Competitive Edge

Seek the Good Life, not Money: The Aristotelian Approach to Business Ethics George Bragues ABSTRACT. Nothing is more common in moral de- bates than to invoke the names of great thinkers from the past. Business ethics is no exception. Yet insofar as business ethicists have tended to simply mine abstract formulas from the past, they have missed out on the potential intellectual gains in meticulously exploring the philosophic tradition. This paper seeks to rectify this shortcoming by advocating a close reading of the so- called ‘‘great books,’’ beginning the process by focusing on Aristotle.The Nichomachean EthicsandThe Politics points to Aristotle’s emphasis on tying business morality to a universal conception of the good life. This con- ception denes personal happiness to chiey consist in practicing the virtues, a life in which both desire and the pursuit of wealth is kept under check. According to Aristotle, virtue reaches its height with the exercise of the intellectual virtues of prudence and wisdom – the rst manifest in the leadership of organizations, and the second in the philosophic search for truth. From an Aristotelian point of view, therefore, the greatest ethical imperative for business is to give individuals opportu- nities to thoughtfully participate in the management of company affairs and to contemplate the ultimate mean- ing of things. KEY WORDS: Aristotle, virtue, happiness, good life, wealth, leadership, wisdom Introduction Of all the testaments to the idea that delving into the classic texts offers a cache of valuable insights, none is more remarkable than the letter Niccolo Machi- avelli wrote to Francesco Vettori describing his evening routine: On the coming of evening, I return to my house and enter my study; and at the door I take off the day’s clothing, covered with mud and dust, and puton garments regal and courtly; and reclothed appro- priately, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them with affection, I feed on that food which only is mine and which I was born for, where I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reasons for their actions; and they in their kindness answer me; and for four hours of time I do not feel boredom, I forget every trou- ble, I do not dread poverty, I am not frightened by death; entirely I give myself over to them. (Machia- velli cited in Hallowell and Porter, 1997, p. 233) Can the eld of business ethics benet from the example set by Machiavelli? Does a close reading, that is, of what have come to be called the great books offer the prospect of enriching our under- standing of how individuals ought to act while en- gaged in the prot oriented production and sale of goods and services? The common practice in busi- ness ethics of appealing to moral theories like utili- tarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics points to a consensus that the major thinkers of the past con- tinue to be useful today. After all, utilitarianism is originally tied to John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Ben- tham, deontology to Immanuel Kant, and virtue ethics to Aristotle. Their names, along with the main points illuminating their ethical doctrines, usually come up in the section on moral theories contained in almost every business ethics textbook. Yet in hearkening back to the philosophic tradi- tion, business ethicists have generally limited them- selves to mining abstract moral formulas, doing relatively little to explore how the great thinkers applied and gave substance to their general principles. To use Ronald Dworkin’s language, the appeal to the past has tended to emphasize concepts rather than conceptions (Dworkin, 1978, pp. 134–136). We hear much, for example, about how Kant insisted that Journal of Business Ethics (2006) 67:341–357
Springer 2006 DOI 10.1007/s10551-006-9026-4 people should be treated as ends in themselves, instead of as objects, but much less about what he specically thought this entailed with respect to our daily con- duct. 1 In ignoring all but the general principles advanced by the philosophers of old, the prevailing assumption seems to be that their foundational arguments, as well as the particular conclusions they deduced from their theories, reect outdated beliefs and values as well as social circumstances radically different from our own. That being the case, so the thinking apparently goes, it is solely our job to apply the moral theories bequeathed to us from the past with a view to our ideals and conditions. This thinking is awed. Though this is not news to business ethicists, making an airtight case for moral claims, of the sort that can silence thoughtful critics and elicit universal acceptance, is exceedingly difcult. Unlike scientists, moral theorists cannot readily settle their controversies by formulating predictions that can be plainly veried through controlled experiments or the statistical analysis of a relevant data set. Sufce it to say, moral philosophy, the sub-discipline of business ethics included, has long been a theater of intellectual discord. As the economists might say, seeking the truth in moral philosophy involves very high information costs (Bragues, 2004). Where scientic methods cannot resolve the issue, a good way of managing these information costs involves harnessing the powers of judgment inherent in a large group whose members have diverse perspectives and individually form their opinions unswayed by what the others think. Numerous studies have conrmed the wisdom of such groups, insofar as they have been shown to outperform individual experts in guessing the weight of a slaughtered ox at a fair, gauging the true win- ning odds of horses at the race track, and even in quickly determining the cause of a space shuttle disaster (Asch and Quandt, 1991; Surowiecki, 2004). Now what makes the classic texts of moral phi- losophy classics is precisely that they have been evaluated by a large group whose members, having lived in different times and places, read the same books independently from noticeably distinct outlooks, with virtually all coming to the same conclusion: these books contain important truths. This is what is truly meant when we say that the great books have stood the test of time. By just pulling out general principles from these books, we pass over anincalculable mass of intellectual riches and, instead, rely for concrete substance on the legion of moral theorists working in the contemporary world, in which individual judgments are vulnerable to the pressures of conforming to thezeitgeist. The resultant pouring of contemporary wine into old bottles justies Richard Posner’s (1999) suspicion, ‘‘whether the ‘real’ Aristotle or Aquinas or Kant is being brought into the fray or whether these big names are merely the stalking-horses for the modern moralist who has invoked them.’’ (p. 49) This paper aims to convey a sense of what a great books approach has to offer in business ethics. It examines virtue theory’s implications for business via a close analysis of Aristotle’s works, principallyThe Nicomachean EthicsandThe Politics. It should be noted that we are not necessarily putting Aristotle forward as the highest authority for business ethics. This same exercise of carefully reading classic texts for business ethics guidance could be done with any other number of thinkers. We are simply trying to open up new vistas, to transcend prevailing assumptions and paradigms by entering, and taking seriously, ways of thinking quite different from our own. Think of it as an experiment in which we test whether some issues of business ethics can be illuminated by hypotheti- cally removing the notion that renowned philoso- phers from the past are fundamentally circumscribed by the exigencies of their time and instead attending to their every word as something that possibly speaks to us. Ultimately, the reader must decide whether Aristotle, interpreted in this fashion, is a worthy guide, though our hope is that our approach will equip him or her with a richer picture of his thought upon which to make that call. That said, our