The impossibility of corporate ethics: For a Levinasian approach to managerial ethics

Business Ethics, the Environment and Responsibility 16 (3):208–219 (2007)
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Abstract

The moral philosophy of Levinas offers a stark prospectus of impossibility for corporate ethics. It differs from most traditional ethical theories in that, for Levinas, the ethical develops in a personal meeting of one with the Other, rather than residing in some internal deliberation of the moral subject. Levinasian ethics emphasizes an infinite personal responsibility arising for each of us in the face of the Other and in the presence of the Third. It stresses the imperious demand we experience to be open to, prepared for and impassioned with that which we may not know, or recognize, about ourselves or about the Other. Such a demand transcends our intellectual and/or rational potential; it involves us in a carnal and somatic bodily experience of otherness. If we are to speak of Levinasian ethics in a business context, it cannot be a matter of corporate ethics but only a matter of individual managerial ethics. What such an ethics would be like is yet to be outlined. This paper proposes a series of questions and suggestions that will explicate some key terms of a practice organized around a Levinasian vocabulary of otherness, responsibility, proximity, diachrony and justice.

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David Bevan
Royal Holloway University of London

Citations of this work

Questioning corporate codes of ethics.Mollie Painter-Morland - 2010 - Business Ethics, the Environment and Responsibility 19 (3):265-279.
“Human Quality Treatment”: Five Organizational Levels.Domènec Melé - 2014 - Journal of Business Ethics 120 (4):457-471.
Levinasian ethics in business.V. Blok - 2021 - In Deborah C. Poff & Alex C. Michalos (eds.), Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics. Springer Verlag.
Enchantment in Business Ethics Research.Emma Bell, Nik Winchester & Edward Wray-Bliss - 2020 - Journal of Business Ethics 174 (2):251-262.

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References found in this work

A Theory of Justice.John Rawls - 1971 - Oxford,: Harvard University Press. Edited by Steven M. Cahn.
A theory of justice.John Rawls - 2009 - In Steven M. Cahn (ed.), Exploring ethics: an introductory anthology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 133-135.
Totality and infinity: an essay on exteriority.Emmanuel Levinas - 1961 - Hingham, MA: distribution for the U.S. and Canada, Kluwer Boston.
Oneself as Another.Paul Ricoeur - 1992 - University of Chicago Press.

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