Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T08:23:10.634Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Promise of Pragmatism: Richard Rorty and Business Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2021

Sareh Pouryousefi Open the ORCID record for Sareh Pouryousefi [Opens in a new window]  and
R. Edward Freeman
Sareh Pouryousefi
Affiliation:
Ryerson University
R. Edward Freeman
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Pragmatists believe that philosophical inquiry must engage closely with practice to be useful and that practice serves as a source of social norms. As a growing alternative to the analytic and continental philosophical traditions, pragmatism is well suited for research in business ethics, but its role remains underappreciated. This article focuses on Richard Rorty, a key figure in the pragmatist tradition. We read Rorty as a source of insight about the ethical and political nature of business practice in contemporary global markets, focusing specifically on his views about moral sentiments, agency, and democratic deliberation. Importantly for business ethicists, Rorty’s approach sets in stark relief our moral responsibility as useful, practical thinkers in addressing the societal challenges of our time. We use “modern slavery” as an empirical context to highlight the relevance of Rorty’s approach to business ethics.

Keywords

Richard Rortypragmatismmoral sentimentsagencydemocratic deliberation
Type
Special Issue
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , October 2021 , pp. 572 - 599
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Business Ethics

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Arnold, Denis G., and Bowie, Norman E.. 2003. “Sweatshops and Respect for Persons.” Business Ethics Quarterly 13 (2): 221–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bacon, Michael. 2008. Richard Rorty: Pragmatism and Political Liberalism. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Bales, Kevin. 2016. Blood and Earth: Modern Slavery, Ecocide, and the Secret to Saving the World. New York: Spiegel and Graux.Google Scholar
Bales, Kevin, and Soodalter, Ron. 2010. The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bales, Kevin, and Trodd, Zoe. 2013. Addressing Contemporary Forms of Slavery in EU External Policy. Briefing paper for the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights, December. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/note/join/2013/433703/EXPO-DROI_NT(2013)433703_EN.pdf.Google Scholar
Balslev, Anindita Niyogi. 1991. Cultural Otherness: Conversations with Richard Rorty. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study.Google Scholar
Bellmann, Christophe, Tipping, Alice, and Rashid Sumaila, U.. 2016. “Global Trade in Fish and Fishery Products: An Overview.” Marine Policy 69 (July): 181–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernstein, Richard J. 1996. “The Hermeneutics of Cross-Cultural Understanding.” In Cross-Cultural Conversation, edited by Balslev, Anindita Niyogi, 29–41. New Delhi: Indian Institute of Advanced Study.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Richard J. 2010. The Pragmatic Turn. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Bonfanti, Angelica, and Bordignon, Marta. 2017. “Seafood from Slaves: The Pulitzer Prize in the Light of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.” Globe Policy 8 (4): 498–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowie, Norman E. 2013. Business Ethics in the 21st Century. New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandom, Robert B. 2011. “Linguistic Pragmatism and Pragmatism about Norms: An Arc of Thought from Rorty’s Eliminative Materialism to His Pragmatism.” In Perspectives on Pragmatism: Classical, Recent, and Contemporary, edited by Brandom, R. B., 107–15. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caruana, Robert, Crane, Andrew, Gold, Stefan, and LeBaron, Genevieve. 2020. “Modern Slavery in Business: The Sad and Sorry State of a Non-field.” Business and Society. DOI: 10.1177/0007650320930417.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crane, Andrew. 2013. “Modern Slavery as a Management Practice: Exploring the Conditions and Capabilities for Human Exploitation.” Academy of Management Review 38 (1): 49–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
George, De, Richard, T. 2006. “The Relevance of Philosophy to Business Ethics: A Response to Rorty’s ‘Is Philosophy Relevant to Applied Ethics?’” Business Ethics Quarterly 16 (3): 381–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dieleman, Susan. 2017. “What Would It Mean to Call Rorty a Deliberative Democrat?” Contemporary Pragmatism 14 (3): 319–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donaghey, Jimmy, Reinecke, Juliana, Niforou, Christina, and Lawson, Benn. 2014. “From Employment Relations to Consumption Relations: Balancing Labor Governance in Global Supply Chains.” Human Resource Management 53 (2): 229–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donaldson, Thomas. 1989. The Ethics of International Business. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Donaldson, Thomas. 2019. “Androids and Corporations: Why Their Rights Derive from Purpose.” Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy 17 (Spring): 853–64.Google Scholar