thesis runs as follows: Aristotle offers a business ethic intent on advancing the attainment of personal happiness. Dening happiness in universal- istic terms, Aristotle insists upon the priority of exercising the virtues, of habitually acting in ways that fulll the highest human potentialities. People are thus called to display courage, self-restraint, generosity, magnicence, magnanimity, sociability, justice, prudence, and wisdom in their business activities. Each of these virtues is to be practiced not for the sake of ensuring nancial success – nay, nancial success is properly dened by what is nec- essary to support a virtuous life. Best manifesting this life, according to Aristotle, is the leader of 342George Bragues associations or, better yet, the philosopher in the quest of absolute truth. Business, then, can only be at its most ethical when it gives individuals opportu- nities to thoughtfully participate in the management of their company’s affairs and contemplate the ulti- mate meaning of things. The good life and virtue The Nicomachean Ethicsstarts by raising the question of personal happiness. This might seem strange, for in ordinary moral discourse we tend to distinguish happiness from morality, as in when we call a person just and courageous for blowing the whistle on corporate wrongdoing, even as their career has been shattered as a result. Everyday moral experience seems to imply what philosophers have come to call the distinction between the right and the good (Ross, 1930). Aristotle, however, does not equate happiness with a pleasurable state of mind, as we are apt to do. 2If happiness were a mere mental state, Aristotle (trans. 1984) observes, it would absurdly follow that a person could be happy while asleep (1098b32-1099a3). By happiness,eudaimoniain an- cient Greek, Aristotle means activity that makes appropriate use of our capacities, a way of life in which we are optimally functioning in accord with our purpose as human beings. That this should constitute the lodestar of our actions is, Aristotle gures, implicit in the logic of our choices. Any- thing we choose to do, we do so to realize a goal. More often than not, the immediate aim we have in mind ends up, upon reection, serving another aim and that aim, in turn, will come to sight as being pursued for the sake of something else. If we keep scrutinizing each and every objective in this way, we inevitably arrive at a goal that does not point beyond itself, something that we desire for its own sake: the good life. Since all our decisions necessarily lead in this direction, clarifying what happiness exactly in- volves becomes the core of moral inquiry and indeed the necessary preface for the design of good social institutions (1094a1-26 and 1324a15-16). At the same time, it must be kept in mind that happiness is not a purely individual matter, for it can only be realized within a network of relations with others. As Aristotle famously says, human beings are social and political animals – we are drawn to live together,not simply out of instinct, necessity, or utility, but because nature inclines us in that direction with a view to our end ortelos, which is nothing less than our perfection as human beings (1252b28-1253a3). Society completes us (1253a25-27). As such, Aris- totelian business ethics will consist of those principles that further the good life within the social context provided by commercial activities. Surveying widely held opinions about happiness, Aristotle nds that they ultimately come down to three alternatives: pleasure, politics, and contem- plation (1095b13-19). The rst refers to a life ded- icated to gratifying the senses and occupying the mind in enjoyments that leave the highest intellec- tual faculties unexercised. Living the life of pleasure is about eating tasty food, drinking ne beverages, driving fast cars, having passionate sex, not to mention listening to melodious tunes, residing in a large and comfortable home with all the amenities, while being able to take part in relaxing diversions and attention-grabbing entertainments. For the majority, as Aristotle rightly discerns, this is the vision of happiness (1095b14-16). Business today is heavily implicated in this vision by producing the goods and services that minister to it and by employing individuals whose primary motivation for working is to earn sufcient funds to afford that lifestyle. By contrast, the second view of happiness that Aristotle considers, the political life, appears utterly distinct from business, yet it should be remembered that the Greek philosopher thought that living politically primarily involved ruling others with a view to obtaining honor, or to put this in more contemporary terms, a reputation for being someone great. With the development of limited liability corporations over the past century, the business arena now contains the same kind of hier- archical structure common to government, provid- ing management positions within which individuals can direct the affairs of large and inuential organi- zations. Certainly, too, corporate managers exercise the levers of power with an eye to enhancing their reputations, as evidenced by the willingness of CEO’s to have their skills and achievements praised in the media. It is far more challenging, however, to locate a place in business for the contemplative life, Aristotle’s third option, since it consists of the the- oretical pursuit of truth. The closest analogue is research and development, though corporations Seek the Good Life343 almost always conduct this with a view to devel- oping practical applications. When Aristotle analyzes the opinions of happi- ness, he immediately dismisses the hedonism championed by the majority as sub-human. Focusing on the gratication of the senses puts us on the same level as the animals (1095b19-20). As for mental amusements, Aristotle gures it would be absurd if all the work people do to gain a livelihood merely served to nance fun and games. More in line with the way we pursue our well- being is to view amusement as a form of relaxation helpful in reenergizing us for more serious pursuits (1176b9-1177a1). While the quest for renown and distinction through ruling draws a more respectful hearing from Aristotle, he nds this way of life wanting on account of its making a person dependent on the opinions of others. No one would call it a supreme good something that is beyond one’s control. Besides, Aristotle notices that individuals seeking recognition do not just want to occupy other people’s mental space; they want to be recognized for their virtues. According to Aristotle, this points to virtue as being at the core of the good life (1095b22-30). What about the pursuit of wealth? Aristotle rejects this by claiming that wealth is not pursued for its own sake. It is not moneyper sethat people truly want, but rather what they hope to obtain with it (1096a6-8). This could be pleasure, distinction, or the leisure to exercise one’s mind – which is to say, the three fundamental alternatives Aristotle identi- es. One could fault Aristotle here for neglecting the possibility of enjoying the hunt after riches, of rev- eling in skillfully playing the business game, so to speak, and looking to the accumulation of money chiey as a means of keeping score. Even so, Aris- totle might well counter that anyone pursuing wealth in this fashion is actually more concerned about exemplifying their excellence by overcoming challenges, insinuating once again, as in the case of recognition, that virtue is the good. Inveighing further against money making, Aristotle insists that it robs people of leisure and that it is apt to become so engrossing as to make people lose sight of the fact that money is just a means to happiness rather than an end in itself (1257b34-1258a14). All too many end up being caught on a treadmill in which, however more one has, it never seems enough.Posing the biggest challenge to prevailing com- mercial practices is the charge that most of what passes for business today places individuals squarely on this happiness treadmill. Aristotle sees no ethical dilemma in letting people acquire goods directly from nature through their labor via shing, hunting, or agriculture. Nor does Aristotle think it objec- tionable when people acquire goods by exchange where it is necessary to meet the need for goods that are more efciently produced by others. In this case, exchange simply recties the natural inequality in the distribution of talents and resources by redi- recting the fruits of these in line with the natural structure of wants (1257a21-30). The problem, however, arises when exchange is conducted purely for monetary gain, which is what Aristotle calls trade and how, arguably, business mostly operates in modern capitalist societies. As there is no inherent limit to acquisition with trade, unlike the rst type of exchange in which natural wants provide a con- straint, Aristotle maintains that trade gives expression to the mirage of innite wealth accumulation. Instead of co-operating with others and actualizing their potential as social beings, trades puts individuals in a competitive struggle in which one’s fellows are viewed as prot opportunities (1258a39-b2). Worse yet, in Aristotle’s eyes, is the trade of money across time, more commonly known as lending with interest. The purpose of money, Aristotle says, is to facilitate the exchange of goods, not to spawn more money (1258b2-7). Obviously, were this stricture against usury enforced now, companies would be stripped of a major source of nancing, and be forced to depend on equity investments and inter- nally generated cash ows, while consumers would have to rely entirely on savings to purchase big- ticket items like houses and cars. Make no doubt about it, ethical conduct in accordance with Aris- totle’s standards comes at the price of signicantly reduced economic activity. 3 The more than adequate return for paying this price, according to Aristotle, is virtue – here is humanity’ssummum bonnum. To virtue belongs the task of superintending the pursuit of wealth in commercial life, instead of virtue being at the mercy of wealth seeking. Life’s moral goal turns out, indeed, to have been latent in the hunger for dis- tinction animating the ambitious few, not in the concern for material well-being characterizing the 344George Bragues humble many. To understand how Aristotle arrives at this conclusion, recall his insistence that happiness is an activity. Now no one can be rightly called happy unless they are performing well whatever it is that they are doing. When we say something per- forms well, Aristotle observes, we mean that it is fullling its role or function, as in the assertion that Winston Churchill, as Britain’s Prime Minister during World War II, carried out his tasks brilliantly by leading the English to victory against the Nazis. However, we cannot simply consult people’s socially circumscribed roles to determine what is expected of them, since ethics is primarily about determining what makes human beings happy, not what makes the Vice-President of Marketing, or the Chief Financial Ofcer, happy (1102a13-16). Hence, Aristotle argues, the moral theorist must come to grips with the function or role of humansquahu- mans (1097b22-27). Just as tasks are best divided between humans in accord with their differences, so the function of humans needs to be identied on the basis of what makes us distinct from other beings in the universe. Humans are akin to both animals and plants in having a drive towards nutrition and physical growth. Like the animals, human beings are moved by appetite and are capable of sensing external objects. What distinguishes human beings, Aristotle remarks, is that our souls contain a rational principle, by which we are able to grasp universal concepts, deliberate between alternative courses of action, and restrain our appetites (1139a3-a15 and 1102b13-1103a3). Humanity’s function thus con- sisting in the exercise of our cognitive capacities, Aristotle deduces that virtue is nothing more than reason excellently used (1097b24-1098a18). This is not to say that Aristotle believed virtue guarantees happiness. Unlike the Stoics, who held that virtue sufces, Aristotle took the more common sense tack of acknowledging that virtue needs to be supplemented by bodily and external (i.e., inde- pendent of the mind) goods (1099a32-1099b1). Some degree of nancial security is necessary to perform virtuous deeds, such as generosity. A lack of resources creates incentives to commit injustices like fraud and theft. It is easier to be virtuous, too, if one happens to possess helpful friends and inuential contacts, as would be the case, for example, where the interests of a rm’s employees and shareholders depend on its top executives being able to enter thepolitical arena and blocking discriminatory legisla- tion. While pleasure does not dene the good life, it would violate prevailing opinions about happiness, as well as the realities of psychological motivation, if one did not recognize pleasure as accompanying the good life (1113a35-b1 and 1172a19-26 and 1175a11-21). In general, pleasure and virtue go together inasmuch as an ethical person feels good in doing the morally appropriate thing (1099a13-21 and 1113a24-35 and 1170a9-11 and 1176a15-19). Still, virtue cannot make up for the pain of losing a treasured friend or relative to death, nor that entailed in being alone or sick, nor the social humiliations arising out of being ugly or of being born into a disadvantaged class (1099b1-6). Applying this to business, Aristotle’s point is that virtue will offer limited solace to anyone that has been denied an important promotion, lost a major client, red from their job, or forced to see their company descend into bankruptcy. Aristotle does say that virtuous individuals have the strength of character to patiently endure the inevitable spells of bad luck (1100b22-32). Yet he was realistic enough to concede that one’s endurance will be sorely, if not impossibly, tested if the adversity is great, or strikes in a sequence of hard blows, or occurs at a stage in one’s life in which there is insufcient time to recover (1100a4-8 and 1101a9-13). Ethics, it seems, is not always consistent with success in business, though that does not stop Aristotle from contending that, however bleak it looks, one must stick to the path of virtue in the reasonable hope that the strong connection between doing good and living joyfully will eventually reassert itself and give way to the improvement of one’s fortunes (1100b12-21). The moral virtues Insofar as reason embraces an intellectual component that, in its conceptual and deliberative aspects, apprehends realities, along with a part that controls the appetites, Aristotle accordingly distinguishes two sorts of virtue: the intellectual virtues referring to conduct that optimally deploys reason’s apprehensive powers, and the moral virtues designating reason’s regulation of desire (1103a1-10). Focusing rst on the latter, Aristotle lists and describes 13 moral vir- tues, of which seven are especially germane to busi- ness: courage, self-control, generosity, magnicence, Seek the Good Life345 magnanimity, sociability, and justice. Aristotle also holds that reason does not simply apply moral truths disclosed to it in a classroom or in a book. The moral virtues are in accord with reason, not evoked by it. For instead of being learned, Aristotle insists the moral virtues are acquired through constant practice, best enjoined right from early youth, until they develop into habits and become second nature (1103a14-1103b6). Even after this point is reached, Aristotle says, laws must continually reinforce what early education implanted, so tempting is vice to human nature. Hence, ‘‘most people obey necessity rather than argument, and punishments rather than what is noble’’ (1180a4-5). Aside from lending support to the strict enforcement of corporate codes of ethics, the implication here is that business ethi- cists should pay a great deal of attention to govern- ment regulations. Courage and self-restraint Let us now go through each of the seven virtues listed above, beginning with courage. Aristotle denes courage as conduct that regulates fear. As anyone with even the slightest familiarity with Aristotle knows, the Greek philosopher famously holds that each of the moral virtues is a mean be- tween two extremes of vicious conduct – the so- called ‘‘golden mean.’’ In the case of courageous individuals, they avoid the excessive fear character- istic of cowardice as well as the decient fear asso- ciated with rashness. Striking the mean here is not incumbent with regard to every kind of fear, only when it is appropriate to control or have that emotion. No one should ever stop fearing the prospect of punishment and shame when contem- plating the commission of an illegal or immoral act. Courage can only show itself when acting for a good cause (1115b15-24). So too, Aristotle notes that it would be untting to be afraid of economic hard- ship, as presumably that would be indicative of excessive concern with money and to events beyond one’s control (1115a17-18). War is the foremost theater for courage, since that is where the greatest of psychic terrors must be managed, the fear of death (1115a24-35). As this fear is rarely pressing in the business world, courage in its purest form must be absent there. This should not be taken to imply thatAristotle privileges military values and thus holds force in higher esteem than the voluntary forms of human interaction seen, amongst other arenas, in commercial exchanges. As will subsequently be made clear, Aristotle’s claim is that the peaks of virtue encompass leadership, ideally exercised over free and consenting individuals, as well as contem- plation, both essentially peaceful endeavors. The suspicion also arises that Aristotle ranks courage low in the catalog of virtues, if only in recognizing that the act itself of displaying bravery is necessarily painful, which oddly runs against the claims that the virtuous personality feels pleasure in doing the right things and that pleasure perfects human activities (1117a32-b16 and 1174b14-23 and 1175a29-b2). 4 Nonetheless, Aristotle is willing to recognize the value of actions that resemble military courage, a category in which he includes the experience of risk (1116b4-19). Businesspersons, and more so entre- preneurs, must undergo this experience when investing in projects with uncertain and variable payoffs. Where a person involved in business habitually avoids such projects for no other reason than fear of loss, even when a reasonable view of the potential risks and returns suggests that it is a chance worth taking, the Aristotelian business ethicist is apt to conclude that this individual is a coward. More common, especially in entrepreneurs, is the rashness produced by over-optimism, which also overtakes the business community in general towards the tail end of economic booms (Cooper et al., 1988; Simon et al., 1999). If courage, as Aristotle points out, is about managing fear, then the person who does not feel it cannot possibly exercise that virtue, since there is no emotion here to manage – precisely the situation of the over-optimistic businessperson. Far from being courageous, this individual is just plain foolish (1115b24-34 and 1117a10-17). Com- mercial courage is restricted to the bold and clear- sighted, under the proviso, of course, that money is not being sought for its own sake, but with a mind to the virtues. Whereas courage deals with the management of painful emotions, self-control regulates our attrac- tion to pleasure. It is a mean between the licen- tiousness or self-indulgence entailed by having too much pleasure, or delighting in the wrong things, and the insensibility of taking too little enjoyment from life. Notice that Aristotle does not equate 346George Bragues self-control with austerity or prudishness; pleasure is ne so long as it does not involve anything odious and is pursued in moderation. Aristotle emphasizes that the pleasures with which self-control is con- cerned are limited to the physical pleasures of taste and touch, chiey food, drink, and sex (1118a24- 32). Self-control does not refer to pleasures of sight, smell, hearing, or to those of the mind, except insofar as these are associated with sex, food, or drink. One can behave poorly with respect to mental pleasure, by say constantly engaging in gossip at the ofce water cooler, but then one would be more properly viewed as chatty and unproductive, rather than self-indulgent. No one is called licentious for spending all their free time looking at impressionist paintings (1117b27-1118a8). But they would come under suspicion if they instead spent all that time looking at pornography, as it would suggest an excessive concern with sex. Of the two extremes from which self-control deviates, Aristotle recog- nizes the obvious fact that self-indulgence is far more common, a vice he says leaves individuals distressed whenever they cannot gratify their inated desires, undermines people’s health and tness, while enslaving their reason to the animal element within them (1119a1-6 and 1118b15-21). As it can hardly be virtuous to entice others to vice, an Aristotelian would have to call on business to limit production and marketing that encourages people to live immoderately – in other words, less fatty and calorie rich foods, sugar laden drinks, fancy alcoholic bev- erages, erotic entertainments, and less sexually evocative advertisements. As part of a corporation’s code of ethics, too, an Aristotelian approach would support employer supervision of employees’ self- control. Generosity, magnificence, magnanimity, and sociability Generosity, or liberality as it is usually translated, is that virtue which regulates our desire for wealth. On one wrong side of it is the prodigal individual, who errs by giving or spending too much money, while doing relatively less to obtain it. The only problem with the prodigal, as Aristotle sees it, is that he or she eventually exhausts their resources, undermining the economic basis for future acts of virtue. Otherwise, Aristotle nds prodigals to besympathetic gures because they share the generous person’s emphasis on expending money as opposed to receiving it. The prodigal just happens to be more foolish than the liberal type, who is more careful about keeping outlays proportional to re- ceipts (1121a16-29). Much worse for Aristotle is the other opposite of liberality, expressing itself either through the stinginess of not parting with one’s money or the sordid avarice involved in making ultimately triing sums from disreputable and suspect activities. As examples of such avarice, Aristotle cites pimps, petty gambling operators, and high interest lenders of small amounts of money; payday loan providers would serve as a current example of the latter (1121b32-1122a2). What they have in common is their willingness to take advantage of other people’s vulnerabilities, and sacrice their reputations, for meager returns. Aristotle concedes that the generous person is not apt to be rich, since building and maintaining a fortune requires a grasping mindset. As a result, over-all savings, and hence investment, will be reduced to the extent that people practice gener- osity. Keeping in mind, too, those who choose not to practice it, wealth can be expected to dispro- portionately end up in the hands of those least capable of using it virtuously. Not only that, the generous person is susceptible to being short- changed in business dealings: ‘‘the liberal man is easy to deal with in money matters; for he can be got the better of, since he sets no store by money, and is more annoyed if he as not spent something that he ought than pained if he has spent something that he ought not’’ (1121a4-7). Virtue is not always good business. Where the amount of money expended is great, a special kind of liberality becomes a possibility, the grandeur of magnicence. As Aristotle tells it, the magnicent person is essentially dened by their good taste in spending large sums in the right way for a worthy purpose. Unlike the vulgar, magnicent people do not try to show off their