Aristotle's Philosophy Of Ethics And Business Ethics

Aristotle advanced the philosophy of ethics, where he demonstrated that it is a means of achieving an end to happiness. However, happiness means many things to different people. To Aristotle, the most adequate way to pursue happiness is through the virtue of excellence. In his writings, Aristotle connected his therory of virtue to economics, and leadership as well. It is a matter of connecting ones personal ethics to that of ones business ethics., simply because Aristotle made no disticntion between ethics and politics. Aristotle illustrated the purpose of ethics in leadership in that he believed that virtue is ingrained in character (Ciulla, 2003).

This means that leaders, especially in business can have morally weak characters, and this

As Aristotle (and Buddha) believed that the “moraity of a person is a seamless whole” (Ciulla, 2003). Hence, the leadership will be guided by the person in his or her full cpacity as a moral, ethical, and virtuous being. