Rendtorff 2015b). Case-studies can be proposed as an important methodology for ethics and philosophy in humanistic management and liberal education and social sciences because they integrate a deeper reflective, philosophical and ethical understanding of the organization with business and economics.
Accordingly, with philosophy of management in case-studies we combine the Harvard method of case studies with the philosophy of critical hermeneutics (Rendtorff 2009, 2015b). A typical case-study therefore consists of the fact the
participants on the basis of well-argued choice in theory and method on the basis of an explicit reflective choice chooses a problem field in relation to a firm or a company, that functions as concrete illustration, documentation, and dept-theme presentation of as well theoretical and practical issues and problems in the case that one attempts to analyze.
This kind of hermeneutics can with inspiration from the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur be considered as fundamentally critical, because it combines phenomenological belonging with critical distanced analysis of the reality in organizations and business firms. This critical hermeneutics implies a critical evaluation of the practice of decision-making and action in organizations. This is also emphasized by the fact that the case-study has to be problem-oriented and focused on dilemmas and critical aspects of action in the practice of the firm (Rendtorff 2015b).
Accordingly the case-study approach tries to overcome the opposition between theory and practice and in this way build a bridge between different theoretical approaches to the reality of the organization or business firm. When we deal with sciences of action like in business economics we see that the case-study gives the researcher and practitioner an improved ability for action. When dealing with ethical dilemmas of decision-making we can say that the case-study gives a better foundation for decision-making in the firm. In connection with case-studies of ethical issues we can say that in connection with this it improves the ability of the manager to make good and right decisions (Rendtorff 2015b).
Ethical decision-making and case-studies imply the following dimensions as basis for leadership and judgment: Interpretation and explanation of ethical dilemmas; Analysis in terms of ethical theory and ethical principles; Analysis in terms Corporate social responsibility and corporate citizenship obligations; Analysis in terms of stakeholder theory; Analysis in terms of corporate compliance standards and codes of conduct; Decision-making and evaluations.
As such case-studies improve personal integrity and the ability to do the right action and the case-study thereby contributes to the realization of the aim of educating good managers and administrators in the business corporation (Rendtorff 2015b). With this the case-study is essential for rethinking the relation between business ethics and philosophy of management and leadership.
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Chapter 2 Universal Ideology & Ethical Strategy
Alan E. Singer
Abstract Ideology has been described as a framework of ideas used to explain values and purposes. Accordingly, one might consider the possibility of constructing a universal ideology, that is, a framework of ideas that can be used to explain all values and purposes, but especially those most relevant to business ethics. A conceptual framework that meets that description is duly set out in this paper. It is comprised of four partitioned sets of concepts: ethical-theories, human-goods, market-limitations and other bi-polar components. In the spirit of philosophical pragmatism, the framework enables its users to generate systematic explanations and justifications of ethical strategies in business. It might also be used as a tool for a type of moral-diplomacy, where the intention is to promote the radical center and business strategies that compensate for selected market-limitations.
2.1 Introduction
Ideology has been described as a trap, a meta-science and as a spiritual guide (e.g. Bauman and Bordoni 2014). Significantly, it has also been defined, as “a framework of ideas used to explain values and purposes” (Lodge and Vogel 1987). The latter authors then claimed that individuals “routinely deal with issues within the limited framework of their personal ideological assumptions”. Accordingly, one might at least consider the possibility of constructing an un-limited or universal ideology, that is: a framework of ideas that can be used to explain all values and purposes; but especially those relevant to business ethics. A conceptual framework that meets that description is duly set out in this paper.
A.E. Singer (*)
Department of Management, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, USA e-mail: singerae@appstate.edu
J.D. Rendtorff (ed.), Perspectives on Philosophy of Management and Business Ethics, Ethical Economy. Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy 51, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46973-7_2
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VI.
My supposition that the artists imitated the poet is no disparagement to them. On the contrary the manner of their imitation reflects the greatest credit on their wisdom. They followed the poet without suffering him in the smallest particular to mislead them. A model was set them, but the task of transferring it from one art into another gave them abundant opportunity for independent thought. The originality manifested in their deviations from the model proves them to have been no less great in their art than the poet was in his.
