Review of Wealth, Commerce, and Philosophy: Foundational Thinkers and Business Ethics, edited by Eugene Heath and Byron Kaldis

Excerpt

In their expansive edited volume, Eugene Heath and Byron Kaldis tackle the predicament at the heart of business ethics as a burgeoning field of applied philosophy. On the one hand, there is a clear need to give business ethics a broad philosophical foundation, but on the other, such efforts are inhibited by the historical hostility of the philosophical tradition to commercial life. Bringing together twenty separate contributions, organized chronologically from Homer to Amartya Sen, the editors successfully demonstrate the long-standing and fertile relationship between business and philosophy, highlighting the latter’s centuries-old occupation with material life and its moral, social, and political significance. They are therefore able to offer new directions for contemporary research drawn from the lesser known parts of this tradition, subjects like the business ethos of a community or the alternative tradition of a non-virtuous ethics. More important, in its very act of compilation, the book emphasizes the value of ethical pluralism, from institutional design to the study of business itself. …