wealth by spending more than the occasion requires or by allowing anything gaudy to be exhibited (1123a19-27). What Aristotle had in mind by vulgarity was recently illustrated by former Tyco CEO Denis Kozlowski (setting aside the fact that half the money spent was not his), who threw a $2 million, week long birthday party for his wife featuring dancing nymphs, buff men Seek the Good Life347 dressed as gladiators, a performance by a music star, and an ice sculpture replicating the statue of David urinating Vodka (‘‘Jurors’’, 2003). At the same time, the magnicent do not tarnish their efforts by fretting the cost of every little detail, in the way that the petty do (1123a27-31). While avoiding both these ex- tremes, the magnicent might direct their resources to building a church, sponsoring a symphony, or buying medical equipment for a hospital ward. The example of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates comes to mind, whose foundation has donated U.S. $4.2 bil- lion to improving health outcomes in Africa and developing nations (‘‘Global Health’’, 2005). Public goods are not the only avenue through which the magnicent display their virtue. They stylishly spare no expense on their private affairs, such as when entertaining guests, offering gifts to friends, or hold- ing a child’s wedding. Their houses, cars, furniture, and clothes bespeak their good sense and renement. Always, when choosing between the latest thing and something subtler that is more likely to last, the magnicent instinctively opt for the latter (1122b19- 1123a18). Aristotle turns out to be not as hostile to the consumption lifestyle as he initially appears in inveighing against hedonism. The consumption just needs to be guided by the demands of self-perfection. Interesting, too, is that the magnicent individual, as in the case of the generous one, does not appear to have any special obligations to the poor and disad- vantaged. This corresponds to a more obvious sign of Aristotle’s inegalitarian standpoint, namely that magnicence is far from being an equal opportunity virtue, being reserved for the wealthiest and most successful members of the business community (1122b26-29). Even more exclusive is magnanimity, or greatness of soul, conduct that expresses the appropriate atti- tude towards great honors. Regulating the more ambitious impulses of self-esteem, magnanimity is a mean between pusillanimity and vanity. Whereas the aw in the pusillanimous lies in their not staking sufcient claim to honors that they truly deserve, the vain go wrong by pretending to great accomplish- ments that are beyond their ken. An example of a pusillanimous individual would be a CFO who had been primarily responsible for successfully steering a large company through bankruptcy declining to pursue the CEO position on offer. A vain person would be the average CFO behavingcondescendingly, dressing extravagantly, trumpeting their every success, while believing that the open CEO position rightly belonged to them. By showing a lack of ambition for great things, the pusillanimous convey the impression that they are not capable of achieving them (1125a19-23). By showing excessive ambition, the vain inevitably lay bare their inepti- tude (1125a27-29). Strangely enough, Aristotle considers pusillanimity to be more common, and indeed worse, than vanity (1125a32-33). People, it seems, are anxious to avoid appearing as failures, or of signaling a high opinion of themselves, in attempting a lofty prize – so anxious, apparently, that many truly capable people end up causing their respective communities to forgo the full benets of their skills and talents, instead leaving the eld open to the condently less able. In today’s corporate world, placed as it is within an egalitarian-demo- cratic culture where every right thinking person is discouraged from thinking that they are better than others, Aristotle’s point is arguably still worth heeding. Perhaps the gifted need to take more ini- tiative. To succeed in becoming magnanimous, it is not enough to claim the highest distinctions, one must additionally practice each and every virtue, and do so exceptionally, for one cannot deserve any special accolades if the entire repertoire of human excel- lence has not been mastered. Thus, Aristotle asserts that magnanimity, ‘‘seems to be a sort of crown of the excellences; for it makes them greater, and it is not found without them’’ (1124a1-4). As such, the magnanimous businessperson will not be concerned with wealth for its own sake, but only insofar as it assists the attainment of exalted goals (1123b1-3 and 1124a5-9). They will not bother with small risks, as that reveals excessive concern with maintaining the wealth one already has and, besides, nothing grand is ever achieved at little risk. The latter requires the assumption of huge risks, and until the right such opportunity comes along, the magnanimous busi- nessperson will proceed routinely with their affairs and wait patiently, comforted by the awareness that great deeds are few and rare (1124b6-7 and 1124b22-26). In the meantime, one speaks bluntly, avoids holding grudges, performs favors more will- ingly than one accepts them, all the while con- ducting one’s affairs in a calm and composed frame of mind (1124b26-1125a5 and 1124b9-15 and 348George Bragues 1125a13-15). When the opportunity for greatness nally arrives, by say betting the company’s fate on an industry shattering technology, the magnanimous businessperson enters the fray without undue trepi- dation, ready to sacrice all their wealth to succeed (1124b7-9). Off the peak of magnanimity is sociability or cordiality, a virtue more highly valued in our time than it was by Aristotle. Though akin to friendli- ness, sociability is not necessarily motivated by feelings of affection, but more usually reects a good-natured disposition in interacting with others, whether strangers or acquaintances, on agreeable terms (1126b22-27). No doubt, this virtue is vital in business, whether in maintaining an amenable work environment, bringing about productive meetings, generating sales, dealing with customers, or forming enduring client relationships. Whenever employers sift through job candidates for the best t with the company’s culture, it is sociability for which they are checking. Perfectly in line with common sense, Aristotle tells us that sociability is a mean between obsequiousness and attery, on the one hand, and quarrelsomeness on the other. Whoever regularly insults the people with which they are dealing, or challenges everything they say, is quarrelsome. Whoever indiscriminately praises others, and sides with everything they say, is obsequious. A variant of obsequiousness is attery, which occurs when the motivation of the person pandering to the other is money. Sociable people willingly please, and refrain from paining, their fellows, as long as nothing shameful is condoned and the overall outcome advantageous (1126b30- 35). During a meeting with an important client, one can put up with their complaints about their secretary. But if the client generalizes his irritation by launching into a rant about female stupidity, then he must respectfully, though rmly, be told: ‘‘while we highly value your business and would like nothing more than to continue working with you, we cannot continue our relationship unless you cease and desist from making such blatantly sexist comments.’’ 