I want to begin by expressing my gratitude to Ed and Pat for inviting me to present at the conference “Celebrating the Work of Patricia H. Werhane” that was held at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business in April 2016. The materials I used for my presentation served as a basis for this chapter in Werhane’s festschrift. Originally, I was asked to discuss in the conference Pat’s work on Wittgenstein but subsequently asked to talk about her work on Adam Smith. Pat and I have over the years been interested in many of the same things. While we have had extensive discussions about Wittgenstein’s notions such as “forms of life”, “seeing as” and “meaning as use”, which led us to further discussions of our mutual interest in aesthetics, we also because of our mutual interest in business ethics talked much about Adam Smith. This offer gave me the opportunity to study her work on Smith, a wonderfully crafted book, Adam Smith and His Legacy for Modern Capitalism (Werhane 1991) and a remarkable article entitled “Adam Smith’s Legacy for Ethics and Economics.” (Werhane 2006) The book and article provide an important and much needed corrective to a major misunderstanding of Adam Smith’s position on ethics in capital markets.
However, before addressing those works I would like to recount my professional associations with this remarkable woman Patricia Werhane. Pat was one of the original founders of the Society for Business Ethics and served as its first executive director. At an early society meeting I was introduced to her by Norman Bowie. We discovered we were both graduates of Northwestern and had a number of philosophical interests in common – Wittgenstein, Aesthetics and last but not least Adam Smith. Soon after we met she persuaded me to take on the society’s executive director duties and from that time on we have worked very closely together on matters affecting the society for business ethics. Needless to say, I as well as the society have an immense debt to Pat whose work has been exceptional and extensive.
As mentioned, while working together, Pat and I have had numerous opportunities to discuss many philosophical issues particularly those involving business ethics and by extension those involved in the evaluation of capitalism. She has approved of my work on Smith, mostly a short video which I had prepared for an on-line course, and I certainly approve of her work on Smith. In one sense I could say she has made me a Smith convert, allowing me to appreciate him as a kind of prophet who defends the free market system.
…challenges the popular understanding of the Wealth of Nations. According to this reading of Smith, self-interested economic actors in free competition with each other unintentionally create a self-constraining system. This system, the “invisible hand” which governs market transactions, functions both to regulate these self-interests and to produce economic growth and well-being such that no actor or group of actors can take advantage of other actors for very long. We suggest that this is a misreading of Smith. Smith is not a laissez-faire economist. Economic exchanges occur and markets are efficient, according to Smith, precisely because we are not merely non-tuistic, and economic growth depends on what today we call the rule of law.
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest... (Thus in economic matters) …. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.
Every individual… neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it… he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. (Smith, WN, Book IV, Ch.II: 456)
I am sure that Werhane agrees with all of this. The freedom to pursue one’s own interest leads to the promotion of the public interest. However, this is often taken as meaning that Smith endorses a laissez-faire economic system, which critics of the unfettered capitalism denounce. But Werhane would deny that this is the whole story of the capitalism that Smith defends?
But what is this Laissez-fare capitalism, that Werhane is challenging. I think one of the clearest views of Laissez-faire capitalism is articulated in Max Weber’s classic work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Therein he identified the spirit of capitalism as “the single- minded pursuit of profit and forever renewed profit.” According to Weber, such a single-minded pursuit is what gives the capitalist society its shape or form of life. For Weber, any business operating in a wholly capitalistic society which does not always take advantage of opportunities for profit making is doomed to extinction. However, we should note that such “spirit”, such single-mindedness, is egoistic, looks awfully like greed, is monomaniacal and according to Werhane would be condemned by Smith.
Howsoever selfish man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it....
That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, … (is an) original passion of human nature, …by no means confined to the virtuous and humane.
“Every man,…, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men.” (Smith 1979, WN, IV, ix: 51)
But, it is important to note that Smith puts a limit on that “perfect freedom”. Every man’s pursuit of his own interest is free (the ellipses contains the words) “as long as he does not violate the laws of justice.” In short, every man is free to pursue one’s own interest in a competitive market governed by justice. So this passage underlies Werhane’s well-founded claim that Adam Smith’s work is not simple Laissez-Faire economics, but is replete with concerns about ethics and justice. She does go on to distinguish commutative from distributive justice, but the distinction is not crucial here so we will leave that for the present.