Environmental Justice Foundation. 2019. Blood and Water: Human Rights Abuse in the Global Seafood Industry. https://ejfoundation.org//resources/downloads/Blood-water-06-2019-final.pdf.Google Scholar
Etter, Michael, Fieseler, Christian, and Whelan, Glen. 2019. “Sharing Economy, Sharing Responsibility? Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age.” Journal of Business Ethics 159 (4): 935–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ewell, Christopher, Cullis-Suzuki, Sarika, Ediger, Mikaela, Hocevar, John, Miller, Dana, and Jacquet, Jennifer. 2017. “Potential Ecological and Social Benefits of a Moratorium on Transshipment on the High Seas.” Marine Policy 81 (July): 293–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feasley, Ashley. 2016. “Eliminating Corporate Exploitation: Examining Accountability Regimes as Means to Eradicate Forced Labor from Supply Chains.” Journal of Human Trafficking 2 (1): 15–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeman, R. Edward. 1994. “The Politics of Stakeholder Theory: Some Future Directions.” Business Ethics Quarterly 4 (4): 409–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeman, R. Edward. 2012. “Bowie’s Ethics: A Pragmatist Perspective.” In Kantian Business Ethics: Critical Perspectives, edited by Arnold, D. G. and Harris, J. D., 35–47. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
Freeman, R. Edward, Harrison, Jeffrey S., Wicks, Andrew C., Parmar, Bidhan L., and De Colle, Simone. 2010. Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gazzaniga, Michael S. 2005. The Ethical Brain. New York: Dana Press.Google Scholar
Gazzaniga, Michael S. 2009. Cognitive Neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Gigerenzer, G. 2007. Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Global Slavery Index. 2018. Walk Free Foundation. https://downloads.globalslaveryindex.org/ephemeral/GSI-2018_FNL_190828_CO_DIGITAL_P-1618559969.pdf.Google Scholar
Gold, Stefan, Trautrims, Alexander, and Trodd, Zoe. 2015. “Modern Slavery Challenges to Supply Chain Management.” Supply Chain Management: An International Journal 20 (5): 485–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greene, Joshua, and Haidt, Jonathan. 2002. “How (and Where) Does Moral Judgment Work?” Trends in Cognitive Science 6 (December): 517–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Habermas, Jürgen. 2000. “Rorty’s Pragmatic Turn.” In Rorty and His Critics, edited by Brandom, Robert B., 31–55. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Haidt, Jonathan. 2001. “The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment.” Psychology Review 108 (4): 814–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hussain, Waheed, and Moriarty, Jeffrey. 2018. “Accountable to Whom? Rethinking the Role of Corporations in Political CSR.” Journal of Business Ethics 149 (3): 519–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
International Labour Organization. 1930. Forced Labour Convention (No. 29). Geneva: International Labour Organization.Google Scholar
International Labour Organization. 2005. A Global Alliance against Forced Labour. Global report under the follow-up to the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. Report of the Director-General. Geneva: International Labour Organization. https://www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/relm/ilc/ilc93/pdf/rep-i-b.pdf.Google Scholar
International Labour Organization. 2017. Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage. Geneva: International Labour Organization.Google Scholar
International Organization for Migration. 2016. Report on Human Trafficking, Forced Labour and Fisheries Crime in the Indonesian Fishing Industry. Jakarta: International Organization for Migration.Google Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, and Sunstein, Cass R.. 2005. “Cognitive Psychology of Moral Intuitions.” In Neurobiology of Human Values, edited by Changeux, J.-P., Damasio, A. R., Singer, W., and Christen, Y., 91–105. Berlin: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kittinger, John N., Teh, Lydia C. L., Allison, Edward H., Bennett, Nathan. J., Crowder, Larry B., Finkbeiner, Elenea M., Hicks, Christina et al. 2017. “Committing to Socially Responsible Seafood.” Science 356 (6341): 912–13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Koehn, Daryl. 2006. “A Response to Rorty.” Business Ethics Quarterly 16 (3): 391–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kotiswaran, Prabha, ed. 2017. Revisiting the Law and Governance of Trafficking, Forced Labor and Modern Slavery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawrence, Felicity, and McSweeney, Ella. 2017. “UK Police Rescue Nine Suspected Victims of Slavery from British Trawlers.” Guardian, December 12. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/12/uk-police-rescue-nine-suspected-victims-of-slavery-from-british-trawlers.Google Scholar