5According to Aristotle as well, sociable people adjust their manners depending on whether they are dealing with a friend or an acquaintance, or whether their conversational partner holds an equal or higher position (1126b35- 1127a6). Put another way, a virtuous middlemanager does not speak to the CEO with the same informal tones he or she adopts with other middle managers. Justice That brings us to the last of the moral virtues in Aristotle’s account, namely justice. It is the need for justice that is underlined whenever top executives are condemned for looting publicly traded corpo- rations, falsifying accounts to investors, trading on insider information, or just plain making too much money. Justice is the issue, too, whenever corpora- tions are encouraged to hire more women and minorities, let whistle-blowers press their case without threat of sanctions, stay away from countries with poor human rights records, or refrain from hiring cheap labor in the Third World. For the subject matter of justice, as Aristotle tells us, is the proper allocation of external goods, of the things people subjectively value (even if assessed objec- tively, they often misvalue the true worth of goods) that can be taken away, or denied them, by others (1129b2-7). These primarily include life, bodily integrity, freedom, money, property, sex, ofces, power, and status. Consulting everyday opinion, Aristotle starts by noting that a just person is thought to be someone inclined to obey the law and treat others fairly (1129a31-b2). The law that the just person obeys is itself designed to promote a shared good within a political community. Justice thus comes to sight as something geared towards the well-being of others, a communal utility (1129b14-19). Yet conning jus- tice to utilitarian principles would, Aristotle argues, fail to capture everything implicit in our ordinary moral notions. Consider the case of an investor who has been defrauded by their stock broker. In calling this unjust, people rarely mean to say that the bro- kers’ particular act lowered social utility or that it would if that sort of behavior were permitted to become a general rule. What most people mean to say is that the broker took advantage of the investor by gaining a disproportionate share of benets from the relationship. The unjust person is deemed to get the better of the victim: ‘‘for the man who acts unjustly has too much, and the man who is unjustly treated too little, of what is good’’ (1131b19-20). Seek the Good Life349 Hence, justice has traditionally been depicted as a scale, with injustice needing to be xed by restoring the balance on that scale or, as it is sometimes put more colloquially, by evening the score (1132a7- 10). Now consider a case in which a hard working and competent brand manager is passed up for promotion to Vice-President of Marketing in favor of the CEO’s patently less qualied cousin. Here, too, most people’s sense of justice is not driven by utility considerations. They would explain their indignation by pointing out that the brand manager obtained less than he or she deserved, whereas the CEO’s cousin received more. Once again, as Aris- totle observes, justice is supposed to require pro- portionality, although this instance differs from the rst inasmuch as the qualities of the persons involved are taken into account in establishing the right bal- ance of goods (1132a2-6). Aristotle calls the pro- portionality requirement inherent in the rst case recticatory justice. The same requirement inherent in the second case is called distributive justice. Recticatory justice serves as a standard for transactions, making it especially relevant to the buying and selling of goods and services, i.e., busi- ness (1131b25-26). The standard basically acknowl- edges that reciprocity must prevail in all commercial exchanges, that each transacting party must receive just as much as they gave. ‘‘In associations for ex- change,’’ Aristotle says, ‘‘this sort of justice does hold men together – reciprocity in accordance with a proportion’’ (1132b31-33). Obviously, satisfying this condition does not entail numerical equality in the quantity of goods exchanged. A trade of one car for the day’s newspaper would clearly be unfair to the car seller. Aristotle explains that the reciprocity called for is proportional, that is, the relative quan- tities must be weighted by the value of the goods transacted. Money, Aristotle avers, facilitates this weighting by, for example, assigning a car that is worth 10,000 newspapers a price that is 10,000 times greater than that for a newspaper (1133a18-22). This way, the seller of the car obtains the money equiv- alent of 10,000 newspapers, thereby receiving exactly the same as what he or she gave. As money, being a medium of exchange, does not set the relative value of goods, but merely represents it, the question naturally arises as to what does, or should, determine value. Given Aristotle’s view that happiness is an objective phenomenon, it would nothave been surprising had he insisted upon an intrinsically correct set of values, perhaps in line with each good’s contribution to virtue and the best life. This would allow an independent observer to de- clare a transaction unjust, even if both parties vol- untarily traded at the going market rate and obtained exactly that for which they bargained. In this fash- ion, Marx used the labor theory of value – according to which the relative value of goods reects the ef- fort that went into producing them – to decry the injustice of the wages that capitalists paid to workers in exchange for their services. After all, to the extent workers add all the value to goods with their labor, the prot that capitalists generate by selling those goods can only come from shortchanging their employees on wages. An objective criterion of value is also implied in the advocacy of minimum wages as well as the charge of exploitation that arises when- ever a large corporation is found to be employing Third World workers at low pay. In these cases, it is usually assumed that workers’ services should at least be worth the price of a minimally comfortable and dignied life. Aristotle, on the other hand, identied the ex- change value of goods as being a function of de- mand. By demand, Aristotle is not using the term in the way economists do nowadays to designate peo- ple’s willingness to pay for a good in contradistinc- tion to supply, representing producers’ willingness to sell. For Aristotle, demand refers to everyone’s subjective desire to make trades (1133a25-30). While acknowledging that goods have objective values, Aristotle accepts people’s subjective assess- ments to understand the demands of justice in the marketplace. Of course, Aristotle wants people to value things at their real worth in their exchanges, but he recognizes the cultivation of proper tastes is the task of moral education on the part of the state or parents, not of the administration of recticatory justice (1129b4-11 and 1179b31-1180a32). Under- stood subjectively, demand is decisive in setting value because a transaction will not take place unless each party wants what the other has to offer and both can negotiate an exchange ratio on mutually acceptable terms (1133b6-10). The combined negotiating efforts will tend to converge at the level reecting the highest price individuals still looking to buy are willing to pay and the lowest price individuals still looking to sell are willing to take, 350George Bragues otherwise known as the market price. Since this is where the logic of demand leads, it must follow for Aristotle that transactions made at the market price do not raise any reciprocity dilemmas for rectica- tory justice to address. A lack of reciprocity can only transpire in the marketplace when a transfer of goods takes place between X and Y to which one of the parties does not actually consent, either due to coercion or fraud. As Aristotle puts it, ‘‘being un- justly treated is not voluntary’’ (1136b13-14), where ‘‘not voluntary’’ means ‘‘that which is done in ignorance, or though not done in ignorance is not in the agent’s power, or is done under compulsion’’ (1135a31-34). 6 One might wonder whether Aristotle would de- ne coercion to include economic pressure, the situation in which the alternative a person faces to an already unappealing course of action is even worse. Aristotle calls an act compulsory, ‘‘when the cause is in external circumstances and the agent contributes nothing’’ (1110b2-3). In clarifying this, Aristotle concedes that some actions are so awful that no one would voluntarily choose them in the abstract. Even so, Aristotle reminds us that decisions are never made in the abstract, but with a view to particular circumstances, so that a bleak option can still be a reasonable choice, if situational factors indicate that the costs are worth the benets (1110a4-14). In it- self, a dollar an hour is far from enticing, but if the alternative is starvation, then an Aristotelian business ethicist must hold that the person who opts to work at that wage is not compelled in any morally relevant sense. Nor does Aristotle provide any grounds to challenge transactions involving a monopoly. He relates the oft-told story of how Thales acquired all the oil presses in Miletus and Chios during the winter on the expectation that the harvest season would produce a bumper crop of olives. Thales’ forecast proved correct, allowing him to make a fortune by charging a high price for the use of his presses. The lesson Aristotle takes from this: ‘‘his scheme for getting wealth is of universal application, and is nothing but the creation of a monopoly’’ (1259a20-21). We can be more precise than Aris- totle and say Thales’ example demonstrates that maximizing prot is best accomplished by forecast- ing demand, and coordinating the applicable re- sources, better than others, such that one ends up holding a monopoly. By not deploring Thales’exploitation of a monopoly, and instead putting it forward as useful advice for people to amass wealth (1259a33-35), Aristotle anticipates Schumpeter (1950), who would later assert that the pursuit of monopoly is a major force driving business life (pp. 87–92). From the standpoint of recticatory justice at least, businesses are permitted to obtain labor, materials, and capital, as well as sell goods and ser- vices, at whatever rate the market will bear, so long as it does not resort to threats of violence or deception. Compared to the recticatory form, distributive justice has a more limited pertinence to business (Hayek, 1976, pp. 67–70). It cannot be used to assess the allocation of wealth and incomes generated by market processes, since Aristotle reckons that dis- tributive justice presupposes a specic individual or entity assigning shares according to some design. This is why he considers the question whether, given the incidence of a distributive injustice, the person who allotted the unfair share is more at fault than the one receiving it (1136b15-1137a4). But if distributive justice does not make sense with respect to the market system in which commerce operates, it does apply to the way each business relates to its employees. After all, managers allot jobs, promotions, demotions, responsibilities, decision-making powers, perks, projects, bonuses, privileges, and awards. Companies must decide how to differentiate people’s remuneration across all the positions it employs. The key issue with distributive justice consists in deter- mining what constitutes merit, which Aristotle well knew was a highly contentious matter with each of the opposing sides tending to state positions favorable to their interests. In an oligarchy, for example, ruling elites identify merit with wealth, while in a demo- cratic regime, the populace declares everyone to be equally entitled to goods (1280a8-24). Aristotle views these as containing a part, but not the whole, of the truth, and therefore as opinions to be transcended through philosophical analysis. What he chiey concludes from his analysis is that merit is a function of those qualities that enable an individual to perform the task at hand. Aristotle cites the example of how one ought to go about allocating utes among pipe players. No fair minded person could ever think that it matters whether a ute player is rich or poor, or whether they are legally recognized as being equal to everyone else. All that matters is their ability to play Seek the Good Life351 the ute. Those who play them well should receive the best ute, while those who are less procient ought to be given lower quality instruments (1282b31-1283a2). Otherwise, the utes would likely go to waste, given the possibility that the best ones might well land in the hands of someone untalented, whether due to their wealth or by right of equality. The same principle would apply to the various tasks confronted in business. If, say, a company is trying to resolve who to promote for a treasury position, the question would be: who among the candidates is likely to be the best treasurer and make the greatest contribution to the company? The phrase ‘‘greatest contribution,’’ however, should not simply be equated to ‘‘greatest prot contribution,’’ since money is not the purpose of life, but simply a means to the good life, which, to repeat, consists of virtuous conduct. Accordingly, Aristotelian business ethics enjoins managers to give people promotions, jobs, tributes, and so forth, not merely with an eye to prot maximization, but also to recognize and encourage virtuous conduct. Thinking beyond prots does not entail inordinately sacricing them by rewarding someone unproductive and virtuous, as that would undercut the material support for virtue, yet it does mean not rewarding someone productive and vicious. Aristotle’s discussion of justice bears on another contentious issue in present-day business ethics associated with the growing internationalization of commerce. Whereas at home, bribing a public ofcial is deemed a serious wrong, in the country where a company’s new factory is planned, the practice might be tolerated as a necessary cost of doing business. Beyond their native borders, rms may discover that tax evasion is expected, meet no opposition to hiring 13-year-olds for physically demanding work, or nd it difcult to employ women in high prole jobs. The logically consistent cultural relativist would see nothing objectionable in a company that played by such norms while abroad and indeed might be apt to view it as a typical example of Western arrogance if an American or European rm were to institute its own values in foreign lands. Cultural relativism has its roots in Aristotle’s time, among a group of itinerant intel- lectuals known as the sophists who opposed natural theories of justice, holding instead that right is ahuman construct reecting the peculiarities of time and place. The sophists’ main supporting argument was that notions of justice vary from one nation to the next, whereas whatever is natural, such as the sexual drive, is universally prevalent. In order to hold companies accountable to universal moral standards, as many business ethicists are wont to do, the sophists’ thesis must be faced. Aristotle’s response to that thesis is stunningly brief and allusive (1134b18-1135b15). What can be arguably culled from the relevant passages is that Aristotle,contrathe sophists, insists the distinction between natural and legal justice to be a real one. While conceding the multiplicity of opinions about justice, Aristotle does not think that relativism log- ically follows, owing to the fact that variances can prevail either consistently with natural forces or in opposition to them. To illustrate this, Aristotle notes that a person who is stronger with their right hand can also learn to use their left-hand without ceasing to be naturally right-handed (1134b33-34). In other words, natural justice approves conduct that, among the various conceivable behaviors, cuts least against the grain of people’s tendencies. Stated otherwise, justice supports conduct involving the least cost for society to cultivate. At the same time, Aristotle lik- ens merely legal rules to standardized measures; it does not so much matter what exactly the rules are in this case as it does to settle upon some framework so as to facilitate social interactions (1134b20-23). An additional variable accounting for the variance of justice norms, Aristotle observes, is that the laws and mores of a given nation are inuenced by its form of government, of which there are several. Still, there is, Aristotle says, but one ideal form of government, in which the supremely virtuous unqualiedly rule (1284a3-11 and 1284b25-34), and that serves as the natural standard by which to weigh the justice of existing regimes (1135a3-6). Since the ideal gov- ernment is the