Now, reversing the matter, I will suppose the poet to be working after the model set him by the artists. This is a supposition maintained by various scholars.[44] I know of no historical arguments in favor of their opinion. The work appeared to them of such exceeding beauty that they could not believe it to be of comparatively recent date. It must have been made when art was at its perfection, because it was worthy of that period.
We have seen that, admirable as Virgil’s picture is, there are yet traits in it unavailable for the artist. The saying therefore requires some modification, that a good poetical description must make a good picture, and that a poet describes well only in so far as his details may be used by the artist. Even without the proof furnished by examples, we should be inclined to predicate such limitation from a consideration of the wider sphere of poetry, the infinite range of our imagination, and the intangibility of its images. These may stand side by side in the greatest number and variety without concealment or detriment to any, just as the objects themselves or their natural symbols would in the narrow limits of time or space.
But if the smaller cannot contain the greater it can be contained in the greater. In other words, if not every trait employed by the
descriptive poet can produce an equally good effect on canvas or in marble, can every trait of the artist be equally effective in the work of the poet? Undoubtedly; for what pleases us in a work of art pleases not the eye, but the imagination through the eye. The same picture, whether presented to the imagination by arbitrary or natural signs, must always give us a similar pleasure, though not always in the same degree.
But even granting this, I confess that the idea of Virgil’s having imitated the artists is more inconceivable to me than the contrary hypothesis. If the artists copied the poet, I can account for all their deviations. Differences would necessarily have arisen, because many traits employed by him with good effect would in their work have been objectionable. But why such deviations in the poet? Would he not have given us an admirable picture by copying the group faithfully in every particular?[45]
I can perfectly understand how his fancy, working independently, should have suggested to him this and that feature, but I see no reason why his judgment should have thought it necessary to transform the beauties that were before his eyes into these differing ones.
It even seems to me that, had Virgil used this group as his model, he could hardly have contented himself with leaving the general embrace of the three bodies within the serpents’ folds to be thus guessed at. The impression upon his eye would have been so vivid and admirable, that he could not have failed to give the position greater prominence in his description. As I have said, that was not the time to dwell upon its details; but the addition of a single word might have put a decisive emphasis upon it, even in the shadow in which the poet was constrained to leave it. What the artist could present without that word, the poet would not have failed to express by it, had the work of art been before him.
The artist had imperative reasons for not allowing the sufferings of his Laocoon to break out into cries. But if the poet had had before him in the marble this touching union of pain with beauty, he would certainly have been under no necessity of disregarding the idea of manly dignity and magnanimous patience arising from it and making his Laocoon suddenly startle us with that terrible cry. Richardson says that Virgil’s Laocoon needed to scream, because the poet’s
object was not so much to excite compassion for him as to arouse fear and horror among the Trojans. This I am ready to grant, although Richardson appears not to have considered that the poet is not giving the description in his own person, but puts it into the mouth of Æneas, who, in his narration to Dido, spared no pains to arouse her compassion. The cry, however, is not what surprises me, but the absence of all intermediate stages of emotion, which the marble could not have failed to suggest to the poet if, as we are supposing, he had used that as his model. Richardson goes on to say, that the story of Laocoon was meant only as an introduction to the pathetic description of the final destruction of Troy, and that the poet was therefore anxious not to divert to the misfortunes of a private citizen the attention which should be concentrated on the last dreadful night of a great city.[46] But this is a painter’s point of view, and here inadmissible. In the poem, the fate of Laocoon and the destruction of the city do not stand side by side as in a picture. They form no single whole to be embraced at one glance, in which case alone there would have been danger of having the eye more attracted by the Laocoon than by the burning city. The two descriptions succeed each other, and I fail to see how the deepest emotion produced by the first could prejudice the one that follows. Any want of effect in the second must be owing to its inherent want of pathos.
Still less reason would the poet have had for altering the serpents’ coils. In the marble they occupy the hands and encumber the feet, an arrangement not less impressive to the imagination than satisfactory to the eye. The picture is so distinct and clear that words can scarcely make it plainer than natural signs.
Micat alter et ipsum
Laocoonta petit, totumque infraque supraque Implicat et rabido tandem ferit ilia morsu.
These lines are by Sadolet. They would doubtless have come with greater picturesqueness from Virgil, had his fancy been fired by the
visible model. Under those circumstances he would certainly have written better lines than those we now have of him.
Bis medium amplexi, bis collo squamea circum Terga dati, superant capite et cervicibus altis.
These details satisfy the imagination, it is true; but not if we dwell upon them and try to bring them distinctly before us. We must look now at the serpents, and now at Laocoon. The moment we try to combine them into one picture, the grouping begins to displease, and appear in the highest degree unpicturesque.
But these deviations from his supposed model, even if not unfortunate, were entirely arbitrary. Imitation is intended to produce likeness, but how can likeness result from needless changes? Such changes rather show that the intention was not to produce likeness, consequently that there has been no imitation.
Perhaps not of the whole, some may urge, but of certain parts. Good; but what are the parts so exactly corresponding in the marble and in the poem, that the poet might seem to have borrowed them from the sculptor? The father, the children, and the serpents, both poet and sculptor received from history. Except what is traditional in both, they agree in nothing but the single circumstance that father and sons are bound by the serpents’ coils into a single knot. But this arose from the new version, according to which father and sons were involved in a common destruction,—a version, as already shown, to be attributed rather to Virgil, since the Greek traditions tell the story differently. If, then, there should have been any imitation here, it is more likely to have been on the side of the artist than of the poet. In all other respects their representations differ, but in such a way that the deviations, if made by the artist, are perfectly consistent with an intention to copy the poet, being such as the sphere and limitations of his art would impose on him. They are, on the contrary, so many arguments against the supposed imitation of the sculptor by the poet. Those who, in the face of these objections, still maintain this supposition, can only mean that the group is older than the poem.
VII.
When we speak of an artist as imitating a poet or a poet an artist, we may mean one of two things,—either that one makes the work of the other his actual model, or that the same original is before them both, and one borrows from the other the manner of copying it.
When Virgil describes the shield of Æneas, his imitation of the artist who made the shield is of the former kind. The work of art, not what it represents, is his model. Even if he describe the devices upon it they are described as part of the shield, not as independently existing objects. Had Virgil, on the other hand, copied the group of the Laocoon, this would have been an imitation of the second kind. He would then have been copying, not the actual group, but what the group represents, and would have borrowed from the marble only the details of his copy.
In imitations of the first kind the poet is an originator, in those of the second a copyist. The first is part of the universal imitation which constitutes the very essence of his art, and his work is that of a genius, whether his model be nature or the product of other arts. The second degrades him utterly. Instead of the thing itself, he imitates its imitations, and gives us a lifeless reflection of another’s genius for original touches of his own.
In the by no means rare cases where poet and artist must study their common original from the same point of view, their copies cannot but coincide in many respects, although there may have been no manner of imitation or emulation between them. These coincidences among contemporaneous artists and poets may lead to mutual illustrations of things no longer present to us. But to try to help out these illustrations by tracing design where was only chance, and especially by attributing to the poet at every detail a reference to this statue or that picture, is doing him very doubtful service. Nor is
the reader a gainer by a process which renders the beautiful passages perfectly intelligible, no doubt, but at the sacrifice of all their life.
This is the design and the mistake of a famous English work by the Rev. Mr. Spence, entitled, “Polymetis; or, An inquiry concerning the agreement between the works of the Roman poets and the remains of the ancient artists, being an attempt to illustrate them mutually from one another.”[47] Spence has brought to his work great classical learning and a thorough knowledge of the surviving works of ancient art. His design of using these as means to explain the Roman poets, and making the poets in turn throw light on works of art hitherto imperfectly understood, has been in many instances happily accomplished. But I nevertheless maintain that to every reader of taste his book must be intolerable.
