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The Philosophical and Spiritual/Religious Quest for an Encompassing Compassion in the Organizational Life: A Different Outlook on Conscious Capitalism

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The Spirit of Conscious Capitalism

Part of the book series: Ethical Economy ((SEEP,volume 63))

Abstract

The Conscious Capitalism movement enhances the “higher purpose” in business without clearly defining it. We argue that an encompassing compassion could be an important part of such “higher purpose”. The philosophical and spiritual/religious quest for an encompassing compassion has relational and temporal components. From a relational viewpoint, an encompassing compassion is universal and unconditional: it could allow people to cope with the various loci of suffering in the organizational life. Philosophical theories about compassion remain unsatisfying, since they convey interpretative pitfalls: favouring our self-interest and reducing our capacity for altruism (Adam Smith, David Hume); rationalizing compassion (Immanuel Kant); embracing a compartmentalization of virtues (Emmanuel Levinas). From a temporal perspective, compassion could put the emphasis on the pastness of the present (memory: retroactive compassion), on the presentness of the present (direct intuition: effective compassion), or on the futureness of the present (expectation: anticipatory compassion). In this chapter, such temporally based notion of an encompassing compassion is described, while analyzing its Confucian, Buddhist, and Islamic expressions.

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  1. École de gestion, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada

    Michel Dion

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Correspondence to Michel Dion .

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  1. École de gestion, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada

    Michel Dion

  2. Professor of Business Ethics, Yeshiva University, New York, NY, USA

    Moses Pava

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Dion, M. (2022). The Philosophical and Spiritual/Religious Quest for an Encompassing Compassion in the Organizational Life: A Different Outlook on Conscious Capitalism. In: Dion, M., Pava, M. (eds) The Spirit of Conscious Capitalism. Ethical Economy, vol 63. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10204-2_23

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