To sum up that view then, if we take justice to mean something like “everyone gets his or her due”, or if justice is balance, then one achieves the balance by doing what is to one’s advantage, but also in the endeavor doing what is good for others. Commercial pursuits are necessarily societal. They involve developing goods that others will want or need, hence they work to supply other’s needs, even if that is inadvertent. The successful entrepreneur must have empathy for others’ desires if he is to successfully determine which products will be in demand. This is what Pat Werhane sees in Adam Smith.
However, pondering the sub-title of Pat’s book, “A Legacy for Modern Capitalism”? I began to wonder about this notion of Modern Capitalism. “What does being a modern capitalist mean? Is Smith a defender of “capitalism”, that nemesis condemned by the Marxists of the world, or is he a different sort of capitalist, one who is more than just an advocate of free markets?
Clearly, it is the addressing of people’s own advantages that makes capitalism so successful. But don’t we assume that addressing people’s self-love is promoting selfishness? I think one needs to be careful about the assumption that equates self-love with selfishness. Werhane talks about narratives and ways of seeing. (In the past, we’ve had many discussions of Wittgenstein and “seeing as”, and I think Pat grounds a lot of this talk in what she calls Post-Kantian narratives). I have my own concern for the importance of narratives, which comes from paying attention to the rhetorical use of words. In this case, the narrative that concerns me is the narrative that conflates the notions of self-interest and selfishness. Ayn Rand in her defense of modern capitalism, a capitalism that looks much like Weber’s, entitles one of her books, The Virtue of Selfishness. That is a disingenuous title and a rhetorical device which undermines an important distinction between selfishness and self-interest.
Let me be clear. Selfishness is evil. To conflate it with virtue is itself unethical. Too often people use the term “selfish” when they mean “self-interest”. The iconic Milton Friedman does so in an interview with Phil Donahue (Friedman 2017). Even Pat slips a bit in her important article “Adam Smith’s Legacy for Ethics and Economics”, when she says, “Even a selfish person is not necessarily evil, unless she harms others or treats others unfairly in the pursuit of her interests.” To the contrary, as Barrows Dunham points out, a selfish person is by definition one who pursues their own self- interest at the expense of another. If one’s self- interested action is not harming others they are not being selfish.
Since self-interest has distinct objects (the self and others) egoism and altruism are not opposites for Smith. Egoists are individuals whose interests are all of the self as object. But egoists are not necessarily evil people. Virtuous self-love is prudence; it’s vice is avarice or greed. One can be a virtuous, i.e., a prudent egoist. (Werhane, Adam Smith’s Legacy for Ethics and Economics, 204)
This remarkable passage by Werhane leads me to suggest that we need to broaden the usual notion of egoism and recognize that the self-interest that Smith refers to involves a type of egoism, rarely discussed, one that Aristotle would refer to as a “true” egoism. A true egoist is one who is quite in contrast to the selfish egoist pictured by Hobbes. Reading Pat and injecting an Aristotelian perspective, it becomes clear that Smith can be seen not so much as a Hobbesian, but almost as a natural law theorist. By using the words “principles in his nature”, Smith implies it is natural for humans to be interested in the fortune of others. Thus, I want to maintain that Smith, as portrayed by Werhane is not only a “true” egoist but also a teleologist much like Aristotle since Werhane suggests that “Smith grounds many of his conclusions in an appeal to warmed over natural law theory.” (Werhane, Adam Smith’s Legacy for Ethics and Economics, 205) Leaving aside the puzzling notion of “warmed over”, I am intrigued by how much Aristotle and Smith have in common. This leads me to wonder if it might not be more helpful to view Smith more as an Aristotelian, rather than someone more in agreement with a Bentham or Hume. Note, that if self-interest is defined as fulfilling one’s nature, then the is/ought dichotomy is avoided, since one’s purpose is a fact of life and fulfilling that purpose is what one ought to do. However, to further explicate this we need to look more closely at Aristotle’s remarkable notion of the True Egoist.
True Egoism
A further problem is whether a person should love himself or someone else most of all. People decry those who love themselves most, and use the term “egoist” in a pejorative sense. Only a base man, it is thought, does everything for his own sake, and the more wicked he is the more selfishly he acts…A good man, on the other hand, is regarded as acting on noble motives, and the better he is the nobler his motives are: he acts for his friend’s sake and neglects his own affairs.” (1168a28-35)
However, the facts are not in harmony with these arguments. It is said that we should love our best friend best, and the best friend is he who, when he wishes for someone’s good, does so for that person’s sake even if no one will ever know it. Now a man has this sentiment primarily toward himself, and the same is true of all the other sentiments by which a friend is defined. For, as we have stated, all friendly feelings toward others are an extension of the friendly feelings a person has for himself. (1168a36-1168b10)
Consequently, he is an egoist or self-lover in the truest sense who loves and gratifies the most sovereign part of himself, and he obeys it in everything.1168b34
So, according to Aristotle, we need to distinguish carefully between egoism in the pejorative sense and true egoism. As we have seen egoism in the pejorative sense involves believing that human beings are fundamentally selfish. We have already noted the distinction between selfishness and self-interest. As we said above, selfishness, pace Ayn Rand, is not a virtue (Rand 1964). Nor is being selfish necessarily in one’s self interest. Selfishness often gets confused with self- interest but it should not be. While we have cited Barrows Dunham (1947: 41), that “selfishness is the pursuit of one’s self interest at the expense of another”, we might rather say, selfish behavior is the pursuit of one’s desires under the aspect of the good, at the expense of another. However, in many cases the pursuit of one’s desires at the expense of another is not in one’s self interest. Consequently, the distinction between selfishness and self-interest is absolutely critical. Equating selfishness with self interest sets up a necessary ethical dichotomy between self-interested behavior and altruism. While self-interest is good (Love your neighbor as yourself requires loving oneself) selfishness is inappropriate. But, if we equate selfishness with self-interest we are required to find an appropriate ethical alternative. That alternative becomes the notion of altruistic behavior. From that perspective, an action is either self-interested or altruistic. Since, on this narrative, in order to be ethical, one must be altruistic, ethical behavior cannot spring from self-interest but must arise only from “duty”, which I take to be at the heart of Kant’s ethical theory.
While many might disagree, it appears to me that this false dichotomy of self-interest and altruism permeates a large part of deontological ethical theory and makes a good deal of the free market pursuit of one’s own interests seem fundamentally unethical. From my perspective, it is difficult to see psychologically how altruism can motivate a person. As Smith would point out, one might bake bread out of an altruistic spirit for a few days, but human nature being what it is, that motivation would wear off and be replaced either by rewards for the work, or if rewards were not coming, by resentment and lack of industry. However, if we make a clear distinction between self-interest and selfishness, and like Aristotle insist that, “… a man has this sentiment primarily toward himself, and the same is true of all the other sentiments by which a friend is defined,” we can avoid the dichotomy, and show how at times it is in one’s interest to act altruistically.
Aristotle is not alone in his appeal to a true egoism. As eminent a scholar as Erich Fromm emphasizes the distinction between selfishness, self-interest and self-love, and shows the shortcomings of the self-interest/altruism dichotomy. Fromm, rightly or wrongly, reads Kant as holding that the love for others and the love for oneself are in conflict with one another. For Kant, the love for others is altruism and its opposite is egoism. When this dichotomy is accepted by the likes of Nietzsche, who promotes a robust self-love, logic forces him to jettison morality, because morality requires looking out for others. For Nietzsche, the love of one’s neighbor indicates the bad love for oneself. This explains his condemnation of slave morality, which promotes love for others. As Fromm notes, for Kant, as an ethical principle, the striving for one’s own happiness “is the most objectionable one (principle), not merely because it is false… but because the springs it provides for morality are such as rather undermine it and destroy its sublimity…” (Fromm 1939: p. 508; p. 444 in Writers in Ethics). I think this might explain some of the reasons the nineteenth century Kantians whom Werhane cites, misread and disliked Smith.