When Valerius Flaccus describes the winged thunderbolts on the shields of the Roman soldiers,—
Nec primus radios, miles Romane, corusci Fulminis et rutilas scutis diffuderis alas,
the description is naturally made more intelligible to me by seeing the representation of such a shield on an ancient monument.[48] It is possible that the old armorers represented Mars upon helmets and shields in the same hovering attitude that Addison thought he saw him in with Rhea on an ancient coin,[49] and that Juvenal had such a helmet or shield in mind in that allusion of his which, till Addison, had been a puzzle to all commentators.
The passage in Ovid where the wearied Cephalus invokes Aura, the cooling zephyr,—
and his Procris takes this Aura for the name of a rival,—this passage, I confess, seems to me more natural when I see that the ancients in their works of art personified the gentle breezes, and, under the name Auræ, worshipped certain female sylphs.[50]
I acknowledge that when Juvenal compares an idle patrician to a Hermes-column, we should hardly perceive the point of the comparison unless we had seen such a column and knew it to be a
poorly cut pillar, bearing the head, or at most the trunk, of the god, and, owing to the want of hands and feet, suggesting the idea of inactivity.[51]
Illustrations of this kind are not to be despised, though neither always necessary nor always conclusive. Either the poet regarded the work of art not as a copy but as an independent original, or both artist and poet were embodying certain accepted ideas. Their representations would necessarily have many points of resemblance, which serve as so many proofs of the universality of the ideas.
But when Tibullus describes Apollo as he appeared to him in a dream,—the fairest of youths, his temples wreathed with the chaste laurel, Syrian odors breathing from his golden hair that falls in ripples over his long neck, his whole body as pink and white as the cheek of the bride when led to her bridegroom,—why need these traits have been borrowed from famous old pictures? Echion’s “nova nupta verecundia notabilis” may have been in Rome and been copied thousands of times: did that prove virgin modesty itself to have vanished from the world? Since the painter saw it, was no poet to see it more save in the painter’s imitation?[52] Or when another poet speaks of Vulcan as wearied and his face reddened by the forge, did he need a picture to teach him that labor wearies and heat reddens? [53] Or when Lucretius describes the alternations of the seasons and brings them before us in the order of nature, with their whole train of effects on earth and air, was Lucretius the creature of a day? had he lived through no entire year and seen its changes, that he must needs have taken his description from a procession of statues representing the seasons? Did he need to learn from statues the old poetic device of making actual beings out of such abstractions?[54] Or Virgil’s “pontem indignatus Araxes,” that admirable poetic picture of a river overflowing its banks and tearing down the bridge that spans it,—do we not destroy all its beauty by making it simply a reference to some work of art, wherein the river god was represented as actually demolishing a bridge?[55] What do we want of such illustrations which banish the poet from his own clearest lines to give us in his place the reflection of some artist’s fancy?
I regret that this tasteless conceit of substituting for the creations of the poet’s own imagination a familiarity with those of others should have rendered a book, so useful as the Polymetis might have
been made, as offensive as the feeblest commentaries of the shallowest quibblers, and far more derogatory to the classic authors. Still more do I regret that Addison should in this respect have been the predecessor of Spence, and, in his praiseworthy desire to make the old works of art serve as interpreters, have failed to discriminate between those cases where imitation of the artist would be becoming in the poet, and those where it would be degrading to him.[56]
VIII.
Spence has the strangest notions of the resemblance between painting and poetry. He believes the two arts to have been so closely connected among the ancients that they always went hand in hand, the poet never losing sight of the painter, nor the painter of the poet. That poetry has the wider sphere, that beauties are within her reach which painting can never attain, that she may often see reason to prefer unpicturesque beauties to picturesque ones,—these things seem never to have occurred to him. The slightest difference, therefore, between the old poets and artists throws him into an embarrassment from which it taxes all his ingenuity to escape.
The poets generally gave Bacchus horns. Spence is therefore surprised that we seldom see these appendages on his statues.[57] He suggests one reason and another; now the ignorance of the antiquarians, and again “the smallness of the horns themselves, which were very likely to be hid under the crown of grapes or ivy which is almost a constant ornament of the head of Bacchus.” He goes all round the true cause without ever suspecting it. The horns of Bacchus were not a natural growth like those of fauns and satyrs. They were ornaments which he could assume or lay aside at pleasure.
