Abstract
Is it possible to detect a story or set of stories that characterize the development of individual managers? If so, from whose perspective will that story be told? What is a virtue? What is a vice? How are virtues acquired and developed? MacIntyre’s answers to these questions are contrasted with those of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. The development of the virtues involves a second-person relationship between teacher and learner with a certain level of intimacy, trust, and a sort of friendship. Moral philosophers and managers are encouraged to move beyond treating one another as stock characters to develop a shared concern for deliberative reflection on managerial activities and the dispositions integral to excellence in both managerial practice and human activity.
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Notes
In addition to MacIntyre’s contribution to the revival of virtue ethics in the world of English language professional academic philosophy, Elizabeth Anscombe’s famous 1958 essay, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy, 33, 1–19, is rightly considered groundbreaking. In addition to the work of MacIntyre, other works in this movement include P. Geach (1977) The Virtues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
P. Foot (1978) Virtues and Vices (Oxford: Blackwell).
M. Slote (1992) From Morality to Virtue (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
R. Hursthouse (1999) On Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Philosophers who have argued that virtue ethics is a helpful way to approach business include R. Solomon (1992) Ethics and Excellence: Cooperation and Integrity in Business (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
D. Koehn (1995), 533–539; A. Sison (2003). See also the April 2012 special edition of Business Ethics Quarterly, “Reviving Tradition: Virtue and the Common Good in Business and Management.” As noted previously, there is a lively discussion applying MacIntyre’s virtue ethics to business corporations. For example, see G. Moore (2005a) “Corporate Character: Modern Virtue Ethics and the Virtuous Corporation,” Business Ethics Quarterly 15:4, 659–685.
D. Koehn (1995), 533–539; A. Sison (2003). See also the April 2012 special edition of Business Ethics Quarterly, “Reviving Tradition: Virtue and the Common Good in Business and Management.” As noted previously, there is a lively discussion applying MacIntyre’s virtue ethics to business corporations. For example, see G. Moore (2005a) “Corporate Character: Modern Virtue Ethics and the Virtuous Corporation,” Business Ethics Quarterly 15:4, 659–685.
A. MacIntyre (1999a), p. x; A. MacIntyre (2007) After Virtue, Third Edition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press), p. xi.
See for example M. Rothbart (2007) “Temperament, Development, and Personality,” Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16:4, 207–212.
The Meyers-Briggs typology is a popular and widely used account of various deep-seated traits that are given, not acquired. See I. Briggs-Meyers (1995) Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type (Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black).
Contemporary personalist authors have called this openness the trait of “active receptivity.” Norris Clarke has described this character trait as a welcoming openness. Normally, when we think of receiving, it involves a lack or an emptiness; a cup is able to receive liquid because it is empty. But the virtue of active receptivity is a fullness by which one hospitably receives the gift of another. N. Clarke (1993) Person and Being (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press). See especially pp. 20–24 and pp. 82–93.
Clarke gives credit in part to Hans Urs von Balthasar for his insights about “active receptivity.” For further discussion of the theme of “active receptivity,” see D. Schindler (1993) “Norris Clarke on Person, Being, and St. Thomas,” Communio, 20, 580–598.
Schindler’s discussion of active receptivity is developed more fully in D. Schindler (1996) Heart of the World, Center of the Church: Communio Ecclesiology, Liberalism, and Liberation (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s).
Also see G. Beabout (2007) “The Silent Lily and Bird as Exemplars of the Virtue of Active Receptivity,” in R. Perkins (ed.) Without Authority: International Kierkegaard Commentary, Volume 18 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press), 127–146.
See R. Bodéüs (1993) The Political Dimensions of Aristotle’s Ethics trans. J. Garrett (Albany: State University of New York Press), especially Chapter 5, “The Audience of the Political Discourses,” 97–122.
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© 2013 Gregory R. Beabout
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Beabout, G.R. (2013). Plot and Perspective: Character Traits and Their Cultivation. In: The Character of the Manager. Humanism in Business Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304063_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304063_7
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