On the contrary, as we have seen, if one looks at Aristotle’s work in the Nichomachean Ethics, it is clear he argues that looking out for our own interests is a good thing. Furthermore, that seems clearly the case. Consider the following example. Imagine a family of six children all of whom like cake. Imagine then a cake cut into six pieces, awaiting the arrival of those children from school. The first child comes home and sees the cake. The parent assumes the child will want a piece of cake. If the child is not interested in the cake, the parent would worry that there is something amiss and the child is not well. Moral of the story: interest in fulfilling one’s desires is a good thing. But, on this day all is well and the child is delighted he can have a piece of cake. His desiring the cake was a good thing. The parent says, “Yes, have a piece of cake”. The child eats the cake. However, 10 minutes later, the child craves another piece of cake. Now, however, there are only enough pieces for his siblings left. For him to take that second piece would be to fulfill his desire (interest?) but it would be selfish because it would be at the expense of others. What we see is healthy self-interest in the first case, unacceptable selfishness (and not true self interest) in the second case.
Note that there are also religious roots for this robust demand to pursue one’s self-interest, for in the New Testament, the second greatest commandment is to “love one’s neighbor as oneself.” One does not do the neighbor a favor when not loving oneself. The Golden Rule requires doing unto others as one would do to oneself. There should be no practicing the Golden Rule if one is a masochist or does not pursue one’s self-interest. Doesn’t this reflect Aristotle’s principle that all friendly feelings toward others are an extension of the friendly feelings a person has for himself.
…who “assign to themselves the larger share of material goods, honors and bodily pleasures. For these are the objects which most people desire… Those …who try to get more than their share of these things, gratify their appetites, their emotions in general, and the irrational part of their souls… This most common form of self-love is base.” 1168B15-23.
assigns what is supremely noble and good to himself. He gratifies the most sovereign part of himself, and he obeys it in everything…. He who is in the truest sense an egoist or self-lover…is different in kind from …the egoist with whom people find fault: as different, in fact, as living by the guidance of reason is from living by the dictates of emotion, and as different as desiring what is noble is from desiring what seems advantageous.
…Therefore a good man should be a self-lover, for he will himself profit by performing noble actions and will benefit his fellow men. But a wicked man should not love himself, since he will harm both himself and his neighbors in following his base emotions. What a wicked man does is not in harmony with what he ought to do, whereas a good man does what he ought to do. For intelligence always chooses what is best for itself, and a good man obeys his intelligence.1168b29-1169a17
Still, we need to contrast what is truly in one’s best interest with what one perceives to be in his or her best interest. People usually act in pursuit of what they perceive to be in their interest. Aristotle notes, that we always act under the aspect of good. However we often perceive as in our best interest something which we want, not necessarily what we need. What we need is not chosen. It is given. What we truly need has to be discovered. What is in our interest is what Aristotle calls living well, and he spends much of the Nichomachean Ethics, trying to spell out what constitutes this happiness or living well.2 In summing up the true egoist, Aristotle says the following, “He is an egoist or self-lover in the truest sense who loves and gratifies the most sovereign element in him.” Since one of the most sovereign elements is love of others, according to Aristotle, selfish egoism is not rational, but emotional.3
Some turn every quality or art into a means of getting wealth; this they conceive to be the end, and to the promotion of the end they think all things must contribute. (Aristotle 1941a, Politics, Bk. 1, Ch. 9.1258a13-14)
If, as Smith maintains, this addressing of people’s advantages makes capitalism so successful, we need to ask if in addressing people’s self-love we are promoting greed? Cleary Weber’s sprit of capitalism which is “the single-minded pursuit of profit and forever renewed profit” promotes greed. But such single-mindedness is monomaniacal and would be condemned by Aristotle since any unchecked pursuit of profit as a goal is an extreme.
Aristotle, the always temperate philosopher, would assert that virtue is always a golden mean and a vice is always an extreme. For him greed is the practice of accumulating wealth for the sake of accumulating wealth. Aristotle deems greed unnatural and inordinate (out of order) in the sense that it is against the purpose of human beings because the purpose of human beings is to live well, and the single-minded quest for wealth cannot be sufficient for living well. Rather it corrupts the human being. According to Aristotle, “like Midas, those who accumulate wealth for its own sake, get intent upon living only, and not upon living well.” This, it seems to me also applies to Smith.
We could add, parenthetically, that what holds for individuals would be true of for-profit corporations. If the sole purpose of existence of a corporation is the ever- increasing reach for more and more profit, the corporation loses its main purpose-- the reason society allows it to flourish and exist-- which is produce goods and/or services. Such an unchecked pursuit of profit overrides concerns for those for whom the good or service is provided.
Selfishness is one kind of greediness. (addiction to self) Like all greediness, it contains an insatiability, as a consequence of which there is never any real satisfaction. Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction. The selfishness is rooted in the very lack of fondness for oneself. The person who is not fond of himself, who does not approve of himself, is in a constant anxiety concerning his own self.” (p. 460)
The philosopher’s responsibility, in all of these cases, is to look at as many perspectives as possible to get as close to the truth as possible. For example, there are good reasons why an owner is entitled to profits. Hence there are reasons that justify the view. But there are also reasons why the owner may not be entitled to all the profits, or why profit is not everything. So the view is only partially true or partially justified.4
The Division of Labor
However, one might ask, if Smith is so concerned with others, how can he defend the deleterious effects of mass production such as that in the pin factory. Werhane spends a great deal of time analyzing Smith’s concerns about the dehumanizing influence of mass production. From Smith’s recommendation of increasing production by the example of the pin factory in the opening pages of the Wealth of Nations to the presentation by Milton Friedman of the division of labor needed to make a pencil, there is admiration for a technique that enables humans to increase production a hundredfold or more. But there is also condemnation. Whether it is appropriate or not, I have often used the following quote of John Ruskin as a critique of Smith.
We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labor; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labor that is divided; but the men…Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished –sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is, we should think there might be some loss in it also. And the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this – that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages.
And all the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads can be met only in one way; not by teaching or preaching, for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach to them, if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can be met only by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labor are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labor. (Ruskin 1860: 186)
Ruskin certainly recognizes the downside of the improved productivity produced by dividing labor. It is interesting that the type of labor Ruskin thought was ennobling was working on the stones of the Cathedrals in Venice. Working for God ennobled the drudgery of stone cutting. So one ideal has to do with meaningful work. But that hardly solves the degradation, or alienation (as Marx would call it) problem.
It is important to note that Werhane in an extremely important chapter of her book, “Labor, the Division of Labor and the Labor Theory of Value”, covers Smith’s observations of the down side of the division of labor. Smith too thought that mass assembly deadened the participants. Overspecialization “corrupts the courage of his mind …and even the activity of his body.” The laborer become “stupid and ignorant” (Smith, WN, V.i,f.50; quote from Werhane, Adam Smith and His Legacy for Modern Capitalism, 144). One only avoids this alienation by separating themselves from their productivity. As Werhane says, “the laborers who do not identify with their work are thereby more productive and innovative than are laborers who do, because in the latter case they have “no occasion to …exercise their invention.” (Smith, WN, V.i,c.; quote from Werhane, Adam Smith and His Legacy for Modern Capitalism, 144–145).
I would note that this issue has interesting ramifications for business ethicists who call for meaningful work when most work in the twenty-first century is dull, repetitive and tedious. I would think the most important passages in this chapter are those that consider how Smith’s notion of the laborer who turns his work into a commodity and dis-identifies with it avoids the Marxists notions of alienation.
Aristotle also recognizes that “in many cases good things bring harmful results”. Thus, it is important to note that some actions or systems bring mixed results. Since it may be a “good thing that brings harmful results”, capitalism is not a justifying meta-narrative so much as it is a system that has good and bad effects. This is quite important, for it shows that every generation or progress is accompanied by corruption or regress. Drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico brings good results along with the bad. Bundling sub-prime mortgages brings good results, as do credit default swaps. But they also can bring the near collapse of the financial system. Or to consider another example, closing General Motors plants in Flint Michigan, as depicted by Michael Moore, in his now classic film, Roger and Me, has both good and bad results. It would be silly for anyone to deny that closing plants in Flint Michigan was harmful. The truth is that people suffered, and suffering is not good. Moore used the event to show the evils of Capitalism. However, some good came from shutting down the plants, because jobs went to Mexico. One Mexican town flourished while an American town floundered. Was the action good or bad? We are not likely to resolve that question because it was both. Capitalism lead to a flourishing economy, but also lead to harms that needed to be remedied by societal action. Neither Libertarianism nor Marxism is sufficient. That is the message that Werhane finds in Smith.
