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Business Ethics and Early Modern French Philosophy at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century

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Part of the book series: Ethical Economy ((SEEP,volume 49))

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Abstract

This chapter presents possible implications for business ethics and philosophy of management of French philosophy at the start of the twentieth century with focus on philosophers and social theorists like Henri Bergson, Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Alexandre Kojève and Georges Bataille. Modernity was developing, but nothing like contemporary globalized capitalism with its large corporations existed. This period marks the beginning of contemporary French philosophy and many of the conceptions of ethics and society that are important today were developed at that time. In France, the Cartesian philosophy of subjectivity was influential on the formulation of the most important questions in French philosophy concerning the relation between body and mind, about the status of the external world, and about the relation between philosophy and the natural and social sciences. With this horizon for philosophical reflection we are confronted with new and astonishing perspectives for business ethics and philosophy of management.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Jérôme Ballet, Francoise de Bry, Aurélie Carimentrand, Patrick Jolivet: L’entreprise et l’éthique, Economie humaine, Seuil, Paris 2011, p. 51.

  2. 2.

    Frederick W. Taylor: Scientific Management: Harber & Bros, New York 1947.

  3. 3.

    Henri Fayol (1916/1999): Administration industrielle et générale, Dubod, Paris 1918. English edition: General and industrial Management, Pitman, London 1949.

  4. 4.

    Emile Bréhier: Histoire de la philosophie II, La philosophie moderne. (1926) Paris 1967–1968.

  5. 5.

    Stephen Lindstead and John Mullarkey: “Time, creativity and culture: Introducing Bergson”, Culture and Organization, 2003, Vol 9(1) March, pp. 3–13, p. 3.

  6. 6.

    Leszek Kolakowski: Bergson, Oxford University Press, 1985. Madeleine Barthélemy-Madaule: Bergson, Le Seuil, Paris 1967.

  7. 7.

    Henri Bergson: Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience, Paris 1889. Oeuvres, pp.1–157 (Paris 1959), p. 82.

  8. 8.

    Ibid., p. 132.

  9. 9.

    Ibid., p. 134.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., p. 27.

  11. 11.

    Ibid., p. 30.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., p. 50.

  13. 13.

    Henri Bergson: Matière et mémoire, Essai sur la relation entre corps et esprit, (1896) Oeuvres complètes, Geneve 1946, p. 16.

  14. 14.

    Ibid., pp. 92–93.

  15. 15.

    Leszek Kolakowski: Bergson, Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 46ff.

  16. 16.

    Henri Bergson: Matière et mémoire, Essai sur la relation entre corps et esprit, Oeuvres complètes, Geneve 1946.

  17. 17.

    Paul Ricœur: La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, Le Seuil, Paris 2000.

  18. 18.

    Henri Bergson: L’Évolution créatrice, Paris 1907, 52. PUF-edition, Paris 1940, p. 16.

  19. 19.

    Ibid., p. 50.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., p. 271.

  21. 21.

    Ibid., p. 186.

  22. 22.

    Ibid., p. 232.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., p. 283.

  24. 24.

    Ibid., p. 288.

  25. 25.

    Ibid., p. 249.

  26. 26.

    Henri Bergson: Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion (1932), 25 edition, PUF, Paris 1962, p. 18ff.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., pp. 46–47.

  28. 28.

    Ibid., p. 53ff.

  29. 29.

    Ibid., p. 78ff.

  30. 30.

    Ibid., p. 85.

  31. 31.

    Stephen Lindstead and John Mullarkey: “Time, creativity and culture: Introducing Bergson”, Culture and Organization, 2003, Vol 9(1) March, pp. 3–13, p. 8.

  32. 32.

    Luk Bouckaert and Laszlo Zsolnai (Eds): The Palgrave Handbook of Spirituality and Business. Palgrave-Macmillan, Hampshire, England, 2011.

  33. 33.

    Maria Jakubik: “Becoming to know. Shifting the knowledge creation paradigm” Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 15 No. 3 2011, pp. 374–402, p. 374.

  34. 34.

    Emile Durkheim: Les règles de la méthode sociologique, (1895) Séconde édition, Quadrige, PUF, Paris 1937, p. 14.

  35. 35.

    Frederick Bird and James A. Waters: “The Nature of Managerial Moral Standards”, Journal of Business Ethics 6 (1987), pp. 1–13, p. 11.

  36. 36.

    Raymond Aron: Les étapes de la pensée sociologiques, Montesquieu. Comte. Marx. Tocqueville. Durkheim. Pareto. Weber, (1967), Gallimard, Tel Quel, Paris 1989, p. 319.

  37. 37.

    Emile Durkheim: Les régles de la méthode sociologique, (1895) Séconde édition, Quadrige, PUF, Paris 1937, p. 19.

  38. 38.

    Emile Durkheim: De la division du travail social. Etude sur l’organisation des sociétés supé rieueres, Paris 1893.

  39. 39.

    Raymond Aron: Les étapes de la pensée sociologiques, Montesquieu. Comte. Marx. Tocqueville. Durkheim. Pareto. Weber, (1967), Gallimard, Tel Quel, Paris 1989, p. 320.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., p. 330.

  41. 41.

    Emile Durkheim: Le suicide. Etude de sociologie, Paris 1897.

  42. 42.

    Tone Dyrdal Solbrekke and Thomas Englund: “Bringing professional responsibility back in”, Studies of Higher Education, 36:7, pp. 847–861, p. 849.

  43. 43.

    Emile Durkheim: Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse: le système totémique en Australie, Paris 1912.

  44. 44.

    Marcel Mauss: Emile Durkheim et le socialisme, Paris 1924.

  45. 45.

    Axel Honneth: Das Recht der Freiheit, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt 2011.

  46. 46.

    Ibid., p. 377.

  47. 47.

    Ibid., p. 431.

  48. 48.

    Lucien Lévi-Bruhl: La morale et la science des moeurs, Paris 1903.

  49. 49.

    Lucien Lévy-Bruhl: La mentalité primitive, Paris 1922.

  50. 50.

    Marcel Mauss: Emile Durkheim et le socialisme, Paris 1924.

  51. 51.

    Kolm, Serge-Christophe and Jean Mercier Ythier: Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity, Volume 1, London: Elsevier B.V. 2006.

  52. 52.

    Marcel Henaff: “Religious ethics, Gift Exchange and the Ethics of Capitalism”, European Journal of Sociology, Volume 44, Issue 03, pp. 293–324., 2003, p. 313.

  53. 53.

    Claude Lévi-Strauss: “Introduction à l’Œuvre de Marcel Mauss” in Marcel Mauss: Sociologie et anthropologie, PUF, (1950), Paris 1985, p. IX.

  54. 54.

    Marcel Mauss: “Essai sur le don. Forme et Raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaiques” in Marcel Mauss: Sociologie et anthropologie, PUF, (1950), Paris 1985, p. 145ff.

  55. 55.

    Ibid., p. 148.

  56. 56.

    Ibid., p. 161.

  57. 57.

    Ibid., p. 243.

  58. 58.

    Ibid., p. 250.

  59. 59.

    Ibid., p. 263.

  60. 60.

    Ibid., p. 235ff.

  61. 61.

    Jean-Paul Sartre: Cahiers pour une morale, Gallimard, Paris 1983.

  62. 62.

    Kolm, Serge-Christophe and Jean Mercier Ythier: Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity, Volume 1, London: Elsevier B.V. 2006.

  63. 63.

    Jeanette Lemmergaard and Sara Louise Muhr: “Regarding gifts-on Christmas gift exchange and asymmetrical business relations”, Organization 18(6), pp. 763–777.

  64. 64.

    Alexandre Kojève: Introduction à la lecture de Hegel, (1947), Gallimard, Paris 1968, p. 16ff.

  65. 65.

    Ibid., p. 301.

  66. 66.

    Ibid., p. 473ff.

  67. 67.

    Vincent Descombes: Le même et l’autre, Minuit, Paris 1978.

  68. 68.

    Ibid., p. 45.

  69. 69.

    Alexandre Kojève: Introduction à la lecture de Hegel, (1947), Paris 1968, pp. 13–15.

  70. 70.

    Ibid., p. 445ff.

  71. 71.

    Ibid., p. 26.

  72. 72.

    Ibid., p. 380.

  73. 73.

    G. W. F. Hegel: Philosophie des Rechts (1818–1832), Reklam Ausgabe, p. 56ff.

  74. 74.

    Alexandre Kojève: Introduction à la lecture de Hegel, (1947), Paris 1968, p. 540ff.

  75. 75.

    Ibid., p. 468ff.

  76. 76.

    Ibid., p. 388.

  77. 77.

    Ibid., the reference, p. 436ff.

  78. 78.

    Alexandre Kojève & Leo Strauss: Tyrannie et sagesse, Plon, Gallimard, Paris 1954.

  79. 79.

    Francis Fukuyama: The End of History and the Last Man, New York 1990.

  80. 80.

    Alexandre Kojève: Introduction à la lecture de Hegel, (1947), Paris 1968, the footnote, p. 436ff.

  81. 81.

    Gwendoline Jarczyk & Pierre Jean Labarrière: Les prèmiers combats de la reconnaissance, Maîtrise et servitude dans la phénoménologie de l’esprit de Hegel, Aubier 1987.

  82. 82.

    Jean Hyppolite: Génèse et structure de la phénoménologie de l’esprit, 1946 and Etudes sur Marx et Hegel, 1955.

  83. 83.

    Eric Weil: Logique et philosophie (1950), Philosophie politique (1956) and Philosophie morale (1961).

  84. 84.

    Gazi Islam: Recognition, “Reification and Practices of Forgetting: Ethical Implications of Human Resource Management”, Journal of Business Ethics (2012) 111: pp. 37–48, p. 37.

  85. 85.

    Michael Richardson: Georges Bataille, Routledge, London 1995, p. 19ff.

  86. 86.

    Asger Sørensen: “On a universal scale: Economy in Bataille’s general economy”, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 38(2), pp. 169–197, p. 170.

  87. 87.

    Ibid., p. 181.

  88. 88.

    Mayfair Mei‐hui Yang: “Putting Global Capitalism in Its Place: Economic Hybridity, Bataille, and Ritual Expenditure”, Current Anthropology, Vol. 41, No. 4 (August/October 2000), pp. 477–509.

  89. 89.

    Georges Bataille: “La structure psychologique du fascisme” in Oeuvres complètes 1, p. 339ff.

  90. 90.

    Ibid., p. 358.

  91. 91.

    Georges Bataille: “La notion de dépense” in Oeuvres complètes 1.

  92. 92.

    Jürgen Habermas: Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1986.

  93. 93.

    René Girard: La violence et le sacré, Grasset, Paris 1972.

  94. 94.

    Omid Nodoushani (1999): “A postmodern theory of general economy: The contribution of Georges Bataille”, Studies in Cultures, Organizations and Societies, 5:2, pp. 331–345.

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  1. Communication, Business and Information, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

    Jacob Dahl Rendtorff

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Rendtorff, J.D. (2014). Business Ethics and Early Modern French Philosophy at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century. In: French Philosophy and Social Theory. Ethical Economy, vol 49. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8845-8_2

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