Abstract
Philosophers have constituted business ethics as a field by providing a systematic overview that interrelates its problems and concepts and that supplies the basis for building on attained results. Is there a properly theological task in business ethics? The religious/theological literature on business ethics falls into four classes: (1) the application of religious morality to business practices; (2) the use of encyclical teachings about capitalism; (3) the interpretation of business relations in agapa-istic terms; and (4) the critique of business from a liberation theological point of view. Theologians have not adequately addressed the questions of whether there are particular theological tasks in the field as they define it, and whether, if they define it, the theological definition is different from the philosophical.
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Richard T. De George is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kansas. He is Vice-President of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies, former President of the Metaphysical Society of America, and a past member of the Executive Committee of the Society for Business Ethics. He is the author of Business Ethics (1982) and a co-editor of Ethics, Free Enterprise and Public Policy (1978).
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De George, R.T. Theological ethics and business ethics. Journal of Business Ethics 5, 421–432 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00380748
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00380748