Ethical Discourse Like Aesthetic Critique
Pat’s Moral Imagination
The ambivalence of difficult situations like the plight of the worker leads me to another important aspect of Pat’s work. I have mentioned that she talks of narratives and I talk of rhetoric. This provokes me to finish my tribute to Pat by moving from the treatment of Adam Smith to consider Pat’s interest in Wittgenstein and Aesthetics. I think both of those interests have led her to her great contribution to solving ethical problems by the use of Moral Imagination.
Let me begin by noting that in line with postmodernist approaches, we can view Aristotle’s move to rhetorical argument and its use of the enthymeme can be seen to anticipate both the Kantian rejection of representation in the Critique of Judgment, where Kant claims the beautiful is that which pleases universally without a concept, and Wittgenstein’s notion of “seeing as” and his insistence on common agreement when he notes in the Philosophical Investigations that “ethics is like aesthetics” and “what we agree on are forms of life”. “What has to be accepted, the given is -- so one could say – forms of life.” (Wittgenstein 1958, Philosophical Investigations, 226).
If ethical judgment is like aesthetic critique, the function of the ethicist in critiquing activities is not just to evaluate and judge them as good or bad in the light of canonical rules,5 but to persuade others to view them as good or bad by getting them to see the activity as the ethicist sees it. Hence, using our prior example, the apologists for General Motors, in the Plant Closings depicted in Roger and Me, attempt to get people to see that they are simply maximizing stockholder value, i.e. fulfilling their fiduciary trust, while the auto workers are trying to get people to see the hardships that accrues from plant closings. The assumption is that people will approve or disapprove when they see things in a certain way. So, on that view, teaching ethics and solving ethical issues is not to teach others a rule to be applied to this situation, but rather, to start where there is agreement, and have them look at the issue from the point of view that the evaluator uses to judge the object or action good or bad, right or wrong. The effective points of view will be what Pat calls “Moral Imagination”.
In this vein, it is important to note that for Aristotle, or at least for his medieval and seventeenth century commentators, the concept is not a picture, nor is it the primary object of knowledge. It is an instrument, a sign, by which we know the external object. It is necessarily a limited perspective, not the exact representation of what we know. Hence, Aristotle would not view the task of the ethicist as Kant does in the Groundwork, to be to apply rules. Rather, he seems to view the task of the ethicist to be much like Kant views the task of the art critic in the third critique, a view enunciated by Wittgenstein in his postmodern work, the Philosophical Investigations, where languages are pragmatic ways of seeing, so meaning is use and not simply sense and reference. This I think is the heart of Pat Werhane’s notion of the utility of moral imagination. It is not, I think incidental, that one who wrote on Wittgensttein and aesthetics would arrive at a notion that moral imagination (seeing as) is crucial in the processing of moral conundrums.
Agreements in Forms of Life
The true and the approximately true are apprehended by the same faculty; it may also be noted that men have a sufficient natural instinct for what is true, and usually do arrive at the truth. (Aristotle 1941b, Rhetoric, 1355a12)
In one sense that sums up Pat’s vocation as philosopher and business ethicist. She has a sufficient natural instinct for the truth…the mark of a true philosopher-- one I truly admire.
I have attempted to present several of Pat’s ideas, with the suggestion that she and possibly Smith are more Aristotelian than they might imagine and that her use of moral imagination allows her to blend into a powerful business ethic her interests in Smith, Wittgenstein and aesthetics which gives rise to her concern for moral imagination which is the reflexive way of viewing moral issues that arise in our capitalist system. I wish to conclude by wishing Pat all the success possible in the future in pursuing her passions lead by a true egoism. I am truly grateful to have met Pat, served with her and learned much from her. Thank you, Pat, for everything.