best suited to realize the longing for happiness, and integrating what was just said above about the implications of Aristotle’s reference to right-handedness, natural justice comes to sight as a set of dictates that optimally enables an association of individuals each to actualize self-perfection in a manner that does not make war with the dominant inclinations of the human soul. Yet Aristotle is under no illusion that the best form of government is practically realizable (1288b21-27). By similar 352George Bragues reasoning it must be unrealistic to insist that the norms of natural justice prevail at every time and place. The stipulations of natural justice must be diluted to accommodate circumstantial necessities. It would be hopeless to extract out of Aristotle’s writings specic measures by which companies can engineer this compromise in their global operations. Even so, Aristotle is useful in reminding those business ethicists committed to imposing a single moral standard worldwide that they are advised to temper their demands. The intellectual virtues To the intellectual virtue ofphronesis, often translated as practical wisdom, or prudence as we will refer to it, belongs the task of guiding action through the thickets of particularity. Exercising reason’s deliber- ative faculties, prudence overcomes the vagueness inherent in merely knowing that morally virtuous conduct is a mean between two extremes, pin- pointing that mean in the situation at hand, taking into account all the relevant details and contingen- cies. The prudent individual consistently makes the right decisions to further every facet of a good life for him or herself, making sure to maintain their health, nances, social relationships, and, most importantly of all, their moral virtue (1140a24-b5). Prudence thus renders it possible for the moral vir- tues to completely express themselves (1144a7-9). None of this is to say that prudence is merely self- referential, for Aristotle notes that it is also exhibited by the heads of households and states in overseeing the affairs of their respective associations (1140b7- 11). Indeed, such displays of prudence are more impressive in Aristotle’s mind than the self-directed kind, owing to the greater intellectual challenges and responsibilities involved. Managerial positions in companies certainly offer analogous opportunities for the application of prudence. Sophia, or wisdom, is the other intellectual virtue, utilizing that part of reason capable of grasping necessary truths as distinct from the conditional and probable truths comprehended by prudence. Wis- dom’s province, in other words, is theory as opposed to rationally informed practice. As Aristotle tells it, the wise person has both intuition and scientic knowledge – the rst consists in discerning the rstprinciples, the initial premises from which all sci- entic demonstrations must be derived; the second involves being able to deductively infer and account for the conclusions established in the theoretical sciences (1141a16-18). Unlike productive or tech- nical rationality, wisdom does not concern itself with bringing new objects into being, instead pursuing knowledge for its own sake in a contemplative mode. The embodiment of this quest is the philos- opher, the lover of wisdom, who is understood by Aristotle not in the modern sense as someone that merely studies logical, metaphysical, and normative issues, but as someone who seeks a full accounting of the essential principles underlying the totality of phenomena in the divine, natural, and human worlds. Recollecting Aristotle’s claim that a human being functions well, and thereby virtuously, in deploying the rational faculties that distinguish us from the animals, the conclusion that prudence and wisdom exercise those faculties necessarily leads to the question: which, if any, of those two virtues deserves priority in clarifying the nature of the good life (1324a23-34)? Aristotle’s answer is that the wisdom sought by the philosopher is to be preferred. His reasoning can be summarized in this way: prudence is fully realized in the political sphere, as that is where a person’s deliberative skills can be put to the greatest test of trying to secure the most vital needs of a large group of people. To exercise prudence in this arena, however, one must hold a leadership role, since the ruled are obligated to follow orders with- out having to think through the advisability of the policies that they are abetting (1277a14-15 and 1277b26-30). Taken to its logical extent, this would suggest that, after acquiring the necessary expertise under someone else’s authority and successfully climbing up the ranks, one should hang onto the top position, doing everything necessary to quash chal- lengers (1325a34-39). Aside from the viciousness such efforts are apt to involve, the individuals that one would be directing would effectively be reduced to slaves and there is little intellectual challenge in ruling people who mechanically follow orders (1325a24-26). Hence, for Aristotle, seeking fulll- ment through prudence requires that one oversee free individuals who are themselves capable of leading and who take turns in doing so, at which point one is duty-bound to obey them (1277b7-16). Seek the Good Life353 The fulllment that prudence offers is thus intermittent; using Aristotle’s language, the good person, to wit the fullled person, cannot be iden- tical to a good citizen, that is, someone who plays their assigned role in the association to which they belong (1276b16-1277a13 and 1277a25-29) 7. Not having to periodically suspend the full use of their intellect, the satisfactions of the philosopher are more continuous, while also being enjoyed in greater leisure, without the busy and hectic days of the typical leader (1177b4-26). Not only that, Aristotle insists that thevia contemplativais the most self-sufcient option in not requiring much in the way of riches, just enough, at any rate, to provide for the necessaries of life (1177a27-b1). Just as a happy life should be, philosophical inquiry is pleasurable, an activity whose mental enjoyments are not mixed with pain, wherein the constant ow of ideas offers an inexhaustible source of engrossing subject matter for the mind (1177a19-27). If, evidently, the philosophic life ranks rst in terms of expressing virtue, while the political life ranks second, and private life ranks third, where does that leave business? It leaves it somewhere between politics and everyday existence. While quite a few corporations employ more people than the popula- tion of some countries, political leaders, by and large, are responsible for greater numbers, especially at the national level, while also having to occupy them- selves with weightier and more comprehensive as- pects of our lives. A top politician nowadays has to deal with national defense, health care, education, and crime, while a CEO might worry about the market share of bipolar transistors in Latin America. Nevertheless, the fact that business leaders do steer large organizations puts them in no mean trial of their prudence. So too, the people that company executives lead are free in the sense that they can usually take a job elsewhere under another boss. A difculty, however, is that businesses are not democracies in which the reins of power are peri- odically switched between the same group of indi- viduals. Generally speaking, someone in a position of being ruled can only become a ruler by progressing up the corporate ladder, and once having attained the reins of power, the expectation is for that person not to descend. In addition, some individuals are not granted the opportunity of rising through the ranks, not being viewed as suited for management. Froman Aristotelian position, they can exercise the virtues appropriate to their role within the rm, by per- forming their assigned duties well, whether as data entry operators, plumbers, or janitors – although this is a far cry from the full cultivation of the intellectual faculties. Given this limitation, as well as the more serious one that companie