The Land of Realism and the Shipwreck of Idea-ism: Thomas Aquinas and Milton Friedman on the Social Responsibilities of Business

Abstract

Aquinas, Corporate social responsibility, Friedman, metaphysics,

Personalist Business Ethics and Humanistic Management: Insights from Jacques Maritain

“…9 Donaldson, whose Corporations and morality (1982) develops the notion of business-society contract, pointedly remarks that the ''social contract justifies corporations as productive organizations, not as corporations''; i.e., the social contract ''has fallen short of a full moral comprehension of corporations'' (p. 54, emphasis added). 10 For more on the relationship between philosophy and the special sciences, see Alzola (2011), Buchholz and Rosenthal (2008), Hartman (2011), Karakas (2010), Smith (2010), Victor and Stephens (1994), Wishloff (2009), andZúñiga (2001).…”

“…Materialism and positivism (Maritain 1952b(Maritain , 1960(Maritain /1968)-'philosophical' positions (simply understood as based on a set of tenets) though questionable at that-have influenced some of the nonpersonalistic approaches outlined. The impact of positivism on Milton Friedman's economistic liberalism, for instance, has been discussed by Alzola (2011) and Wishloff (2009). In reality, though, philosophy ''governs or directs the sciences in view of the common end to which their particular objects are subordinate [i.e., wisdom]'' (Maritain 1931(Maritain /2005.…”

“…Some distinguished personalist (though not necessarily in the Maritainian sense) philosophers from recent centuries are: Emmanuel Mounier, Gabriel Marcel, Max Scheler, Edith Stein, Martin Buber, Maurice Blondel, É tienne Gilson, Yves Simon, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Robert Spaemann, Dietrich von Hildebrand and Karol Wojtyła. Although some of this work has been addressed in the fields of economics and business ethics (e.g., Babiuch-Luxmoore 1999;Bouckaert 1999;Finn 2003;Melé 2003Melé , 2009aO'Boyle 2003;Puel 1999;Sandelands 2009;Whetstone 2002;Wishloff 2009;Zúñiga 2001), more research is necessary as presently argued. According to Williams and Bengtsson (2009), the term personalism originated ''in Germany, where 'der Personalismus' was first used by F. D. E. Schleiermacher (1768-1834) in his book Über die Religion in Footnote 12 continued 1799''.…”

“…In a related vein, Wishloff (2009) has recently made the case for Thomistic realistic metaphysics as a basis for ethics and, in particular, for normative political economics (see also, Melé 2009c). Recent Roman Catholic social teaching has also been studied (e.g., Grassl and Habisch 2011;Melé 2009a;Sandelands 2009).…”

“…Zúñiga (2001) only mentions Maritain as one of the ''realist personalists in the Christian anthropological tradition' ' (p. 163), along with É tienne Gilson and Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II). Even those authors explicitly writing within a Catholic tradition framework (e.g., Grassl and Habisch 2011;Sandelands 2009;Wishloff 2009) have not discussed Maritain's contribution even though his influence on Second Vatican, particularly regarding the apostolate of laypeople and the role of human rights, and on Karol Wojtyla's personalist work (e.g., Acevedo 2009) is well known. His friend Giovanni Battista Montini (Pope Paul VI), who admired him and even referred to him as his teacher, recognized his influence on his encyclical on economic justice (DeMarco 1991;Marrus 2004).…”