Tibi, cum sine cornibus adstas, Virgineum caput est, ...
says Ovid in his solemn invocation to Bacchus.[58] He could therefore show himself without horns, and did, in fact, thus show himself when he wished to appear in his virgin beauty. In this form artists would choose to represent him, and necessarily omitted all disagreeable accompaniments. Horns fastened to the diadem, as we see them on a head in the royal museum in Berlin,[59] would have been a
cumbersome appendage, as would also the diadem itself, concealing the beautiful brow. For this reason the diadem appears as rarely as the horns on the statues of Bacchus, although, as its inventor, he is often crowned with it by the poets. In poetry both horns and diadem served as subtle allusions to the deeds and character of the god: in a picture or statue they would have stood in the way of greater beauties. If Bacchus, as I believe, received the name of Biformis, Δίμορφος, from having an aspect of beauty as well as of terror, the artists would naturally have chosen the shape best adapted to the object of their art.
In the Roman poets Minerva and Juno often hurl the thunderbolt. Why are they not so represented in art? asks Spence.[60] He answers, “This power was the privilege of these two goddesses, the reason of which was, perhaps, first learnt in the Samothracian mysteries. But since, among the ancient Romans, artists were considered as of inferior rank, and therefore rarely initiated into them, they would doubtless know nothing of them; and what they knew not of they clearly could not represent.” I should like to ask Spence whether these common people were working independently, or under the orders of superiors who might be initiated into the mysteries; whether the artists occupied such a degraded position among the Greeks; whether the Roman artists were not for the most part Greeks by birth; and so on.
Statius and Valerius Flaccus describe an angry Venus with such terrible features that we should take her at the moment for a fury rather than for the goddess of love. Spence searches in vain for such a Venus among the works of ancient art. What is his conclusion? That more is allowed to the poet than to the sculptor and painter? That should have been his inference. But he has once for all established as a general rule that “scarce any thing can be good in a poetical description which would appear absurd if represented in a statue or picture.”[61] Consequently the poets must be wrong. “Statius and Valerius Flaccus belong to an age when Roman poetry was already in its decline. In this very passage they display their bad judgment and corrupted taste. Among the poets of a better age such a repudiation of the laws of artistic expression will never be found.”[62]
Such criticism shows small power of discrimination. I do not propose to undertake the defence of either Statius or Valerius, but will simply make a general remark. The gods and other spiritual beings represented by the artist are not precisely the same as those introduced by the poet. To the artist they are personified abstractions which must always be characterized in the same way, or we fail to recognize them. In poetry, on the contrary, they are real beings, acting and working, and possessing, besides their general character, qualities and passions which may upon occasion take precedence. Venus is to the sculptor simply love. He must therefore endow her with all the modest beauty, all the tender charms, which, as delighting us in the beloved object, go to make up our abstract idea of love. The least departure from this ideal prevents our recognizing her image. Beauty distinguished more by majesty than modesty is no longer Venus but Juno. Charms commanding and manly rather than tender, give us, instead of a Venus, a Minerva. A Venus all wrath, a Venus urged by revenge and rage, is to the sculptor a contradiction in terms. For love, as love, never is angry, never avenges itself. To the poet, Venus is love also, but she is the goddess of love, who has her own individuality outside of this one characteristic, and can therefore be actuated by aversion as well as affection. What wonder, then, that in poetry she blazes into anger and rage, especially under the provocation of insulted love?
The artist, indeed, like the poet, may, in works composed of several figures, introduce Venus or any other deity, not simply by her one characteristic, but as a living, acting being. But the actions, if not the direct results of her character, must not be at variance with it. Venus delivering to her son the armor of the gods is a subject equally suitable to artist and poet. For here she can be endowed with all the grace and beauty befitting the goddess of love. Such treatment will be of advantage as helping us the more easily to recognize her. But when Venus, intent on revenging herself on her contemners, the men of Lemnos, wild, in colossal shape, with cheeks inflamed and dishevelled hair, seizes the torch, and, wrapping a black robe about her, flies downward on the storm-cloud,—that is no moment for the painter, because he has no means of making us recognize her. The poet alone has the privilege of availing himself of it. He can unite it so closely with some other moment when the goddess is the true
Venus, that we do not in the fury forget the goddess of love. Flaccus does this,—
Illa Paphon veterem centumque altaria linquens, Nec vultu nec crine prior, solvisse jugalem
Ceston, et Idalias procul ablegasse volucres
Fertur. Erant certe, media qui noctis in umbra
Divam, alios ignes majoraque tela gerentem, Tartarias inter thalamis volitasse sorores
Vulgarent: utque implicitis arcana domorum
Anguibus, et sæva formidine cuncta replerit
Limina.[64]
Or, we may say, the poet alone possesses the art of so combining negative with positive traits as to unite two appearances in one. No longer now the tender Venus, her hair no more confined with golden clasps, no azure draperies floating about her, without her girdle, armed with other flames and larger arrows, the goddess hastes downward, attended by furies of like aspect with herself. Must the poet abstain from the use of this device because artists are debarred from it? If painting claim to be the sister of poetry, let the younger at least not be jealous of the elder, nor seek to deprive her of ornaments unbecoming to herself.
IX.
When we compare poet and painter in particular instances, we should be careful to inquire whether both have had entire freedom, and been allowed to labor for the highest results of their art without the exercise of any constraint from without.
Religion often exercised such constraint upon the old artists. A work, devotional in character, must often be less perfect than one intended solely to produce pleasure. Superstition loaded the gods with symbols which were not always reverenced in proportion to their beauty.
In the temple of Bacchus at Lemnos, from which the pious Hypsipyle rescued her father under the guise of the deity,[65] the god was represented horned. So he doubtless appeared in all his temples, the horns being symbols typical of his nature and functions. The unfettered artist, whose Bacchus was not designed for a temple, omitted the symbol. If, among the statues of the god that remain to us, we find none with horns,[66] that circumstance perhaps proves that none of them were sacred statues, representing the god in the shape under which he was worshipped. We should naturally expect, too, that against such the fury of the pious iconoclasts in the first centuries of Christianity would have been especially directed. Only here and there a work of art was spared, because it had never been desecrated by being made an object of worship.
But since, among the antiques that have been unburied, there are specimens of both kinds, we should discriminate and call only those works of art which are the handiwork of the artist, purely as artist, those where he has been able to make beauty his first and last object. All the rest, all that show an evident religious tendency, are unworthy to be called works of art. In them Art was not working for her own sake, but was simply the tool of Religion, having symbolic
representations forced upon her with more regard to their significance than their beauty. By this I do not mean to deny that religion often sacrificed meaning to beauty, or so far ceased to emphasize it, out of regard for art and the finer taste of the age, that beauty seemed to have been the sole end in view.
If we make no such distinction, there will be perpetual strife between connoisseurs and antiquarians from their failure to understand each other. When the connoisseur maintains, according to his conception of the end and aim of art, that certain things never could have been made by one of the old artists, meaning never by one working as artist from his own impulse, the antiquarian will understand him to say that they could never have been fashioned by the artist, as workman, under the influence of religion or any other power outside the domain of art. He will therefore think to confute his antagonist by showing some figure which the connoisseur, without hesitation, but to the great vexation of the learned world, will condemn back to the rubbish from which it had been dug.[67]
But there is danger, on the other hand, of exaggerating the influence of religion on art. Spence furnishes a remarkable instance of this. He found in Ovid that Vesta was not worshipped in her temple under any human image, and he thence drew the conclusion that there had never been any statues of the goddess. What had passed for such must be statues, not of Vesta, but of a vestal virgin. [68] An extraordinary conclusion! Because the goddess was worshipped in one of her temples under the symbol of fire, did artists therefore lose all right to personify after their fashion a being to whom the poets give distinct personality, making her the daughter of Saturn and Ops, bringing her into danger of falling under the ill treatment of Priapus, and narrating yet other things in regard to her? For Spence commits the further error of applying to all the temples of Vesta and to her worship generally what Ovid says only of a certain temple at Rome.[69] She was not everywhere worshipped as in this temple at Rome. Until Numa erected this particular sanctuary, she was not so worshipped even in Italy. Numa allowed no deity to be represented in the shape of man or beast. In this prohibition of all personal representations of Vesta consisted, doubtless, the reformation which he introduced into her rites. Ovid himself tells us that, before the time of Numa, there were statues of Vesta in her
temple, which, when her priestess Sylvia became a mother, covered their eyes with their virgin hands.[70] Yet further proof that in the temples of the goddess outside the city, in the Roman provinces, her worship was not conducted in the manner prescribed by Numa, is furnished by various old inscriptions, where mention is made of a priest of Vesta (Pontificis Vestæ).[71] At Corinth, again, was a temple of Vesta without statues, having only an altar whereon sacrifices were offered to the goddess.[72] But did the Greeks, therefore, have no statues of Vesta? There was one at Athens in the Prytaneum, next to the statue of Peace.[73] The people of Iasos boasted of having one in the open air, upon which snow and rain never fell.[74] Pliny mentions one in a sitting posture, from the chisel of Scopas, in the Servilian gardens at Rome, in his day.[75] Granting that it is difficult for us now to distinguish between a vestal virgin and the goddess herself, does that prove that the ancients were not able or did not care to make the distinction? Certain attributes point evidently more to one than the other. The sceptre, the torch, and the palladium would seem to belong exclusively to the goddess. The tympanum, attributed to her by Codinus, belongs to her, perhaps, only as the Earth. Or perhaps Codinus himself did not know exactly what it was he saw.[76]
X.
Spence’s surprise is again aroused in a way that shows how little he has reflected on the limits of poetry and painting.
“As to the muses in general,” he says, “it is remarkable that the poets say but little of them in a descriptive way; much less than might indeed be expected for deities to whom they were so particularly obliged.”[77]
What is this but expressing surprise that the poets, when they speak of the muses, do not use the dumb language of the painter? In poetry, Urania is the muse of astronomy. Her name and her employment reveal her office. In art she can be recognized only by the wand with which she points to a globe of the heavens. The wand, the globe, and the attitude are the letters with which the artist spells out for us the name Urania. But when the poet wants to say that Urania had long read her death in the stars,—
Ipsa diu positis lethum prædixerat astris Urania.[78]
Why should he add, out of regard to the artist,—Urania, wand in hand, with the heavenly globe before her? Would that not be as if a man, with the power and privilege of speech, were to employ the signs which the mutes in a Turkish seraglio had invented to supply the want of a voice?
Spence expresses the same surprise in regard to the moral beings, or those divinities who, among the ancients, presided over the virtues and undertook the guidance of human life.[79] “It is observable,” he says, “that the Roman poets say less of the best of these moral beings than might be expected. The artists are much fuller on this head; and one who would know how they were each set off must go to the medals of the Roman emperors. The poets, in fact,
speak of them very often as persons; but of their attributes, their dress, and the rest of their figure they generally say but little.”
When a poet personifies abstractions he sufficiently indicates their character by their name and employment.
These means are wanting to the artist, who must therefore give to his personified abstractions certain symbols by which they may be recognized. These symbols, because they are something else and mean something else, constitute them allegorical figures.
A female figure holding a bridle in her hand, another leaning against a column, are allegorical beings. But in poetry Temperance and Constancy are not allegorical beings, but personified abstractions.
Necessity invented these symbols for the artist, who could not otherwise indicate the significance of this or that figure. But why should the poet, for whom no such necessity exists, be obliged to accept the conditions imposed upon the artist?
What excites Spence’s surprise should, in fact, be prescribed as a law to all poets. They should not regard the limitations of painting as beauties in their own art, nor consider the expedients which painting has invented in order to keep pace with poetry, as graces which they have any reason to envy her. By the use of symbols the artist exalts a mere figure into a being of a higher order. Should the poet employ the same artistic machinery he would convert a superior being into a doll.