LeBaron, Genevieve. 2014. “Reconceptualizing Debt Bondage: Debt as a Class-Based Form of Labor Discipline.” Critical Sociology 40 (5): 763–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LeBaron, Genevieve, and Crane, Andrew. 2019. “Methodological Challenges in the Business of Forced Labour.” In Researching Forced Labour in the Global Economy: Methodological Challenges and Advances, edited by LeBaron, G., 25–43. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Legg, Catherine, and Hookway, Christopher. 2019. “Pragmatism.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by E. N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/pragmatism/.Google Scholar
Marschke, Melissa, and Vandergeest, Peter. 2016. “Slavery Scandals: Unpacking Labour Challenges and Policy Responses within the Off-shore Fisheries Sector.” Marine Policy 68 (June): 39–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mendoza, Martha, and Mason, Margie. 2016. “Hawaiian Seafood Caught by Foreign Crews Confined on Boats.” Associated Press. https://www.ap.org/explore/seafood-from-slaves/hawaiian-seafood-caught-foreign-crews-confined-boats.html.Google Scholar
Migrant Rights Centre Ireland. 2017. “Left High and Dry: Exploitation of Migrant Workers in the Irish Fishing Industry.” https://www.mrci.ie/2017/12/11/left-high-and-dry-the-exploitation-of-migrant-workers-in-the-irish-fishing-industry/.Google Scholar
Misak, Chantal. 2009. “Richard Rorty’s Place in the Pragmatist Pantheon.” In The Philosophy of Richard Rorty, edited by Auxier, R. E. and Hahn, L. E., 29–43. Library of Living Philosophers XXXII. Chicago: Open Court.Google Scholar
Mouffe, C. 1993. The Return of the Political. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Mouffe, C. 2005. The Democratic Paradox. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Natural Resources Committee. 2016. “Natural Resources Democratic Forum: Fishing for Justice—Slavery and Human Rights Abuses at Sea.” https://naturalresources.house.gov/hearings/_fishing-for-justice-slavery-and-human-rights-abuses-at-sea.Google Scholar
Niżnik, Józef, and Sanders, John T., eds. 1996. Debating the State of Philosophy: Habermas, Rorty, and Kołakowski. Westport, CT: Praeger.Google Scholar
Nyholm, Sven, and Smids, Jilles. 2016. “The Ethics of Accident-Algorithms for Self-Driving Cars: An Applied Trolley Problem?” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (5): 1275–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nystrom, Derek, Puckett, Kent, and Rorty, Richard. 1998. Against Bosses, Against Oligarchies: A Conversation with Richard Rorty. Charlottesville, VA: Prickly Pear.Google Scholar
Österblom, Henrik, Jouffray, Jean-Baptiste, Folke, Carl, and Rockström, Johan. 2017. “Emergence of a Global Science: Business Initiative for Ocean Stewardship.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 114 (34): 9038–43.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pramod, Ganapathiraju, Nakamura, Katrina, Pitcher, Tony J., and Delagran, Leslie. 2014. “Estimates of Illegal and Unreported Fish in Seafood Imports to the USA.” Marine Policy 48 (September): 102–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Posner, Richard A. 1993. “Richard Rorty’s Politics.” Critical Review 7 (1): 33–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quirk, Joel. 2006. “The Anti-Slavery Project: Linking the Historical and Contemporary.” Human Rights Quarterly 28 (3): 565–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramasastry, Anita. 2002. “Corporate Complicity: From Nuremberg to Rangoon—An Examination of Forced Labor Cases and Their Impact on the Liability of Multinational Corporations.” Berkeley Journal of International Law 20 (1): 91–159.Google Scholar
Ramberg, Bjørn. 2008. “Rorty, Davidson, and the Future of Metaphysics in America.” In The Oxford Handbook of American Philosophy, edited by Misak, Cheryl, 430–48. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ramberg, Bjørn. 2009. “Richard Rorty.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by E. N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/rorty/.Google Scholar
Ramberg, Bjørn. 2013. “Being Constructive: On Misak’s Creation of Pragmatism.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49 (3): 396–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1961. “Recent Metaphilosophy.” Review of Metaphysics 15 (2): 299–318.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1982. Consequences of Pragmatism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1991a. “Feminism and Pragmatism.” Tanner Lectures on Human Values. Delivered at the University of Michigan, December 7.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1991b. Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth. Philosophical Papers 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1997a. “Justice as a Larger Loyalty.” Ethical Perspectives 4 (3): 139–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1997b. Truth, Politics and “Post-modernism.” 1997 Spinoza Lectures. Amsterdam: Van Gorcum.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1998a. Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1998b. “Can American Egalitarianism Survive a Globalized Economy?” Ruffin Series of the Society for Business Ethics 1: 1–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1998c. Truth and Progress. Philosophical Papers 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1999a. “Human Rights, Rationality and Sentimentality.” In The Politics of Human Rights, edited by Savic, Obrad, 67–82. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1999b. Philosophy and Social Hope. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 2000. “Response to Jürgen Habermas.” In Rorty and His Critics, edited by Brandom, R. B., 56–64. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 2006a. “Is Philosophy Relevant to Applied Ethics?” Business Ethics Quarterly 16 (3): 369–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 2006b. “Pragmatism as Anti-authoritarianism.” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 1999 53 (1): 7–20. Reprinted in A Companion to Pragmatism, edited by J. R. Shook and J. Margolis, 257–66. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 2006c. “Replies to Koehn, De George, and Werhane.” Business Ethics Quarterly 16 (3): 409–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 2007a. “Dewey and Posner on Pragmatism and Moral Progress.” University of Chicago Law Review 74 (3): 915–27.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 2007b. Philosophy as Cultural Politics. Philosophical Papers 4. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rozin, Paul, Lowery, Laura, Imada, Sumio, and Haidt, Jonathan. 1999. “The CAD Triad Hypothesis: A Mapping between Three Moral Emotions (Contempt, Anger, Disgust) and Three Moral Codes (Community, Autonomy, and Divinity).” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76 (4): 574–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sabadoz, Cameron, and Singer, Abraham. 2017. “Talk Ain’t Cheap: Political CSR and the Challenges of Corporate Deliberation.” Business Ethics Quarterly 27 (2): 183–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwab, Klaus. 2016. The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Geneva: World Economic Forum.Google Scholar
Skinner, Ε. Benjamin. 2012. “Slaves Put Squid on U.S. Dining Tables from South Pacific Catch.” Bloomberg Business Week, February 23. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-02-23/slaves-put-squid-on-u-s-dining-tables-from-south-pacific-catch.Google Scholar
Stout, Jeffrey. 1988. Ethics after Babel: The Languages of Morals and Their Discontents. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Strauss, Kendra. 2012. “Coerced, Forced and Unfree Labour: Geographies of Exploitation in Contemporary Labour Markets.” Geography Compass 6 (3): 137–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stringer, Christina, Hugh Whittaker, D., and Simmons, Glenn. 2016. “New Zealand’s Turbulent Waters: The Use of Forced Labour in the Fishing Industry.” Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs 16 (1): 3–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tickler, David, Meeuwig, Jessica J., Bryant, Katharine, David, Fiona, Forrest, John A. H., Gordon, Elise, Larsen, Jacqueline Joudo et al. 2018. “Modern Slavery and the Race to Fish.” Nature Communications 9 (1): 1–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voparil, Christopher J. 2011. “Rortyan Cultural Politics and the Problem of Speaking for Others.” Contemporary Pragmatism 8 (1): 115–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voparil, Christopher J. 2014. “Taking Other Human Beings Seriously: Rorty’s Ethics of Choice and Responsibility.” Contemporary Pragmatism 11 (1): 83–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voparil, Christopher J., and Bernstein, Richard J., eds. 2010. The Rorty Reader. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Werhane, Patricia H. 1999. Moral Imagination and Management Decision Making. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Werhane, Patricia H. 2006. “A Place for Philosophers in Applied Ethics and the Role of Moral Reasoning in Moral Imagination: A Response to Richard Rorty.” Business Ethics Quarterly 16 (3): 401–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wettstein, Florian. 2009. Multinational Corporations and Global Justice: Human Rights Obligations of a Quasi-governmental Institution. Stanford, CA: Stanford Business Books.Google Scholar
Whelan, Glen. 2012. “The Political Perspective of Corporate Social Responsibility: A Critical Research Agenda.” Business Ethics Quarterly 22 (4): 709–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wicks, Andrew C. 1990. “Norman Bowie and Richard Rorty on Multinationals: Does Business Ethics Need ‘Metaphysical Comfort?’” Journal of Business Ethics 9 (3): 191–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wicks, Andrew C. 1993. “Divide and Conquer? Rorty’s Distinction between the Public and the Private.” Soundings 76 (4): 551–69.Google Scholar
Wicks, Andrew C., and Edward Freeman, R.. 1998. “Organization Studies and the New Pragmatism: Positivism, Anti-positivism, and the Search for Ethics.” Organization Science 9 (2): 123–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 2000. Inclusion and Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar