Business Ethics: A European Review Volume 17 Number 2 April 2008

Practising Applied Ethics with philosophical integrity: the case of Business Ethics
Deon Rossouwn
The unprecedented growth and demand for Applied Ethics (Business Ethics, Medical Ethics, Information Ethics, Engineering Ethics, etc.) since the last quarter of the previous century, has opened up a range of new opportunities for the discipline of Philosophy. While these new opportunities have been enthusiastically seized upon by some philosophers, others have frowned upon them or rejected them outright. In order to make sense of this demand for Applied Ethics training, I will rst explore in general why this demand for Applied Ethics developed. I will then use the example of Business Ethics to demonstrate and discuss some of the suspicions contemplated by philosophers who regard Applied Ethics as a dangerous and deceitful temptation that potentially can corrupt Philosophy, and that philosophers should at best avoid or at least be very careful of. I will assess the legitimacy and seriousness of these concerns and objections with regard to Business Ethics and then outline an Aristotelian approach to Business Ethics that I believe can be practised with philosophical integrity.

Introduction
There has been an unprecedented growth and demand for Applied Ethics (Business Ethics, Medical Ethics, Information Ethics, Engineering Ethics, etc.) since the last quarter of the previous century. Philosophy departments, from time to time, nd themselves in a position where they are expected to supply this demand. The reactions to this demand on the side of philosophers have been varied. Some simply reject this demand as inappropriate, others reluctantly agree to supply this demand, whilst still others embrace it. Those who regard this demand as inappropriate, typically portray such ventures into Applied Ethics as an attempt by ailing Philosophy Departments to grow their student numbers or, as John Passmore
n

Professor of Philosophy, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa.

put it on a lighter note, as a last despairing attempt on the part of philosophers to demonstrate that they are not, after all, entirely useless (1998: 681). Those who oppose the move towards Applied Ethics are typically portrayed as philosophers who have lost contact with reality and, as Martha Nussbaum said on occasion, are playing truant from all meaningful activity, producing works of interest to nobody but one another, and in most cases not even to one another (Hoffman et al. 1995: 144). In order to make sense of this demand for Applied Ethics, I will rst discuss some of the major developments that contributed to the turn to Applied Ethics that have been witnessed over the last three decades. I will then use the example of Business Ethics to demonstrate and discuss some of the suspicions contemplated by philosophers who regard Applied Ethics as a dangerous and deceitful temptation that potentially can

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corrupt Philosophy, and that philosophers should at best avoid or at least be very careful of. I will assess the legitimacy and seriousness of these concerns and objections in the case of Business Ethics and then outline an Aristotelian approach to Business Ethics that I believe can be practised with philosophical integrity.

The turn towards Applied Ethics

The contemporary turn towards Applied Ethics was fuelled by a variety of developments. Probably the most important of these developments was the rise in prominence and status of science in the modern era. Francis Bacons famous adage that knowledge is power has become a reality in the modern era. Science was embraced as a moral ideal in the optimistic belief that through modern science humanity would be able to ward off the insecurities imposed by the unpredictability and harshness of nature (cf. Taylor 1991: 104). Through science, it was believed, humanity would ultimately be able to cope with and conquer the scarcity and insecurity that threaten human existence. The prominence and prestige thus accorded to science have also had a secondary, but inverse effect on the prominence and prestige of philosophical ethics. In modern science a stark distinction has arisen between facts and values. The rationality underpinning modern science places a special emphasis on facts, but devalues values. The discourse on facts gained priority over the discourse on values. Consequently philosophical ethics, which by its very nature deals with values, has been pushed to the sidelines, if not totally excluded from mainline modern scientic discourse (cf. MacIntyre 1979: 128, 1990: 217). This has resulted in a situation in which the discourse on science and the application thereof have increasingly become isolated from the philosophical discourse on ethics. The blame for the marginalisation of ethics discourse in the modern era could, however, not only be pinned on developments in modern science. There are also developments within Philosophy itself that have contributed to the

marginalisation of Philosophical Ethics. Modern Philosophical Ethics, in an attempt to keep up with the rationality of modern science, has produced approaches to ethics that simulate the universal laws of nature produced by the natural sciences. The two best known traditions within modern philosophical ethics, viz. Immanuel Kants deontological ethics and John Stuart Mills utilitarian ethics, each produced its own version of a universal moral law in the form of Kants Categorical Imperative (or universal moral law) and Mills Greatest Happiness Principle. The focus of modern Philosophical Ethics on fundamental ethical principles (such as the Categorical Imperative and the Greatest Happiness Principle) has run into a variety of difculties. First, an anti-theory position has developed that questions the usefulness of ethical principles, because they are too abstract to have a meaningful relevance and application to the mainstream ethical issues of modern society (cf. Solomon 1992: 99, Furrow 1995: xiiixiv, Horvath 1995: 501, Crisp 1998: 13, Railton 2004: 28). Second, modern ethical theories have failed to resolve moral dilemmas and often, instead, fuel moral differences and disputes (Horvath 1995: 501). This inability to solve moral dilemmas and the obvious incommensurable clashes between the various modern ethical theories has had a double effect on the way in which modern Philosophical Ethics was being practised. A rst effect that these charges of abstractness and incommensurability had on Philosophical Ethics was that a line of thinking emerged that viewed moral differences as irresolvable in principle owing to the fact that moral differences can ultimately be related to individual and cultural differences regarding moral values (Heeger 1993: 13). This has opened the door for a variety of versions of subjectivism, relativism and emotivism to emerge. By pushing ethics back into the domain of the subjective and the emotional, the potential of Philosophical Ethics to make a meaningful contribution to the ethical crisis of the modern era had been seriously undermined (cf. MacIntyre 1983: 10). Another effect that that these charges of abstractness and incommensurability had was
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that, instead of focussing on the ethical challenges of the modern era, Philosophical Ethics became increasingly entangled in its own internal difculties. This inward movement fuelled meta-ethical debates where the focus was no longer on the ethical issues of the modern world but on the nature and meaning of ethical deliberation and the moral concepts used in ethical deliberation. This unprecedented focus on meta-ethics prompted Bernard Williams to say that contemporary moral philosophy has found an original way of being boring, which is by not discussing moral issues at all (1993: xvii). The marginalisation of ethics in modern science and the complementary marginalisation of Philosophical Ethics within Philosophy reached a turning point in the latter half of the 20th century. After two devastating world wars, numerous incidents of genocide, a widening gap between the rich and the poor, a spate of scandals in commerce, professions and politics, and also ecological destruction on a scale never experienced before, the belief that science alone can pave the way to a better future lost its credibility (Heeger 1993: 11). Instead, a realisation has dawned that the power that modern science has placed in the hands of modern individuals was able to destabilise and threaten the continued existence of humankind. In this regard, Hans Jonas remarked that before our time mans inroads into nature were essentially supercial and powerless to upset its appointed balance (in Jacobs 1993: 29). Now, Jonas indicates, we have become aware that nature will not forever be able to take care of itself. Instead, we have started to recognise that we need to assume responsibility for the impact of our actions on our natural and social world. It is exactly this awareness of ethical responsibility towards our world that has triggered the need for a new way of engaging ethically with our world. Philosophical Ethics, with its focus on abstract moral principles on the one hand, and its fascination with meta-ethical issues on the other hand, was not able to answer this call for an ethics that can engage with the ethical challenges of the modern world. Applied Ethics instead emerged as a contender to ll this void.
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Traditionally, Philosophical Ethics focussed on the nature of ethical obligation, the fundamental principles underpinning ethical obligation, and the meta-ethical dimensions thereof. Applied Ethics, in contrast, engages with specic ethical challenges that arise in various disciplines and domains of life. Instead of merely attempting to apply fundamental ethical principles to practical moral challenges, it generated what Richard De George (1988: 676) calls second-order principles and norms; that is, norms that are articulated through a process of going back and forth from ethical considerations to practical ethical challenges until, what John Rawls called a reective equilibrium, is being reached. Applied Ethics, also in other respects, ventured beyond the traditional domain of Philosophical Ethics by engaging with ethics not merely on the intra- and interpersonal level, but also on the macro-moral level of the morality of social and economic systems (cf. De George 1988: 678). Instead of merely making moral judgements, it also attends to the prevention of individual and systemic moral failures. A further distinguishing aspect of Applied Ethics is the depth with which it engages with disciplines or domains on which it is focussed (Heeger 1993: 11). It became clear that ethics can only be applied to a specic domain or discipline if the applied ethicist is properly acquainted with that specic discipline or domain. This realisation stimulated both the growth of descriptive ethics (i.e. social scientic investigation, description and analysis of ethical states of affairs) and co-operation across disciplines, but also across the academic-practitioner divide. Although Philosophy is by no means the sole player in this new eld of Applied Ethics that emerged particularly since the last quarter of the previous century, it was a prominent player from the beginning and still remains one. It is exactly the prominence and participation of Philosophy in the eld of Applied Ethics that some philosophers regard with suspicion or reject outright. In the next section I will examine the objections and concerns of philosophers who regard Applied Ethics as a dangerous temptation for Philosophy. I will specically use the case of Business Ethics to demonstrate and discuss these concerns.

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Philosophical concerns about Applied Ethics

My survey of philosophical literature on Applied Ethics has identied three main concerns to be found amongst those who regard Applied Ethics as a temptation that should be resisted by Philosophy or at least treated with great circumspection. These three concerns revolve around the nature of Applied Ethics, the scope of Applied Ethics and the philosophical integrity of Applied Ethics. (Crisp identied a fourth objection, viz., philosophical scepticism (1998: 10), but since this objection is not specically aimed at Applied Ethics, but against any form of Philosophical Ethics (cf. Crisp 1998: 13), I will not include it as a major concern about Applied Ethics specically.) I will now discuss each of these three concerns and also demonstrate how these concerns relate specically to Business Ethics. Furthermore, I will evaluate the seriousness of the challenge that these concerns pose to philosophical engagement with Business Ethics. I deliberately follow this approach of starting with general objections against Applied Ethics and then applying these objections to Business Ethics, because I wish to build a case for a philosophically responsible approach to Business Ethics as a form of Applied Ethics. I thus deliberately avoid getting entangled in the debate where the philosophical legitimacy of Business Ethics is accepted, but certain approaches to teaching, researching or practising Business Ethics are nevertheless critiqued (see e.g. Hosmer 1988, 2000, Adams et al. 1998, Cowton & Cummins 2003: 4851). The nature of Applied Ethics The rst concern that is voiced regarding Applied Ethics is that it is un-philosophical in nature. It is argued that there is nothing typically philosophical in applying fundamental ethical theories to practical issues (cf. Solomon 1992: 175; also see Friday 2004: 30). This charge against Applied Ethics is based on the assumption that Applied Ethics is a mere technical application of existing ethical theories to current moral issues. It thus lacks that critical and creative dimension that characterises a philosophical approach.

In the case of Business Ethics this critique would typically be addressed to approaches where philosophical ethical theories like deontological, utilitarian, social contract or virtue theories are described and then applied to real or ctional business issues or scenarios. This approach is often encountered especially in undergraduate textbooks on Business Ethics. This rst concern about Applied Ethics as it relates to Business Ethics cannot be considered a serious challenge for two reasons: rst, it paints a distorted picture of the eld of Applied Ethics in general and Business Ethics in particular. That such applications of philosophical ethical theories to business issues and scenarios do occur cannot be denied, but to argue that such applications constitute the core of what is happening in the eld of Business Ethics is simply false. As already indicated, such applications are mostly restricted to undergraduate textbooks. However, if one looks beyond textbooks to what is being published by philosophers in the eld of Business Ethics in scholarly books and journals, this charge simply does not stick. Second, this concern is premised upon a distorted view of the nature of Applied Ethics in general. It was argued above in the discussion on the distinction between traditional Philosophical Ethics and Applied Ethics, that what distinguishes Applied Ethics is exactly the fact that it ventures beyond the mere application of ethical theory to practical moral challenges. What holds true for Applied Ethics in general also applies to the case of Business Ethics. Besides being a misrepresentation, this concern about the nature of Applied Ethics borders on demonising any form of Applied Ethics, including Business Ethics. Demonising occurs when the worst practice of something is contrasted with the best or ideal form of whatever it is being compared with (cf. Hromadka 1964: 63). In this case an inadequate and incomplete aspect of Applied and Business Ethics is being compared with the best that Philosophy can offer. The scope of Applied Ethics A second concern about Applied Ethics is that its scope is too restricted. It is argued that ethical
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problems are embedded in wider cultural and intellectual contexts, and that, by focusing on only the ethical dimension of problems, the wider philosophical context and philosophical underpinnings of modern moral problems are neglected. Ethical problems, we are reminded by these critics, are rooted in philosophical assumptions about persons, society, science, knowledge and the meaning of life, to mention only a few. Furthermore, they are also accompanied by all kinds of meta-ethical considerations and questions. In this regard, Friday argues that in addressing the moral ailments of modern society, we would do better to abandon the limited vocabulary of Applied Ethics and substitute for it the much wider vocabulary that Philosophy affords us (2004: 32). When this concern is applied to the eld of Business Ethics it amounts to a charge that the scope of investigation and the theoretical vantage points used in philosophical Business Ethics are too narrow. Consequently it runs the danger of addressing ethical issues and problems within business, without ever challenging business as such or the free market economics within which business operates or the culture of consumerism that underpins business (Sorell 1998: 93). Philosophical Business Ethics therefore runs the risk of having or developing theoretical blind spots due to its too narrow theoretical scope. This challenge of Applied Ethics, and by implication also Business Ethics, being too limited in its scope to address modern ethical problems deserves to be taken seriously. A too narrow focus on the rightness and wrongness of specic actions or practices can blind us to the wider intellectual context in which modern moral problems need to be perceived and discussed. The important question in this regard is whether there are any inherent restrictions in Applied Ethics in general and Business Ethics in particular that prevent them from engaging with the broader philosophical issues and questions in which our modern moral problems are embedded. I nd myself in agreement with Richard De George who says that in practising Applied Ethics one inevitably runs into a host of philosophical and meta-ethical questions that blur the distinction between
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Applied Ethics, Philosophical Ethics and Philosophy in general (1988: 678). There is thus nothing in the nature of Applied Ethics, or in Philosophical Business Ethics in particular, that prevents them from engaging with any philosophical dimension of any modern moral issue that they encounter. To the contrary, Business Ethics affords us the option not only to engage with Philosophy, but also to challenge existing philosophical views with regard to their relevance and meaning for modern economics and conceptions of work (see e.g., McCann & Brownsberger (1995: 513) for their critique of the Aristotelian conception of commerce). The critique about the scope of Philosophical Business Ethics should therefore not be regarded as a critique against Business Ethics as such, but rather as a critique against some philosopher business ethicists who pursue a too restricted agenda. In this respect it is telling that a philosopher like Klonoski who levelled the charge of a too restrictive scope against Applied Ethics, also demonstrates how he engages with Professional Ethics in a manner that leads students to discover that current problems have a long philosophical lineage (2003: 23). The philosophical integrity of Applied Ethics The third concern about Applied Ethics is by far the most serious one. That is the concern that the academic and philosophical integrity of Applied Ethics can be sacriced as it might become subservient to the existing order (cf. Heeger 1993: 12). The concern is expressed that philosophers who engage in Applied Ethics might be lured by the temptations of money, power and prestige to become so engaged on the micro-moral level that they lose their ability to reect critically on modern society and the socio-economic system within which they offer their moral advice. In doing so they might sacrice their allegiance to the uncompromising philosophical quest for truth and wisdom and become uncritical endorsers of the status quo who only tamper with the problems that arise within our modern culture, without challenging the values of that culture any more. Noonan articulates this concern when he says that Applied Ethics presents not only a distortion of

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philosophys nature, but a fundamental danger to the future of philosophical enquiry (2003: 37). Of all the elds of Applied Ethics, Business Ethics is the most likely candidate to fall prey to this temptation. Expertise within the eld of Business Ethics is in demand by business, governmental and non-governmental organisations and can open career paths or opportunities to earn additional income for philosopher business ethicists. The possibility of sacricing philosophical integrity for the sake of money, power or status is thus real. The spectre of philosopher business ethicists being subservient to the agenda of business cannot be merely dismissed as the idle or jealous day dreaming of philosophers whose expertise is not in immediate demand. It is possible to build a defence against this concern about Philosophical Business Ethics by pointing out that, although this temptation of sacricing philosophical integrity for material or symbolic gain is real, it does not constitute a compelling force that necessarily will coerce philosopher business ethicists to sacrice their academic or philosophical integrity. To ignore this temptation would be a grave mistake, but to turn a temptation into an unavoidable necessity would also be a mistake. Instead of dismissing this concern on the ground that it is premised on a slippery slope argument, I prefer to give this concern the full weight that it deserves and outline an Aristotelian approach to Applied Ethics that can withstand this third concern. I will once more demonstrate the implications of such an Aristotelian Applied Ethics approach for Philosophical Business Ethics A good entry point into developing a normative ideal of what Applied Ethics should be is to determine what kind of knowing and what kind of knowledge is to be pursued in Applied Ethics. A distinction that Aristotle made in his Nichomachean Ethics is particularly apt in this regard. Aristotle distinguished between ve kinds of knowledge, viz. scientic knowledge, technical skill, practical wisdom, intuition and wisdom (1976: 206213). I wish to propose that specically the third of these categories of knowledge, viz. practical knowledge, provides a model upon which any form of responsible Applied Ethics should be based. I will therefore unpack the

