Recently, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum have developed the capabilities approach to provide a model for understanding the effectiveness of programs to help the developing nations. The approach holds that human beings are fundamentally free and have a sense of human dignity. Therefore, institutions need to help people enhance this dignity by providing them with the opportunity to develop their capabilities freely. I argue that this approach may help support business ethics based on virtue. Since teleology has become problematic, virtue (...) ethics has had difficulty giving itself an ultimate justification. By combining virtue ethics with the capabilities approach, it becomes possible to ground virtue ethics on the basis of the existence of human dignity. This frees virtue ethics of the need for a strict teleology, replacing it with the notion that people must work to develop the capabilities of others although those capabilities are not pointed toward a definite goal. I further suggest that by grounding virtue ethics in capabilities, the actions of a virtuous manager become clearer. Rather than simply charging a manager with serving the public, the manager is charged with serving the stakeholders in a way that develops their capabilities. For example, a manager should not just give their employees what is just but must give them the environment and the encouragement to grow and to find fulfillment in their job. (shrink)

Living in a province dominated by powerful oligarchs, Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) concluded that political philosophy should work to undermine aristocratic authority and prevent political devolution into feudalism. Rejecting the possibility that the free market could successfully instill civil behavior, he advocated for a strong central judicial system to work closely with citizens to promote stability and justice. This study puts Vico in conversation with other Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, Rousseau, and Mandeville to show how his alternative warrants serious consideration. (...) In contrast to scholars who read Vico's New Science as a defense of the imagination, this study casts his account of poetic wisdom politically as an epistemological critique of the aristocratic mentality. Myth and Authority argues that Vico's depiction of pagan religion is a refined attempt to explain how oligarchy maintains its stranglehold on power. While Western civilization did not follow the path Vico suggested, it may now be more relevant as concerns grow about the increasing influence of the wealthy on civil institutions. (shrink)

Gianvincenzo Gravina (1664–1718) and Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) were two Neapolitan philosophers concerned with the way human society initially formed. They agreed that ancient myths were produced by a mentality that had a powerful ability for acute perception but could not reflect abstractly. They also agreed that wonder (la maraviglia) was an important force that enchanted the first peoples into founding society. They disagreed on how this happened. Gravina argued that early poets could see the truth and used persuasive poetry to (...) teach the people how to live. Vico argued that wonder impelled the first poets to create false divinities that frightened the first bestial people into founding civilization. While the two views differ, they show how Neapolitan Enlightenment thinkers developed radically different answers to questions that Northern Europeans were asking. (shrink)

Gianvincenzo Gravina (1664–1718) and Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) were two Neapolitan philosophers concerned with the way human society initially formed. They agreed that ancient myths were produced by a mentality that had a powerful ability for acute perception but could not reflect abstractly. They also agreed that wonder (la maraviglia) was an important force that enchanted the first peoples into founding society. They disagreed on how this happened. Gravina argued that early poets could see the truth and used persuasive poetry to (...) teach the people how to live. Vico argued that wonder impelled the first poets to create false divinities that frightened the first bestial people into founding civilization. While the two views differ, they show how Neapolitan Enlightenment thinkers developed radically different answers to questions that Northern Europeans were asking. (shrink)

This discussion is an analysis of Vico’s account of the imaginative universals in the 1744 edition of the New Science in regard to the origin of number. The origin of number is a difficult problem for Vico because numbers are discursive concepts, yet Vico wants to fi nd their origin in mythical thought. Vico finds the origin of numbers in the power struggle between the heroes and the plebeians. The imaginative universal Mercury is the heroic act of granting bonitary ownership (...) to the plebeians. However, Mercury is also the imaginative universal of marking heroic ownership. Number originates from the heroes emphasizing ownership by marking territory more than once. This explains several peculiar passages in the New Science, including Vico’s claims about the three frogs of France (NS par. 535). (shrink)

This discussion is an analysis of Vico’s account of the imaginative universals in the 1744 edition of the New Science in regard to the origin of number. The origin of number is a difficult problem for Vico because numbers are discursive concepts, yet Vico wants to fi nd their origin in mythical thought. Vico finds the origin of numbers in the power struggle between the heroes and the plebeians. The imaginative universal Mercury is the heroic act of granting bonitary ownership (...) to the plebeians. However, Mercury is also the imaginative universal of marking heroic ownership. Number originates from the heroes emphasizing ownership by marking territory more than once. This explains several peculiar passages in the New Science, including Vico’s claims about the three frogs of France (NS par. 535). (shrink)

This discussion is an analysis of Vico’s account of the imaginative universals in the 1744 edition of the New Science in regard to the origin of number. The origin of number is a difficult problem for Vico because numbers are discursive concepts, yet Vico wants to fi nd their origin in mythical thought. Vico finds the origin of numbers in the power struggle between the heroes and the plebeians. The imaginative universal Mercury is the heroic act of granting bonitary ownership (...) to the plebeians. However, Mercury is also the imaginative universal of marking heroic ownership. Number originates from the heroes emphasizing ownership by marking territory more than once. This explains several peculiar passages in the New Science, including Vico’s claims about the three frogs of France (NS par. 535). (shrink)

Jean-Luc Nancy is a contemporary continental philosopher who argues that the hope of fully unifying a community through work is problematic. This is because people cannot be reduced to their function as workers. Thus, community is, at best, inoperative. This article takes Nancy’s ideas of community and applies them to the notion of teamwork in business. It shows how in some literature on business teamwork, there is a desire to build a team through shared work experiences. It then explains Nancy’s (...) view as to why this cannot work, and it enters into Nancy’s positive account of how a community should be seen as a web of people communicating and sharing with each other in a variety of ways. The practical conclusion the study draws is that team members need to be careful about allowing goal orientation to obfuscate the richness of the relationships that occur among team members. People need to explore all of the ways in which people share with each other rather than just those ways that advance a narrow set of goals. If the richness of those relationships is recognized, many new directions for business and for general human development may appear. (shrink)

This discussion is an analysis of Vico’s account of the imaginative universals in the 1744 edition of the New Science in regard to the origin of number. The origin of number is a difficult problem for Vico because numbers are discursive concepts, yet Vico wants to fi nd their origin in mythical thought. Vico finds the origin of numbers in the power struggle between the heroes and the plebeians. The imaginative universal Mercury is the heroic act of granting bonitary ownership (...) to the plebeians. However, Mercury is also the imaginative universal of marking heroic ownership. Number originates from the heroes emphasizing ownership by marking territory more than once. This explains several peculiar passages in the New Science, including Vico’s claims about the three frogs of France (NS par. 535). (shrink)

This discussion is an analysis of Vico’s account of the imaginative universals in the 1744 edition of the New Science in regard to the origin of number. The origin of number is a difficult problem for Vico because numbers are discursive concepts, yet Vico wants to fi nd their origin in mythical thought. Vico finds the origin of numbers in the power struggle between the heroes and the plebeians. The imaginative universal Mercury is the heroic act of granting bonitary ownership (...) to the plebeians. However, Mercury is also the imaginative universal of marking heroic ownership. Number originates from the heroes emphasizing ownership by marking territory more than once. This explains several peculiar passages in the New Science, including Vico’s claims about the three frogs of France (NS par. 535). (shrink)