Conformity to this rule was as persistently observed by the ancients as its studious violation is by the viciousness of modern poets. All their imaginary beings go masked, and the writers who have most skill in this masquerade generally understand least the real object of their work, which is to let their personages act, and by their actions reveal their character.
Among the attributes by which the artist individualizes his abstractions, there is one class, however, better adapted to the poet than those we have been considering, and more worthy of his use. I refer to such as are not strictly allegorical, but may be regarded as instruments which the beings bearing them would or could use, should they ever come to act as real persons. The bridle in the hand of Temperance, the pillar which supports Constancy are purely
allegorical, and cannot therefore be used by the poet. The scales in the hand of Justice are less so, because the right use of the scales is one of the duties of Justice. The lyre or flute in the hand of a muse, the lance in the hand of Mars, hammer and tongs in the hands of Vulcan, are not symbols at all, but simply instruments without which none of the actions characteristic of these beings could be performed. To this class belong the attributes sometimes woven by the old poets into their descriptions, and which, in distinction from those that are allegorical, I would call the poetical. These signify the thing itself, while the others denote only some thing similar.[80]
XI.
Count Caylus also seems to require that the poet should deck out the creatures of his imagination with allegorical attributes.[81] The Count understood painting better than poetry.
But other points more worthy of remark have struck me in the same work of his, some of the most important of which I shall mention here for closer consideration.
The artist, in the Count’s opinion, should make himself better acquainted with Homer, that greatest of all word painters,—that second nature, in fact. He calls attention to the rich and fresh material furnished by the narrative of the great Greek, and assures the painter that the more closely he follows the poet in every detail, the nearer his work will approach to perfection.
This is confounding the two kinds of imitation mentioned above. The painter is not only to copy the same thing that the poet has copied, but he is to copy it with the same touches. He is to use the poet not only as narrator, but as poet.
But why is not this second kind of imitation, which we have found to be degrading to the poet, equally so to the artist? If there had existed previous to Homer such a series of pictures as he suggests to Count Caylus, and we knew that the poet had composed his work from them, would he not lose greatly in our estimation? Why should we not in like manner cease to admire the artist who should do no more than translate the words of the poet into form and color?
The reason I suppose to be this. In art the difficulty appears to lie more in the execution than in the invention, while with poetry the contrary is the case. There the execution seems easy in comparison with the invention. Had Virgil copied the twining of the serpents about Laocoon and his sons from the marble, then his description would lose its chief merit; for what we consider the more difficult
part had been done for him. The first conception of this grouping in the imagination is a far greater achievement than the expression of it in words. But if the sculptor have borrowed the grouping from the poet, we still consider him deserving of great praise, although he have not the merit of the first conception. For to give expression in marble is incalculably more difficult than to give it in words. We weigh invention and execution in opposite scales, and are inclined to require from the master as much less of one as he has given us more of the other.
There are even cases where the artist deserves more credit for copying Nature through the medium of the poet’s imitation than directly from herself. The painter who makes a beautiful landscape from the description of a Thomson, does more than one who takes his picture at first hand from nature. The latter sees his model before him; the former must, by an effort of imagination, think he sees it. One makes a beautiful picture from vivid, sensible impressions, the other from the feeble, uncertain representations of arbitrary signs.
From this natural readiness to excuse the artist from the merit of invention, has arisen on his part an equally natural indifference to it. Perceiving that invention could never be his strong point, but that his fame must rest chiefly on execution, he ceased to care whether his theme were new or old, whether it had been used once or a hundred times, belonged to himself or another. He kept within the narrow range of a few subjects, grown familiar to himself and the public, and directed all his invention to the introducing of some change in the treatment, some new combination of the old objects. That is actually the meaning attached to the word “invention” in the old text-books on painting. For although they divide it into the artistic and the poetic, yet even the poetic does not extend to the originating of a subject, but solely to the arrangement or expression.[82] It is invention, not of the whole, but of the individual parts and their connection with one another; invention of that inferior kind which Horace recommended to his tragic poet:
Tuque
Rectius Iliacum carmen deducis in actus, Quam si proferres ignota indictaque primus.[83]