meaning and implications of the Aristotelian notion of practical wisdom. The original Greek term, phronesis, is usually translated as practical knowledge or prudence. Aristotle said that phronesis is distinguished from other forms of knowledge by the fact that it refers specically to the intellectual ability to deliberate rightly about what is conducive to the good life generally (1976: 209). He went on to add that we regard people as prudent when they can envisage what is good for themselves and for people in general; we consider that this quality belongs to those who understand the management of households or states (1976: 209). In his discussion of the virtue of phronesis he further emphasised that the intellectual virtue of phronesis applies specically to situations where we encounter variables and not rst principles or scientic truths (cf. Solomon 1992: 63 and 174). The meaning of phronesis is well captured by Gerard Hughes (1998) when he says that for Aristotle Prudence consisted in an admirable intellectual skill and then continues to indicate that the prudent person has to have both an understanding of what human fullment is and an ability to perceive which action, here and now, can contribute to living a life of human fullment. The above exposition of Aristotles understanding of phronesis implies that there are three kinds of knowledge or understanding that one has to obtain in order to produce phronesis or practical wisdom. First, one should have a proper understanding of the variables that caused a situation, which calls for judgements of practical wisdom. Second, one should have some understanding of what a good life consists of. Finally, one should know what actions or decisions need to be taken in a specic situation in order to facilitate movement in the direction of a good life. I will briey indicate what each of these three kinds of understanding entails and also the signicance thereof for the eld of Business Ethics. Understanding the variables A rst requirement for practising Applied Ethics well is a proper understanding of the context and the variables amidst which moral problems,
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dilemmas and challenges arise. This calls for what Covey describes as an increased clinical involvement by ethicists [. . .] in mundane, practical, or professional settings (1993: 57). The philosopher who engages in Applied Ethics will have to acquaint herself with whatever area she wishes to work in. Very often this will imply an engagement with practices, socio-economic settings and disciplines that lie outside ones own discipline. It is exactly for this reason that Applied Ethics has a multi-disciplinary and sometimes even an inter-disciplinary dimension. In this regard Socrates set us a ne example with his dialogues and discourses with all who had pretensions to knowledge. Aristotle as well demonstrated an intimate knowledge of the disciplines and domains with which he engaged in his Ethics. As Railton says: No one did this better than Aristotle who has taken the anatomy of the psyche and the nature of the organism and the role of social context into consideration in constituting moral excellence (2004: 275). The implication of this rst requirement for the eld of Business Ethics should be clear. To escape the charges of abstractness and idle wheel identied by Crisp (1998: 13 and 15) as well as the risk identied by Sorell (1998) of being a form of armchair applied ethics, philosopher business ethicists will have to engage with the domain of business and economics in order to gain a proper understanding thereof. Philosophers who have no disciplinary background in business or economics, especially, will have to acquaint themselves well with these elds of study, but often also with business and economic practice. This might require a certain amount of what Donaldson called scholarly bilingualism and methodological ambidexterity (1994: 167). The challenge of being well acquainted with the domain of business and economics can also be met by engaging in inter- or multi-disciplinary work with scholars or practitioners who are well versed in business and economics. Understanding the good life A second requirement for practising Applied Ethics well resides in Aristotles insistence that
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an understanding of what a good life entails is one of the conditions for exercising practical wisdom. Understanding what a good life entails requires Applied Ethicists to engage with one of the oldest and deepest philosophical questions, viz. the question of the meaning of life. This question asks us to give an account of what we consider as individual and collective goods, but also urges us to determine the meaning and value of the social, economic and political practices that we are involved in. Without at least some notion of what a good life and good society are about, it becomes impossible to offer any meaningful advice on the moral issues that arise in various domains and disciplines (cf. MacIntyre 1999: 317, Moore 2005: 247). When this requirement is applied to the eld of Philosophical Business Ethics, it implies that ethical challenges that arise in business and economics cannot be studied in isolation. Business and economic practices should be investigated to determine their impact on individuals and society. This opens up not only the question about the contribution that our current business and economic practices make to the well-being of individuals and society; it also opens up the question of what constitutes the individual and collective good. Philosopher business ethicists have to engage with these questions in order to address the moral challenges that arise within business and economics. Failure on their side to engage with these questions will indeed open them up to the charge of being uncritical endorsers of existing economic orders and business practices. Understanding what is contextually right It is in the interaction between an adequate understanding of the variables of a specic situation or context (rst requirement discussed above) and an understanding of what a good life individually and collectively entails (second requirement discussed above) that judgements about what is right and wrong should be made. Such moral judgments most denitely do not consist of applying abstract ethical theories in a technical manner to modern day problems, as is alleged by some critics of Applied Ethics that I

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discussed earlier. This engagement has rather the character of a hermeneutical engagement in which my understanding or reading of the specic situation unlocks new meaning that changes both the situation and my own understanding of the situation. Jacobs is correct when he says that the engagement of the applied ethicist with a specic context combines inductive and deductive processes similar to Gadamers horizon of understanding (1993: 25). Engaging in this manner opens for philosophers the opportunity not only to draw on the long tradition of Socratic dialogue and the more recent tradition of discourse ethics, but also to bring, as Passmore (1998: 682) rightly says, the typical philosophical methodology of distinguishing issues, sorting out questions and discarding irrelevant considerations into play. Applied to the eld of Business Ethics this third requirement implies that philosopher business ethicists do not act as gures of moral authority, trying to put a stamp of moral approval or disapproval on certain economic behaviours or practices. Rather, in their attempts to decipher what is right, they engage with colleagues across disciplines and with practitioners in other domains as co-searchers for meaningful and humane behaviour (cf. London 2001: 95). They do not engage in mindless applications of abstract theories to contemporary business and economic practices. Instead they enter into deep engagement with the ethical dimension of business and economics and through careful analysis and reective assessment identify ways of perceiving and behaving that will do justice to both the complexity of the business challenge and to the challenge of pursuing individual and collective good. As Solomon says, practising the virtue of prudence within the context of Business Ethics is no (non-arbitrary) mechanistic decision procedure but the ability to weigh competing concerns and come to a fair conclusion (1992: 175). When Philosophical Business Ethics is practised according to the above outline of an Aristotelian Applied Ethics, the charge that it lacks philosophical integrity can hardly be maintained. Business Ethics premised on the Aristotelian notion of phronesis by denition has to move beyond the

micro-moral dimension of problem-solving within economic organisations and systems and onto the macro-moral dimension of also questioning business practices, organisations and systems as such for their contribution towards a good life and a good society. Business Ethics premised upon Aristotles notion of practical wisdom is thus unlikely to sacrice its academic or philosophical integrity by becoming subservient to the existing socio-economic order. Besides settling the concern about the philosophical integrity of Business Ethics, the Aristotelian approach outlined above also addresses the second concern about Applied Ethics, viz. the one about a too narrow scope of Applied Ethics. When the proposed approach is applied to Business Ethics it will compel philosophers as applied ethicists not only to engage with a wide array of philosophical themes related to the good of individuals and society, but it will also force them to rethink accepted philosophical ideas or send them back into the depths of meta-ethics to deal with unresolved conceptual issues that are likely to arise.

Conclusion
I have argued that the turn to Applied Ethics can be partly blamed on the inability of Philosophy as a discipline to respond to the practical and lifethreatening moral challenges of our day. I have also indicated that, although some of the misgivings of some philosophers about Applied Ethics, and therefore by implication also about Business Ethics, can be dismissed as ill-informed, other objections by philosophers need to be taken seriously in order to ensure that Philosophical Business Ethics as a form of Applied Ethics can be practised with philosophical integrity. Business Ethics, as well as all other forms of Applied Ethics, should always be self-aware and reective about its own practices and impact. It is exactly for this reason that it cannot afford to be divorced from Philosophy as the latter will ensure that the former remains intellectually vigilant and self-conscious. Through its ongoing conversation with Philosophy, Business Ethics and also other elds of Applied Ethics will be able to resist the
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temptation of a simplistic belief in linear moral progress. Business ethicists need to operate with the philosophical reminder ringing in their consciousness that in their attempt to put some things right, they unintentionally do harm to others without even realising it. Railton echoes this sentiment, when he says that the century just past may hold as many tragedies born of fantasies of purity, virtue or morality as from outright malice or shrewd self-interest (2004: 265). Furthermore, Dwight Furrow reminds us that we can never be sure that our attempts to alleviate suffering will not lead to more suffering. This awareness of our moral blind spots, he goes on to say, is why ethics must involve constant vigilance and resistance, why we must see ourselves rst as potential victimizers (1995: 192). It is for this reason that Applied Ethics in general and Business Ethics in particular need the constant company of Philosophy to interrogate their discourses and practices.

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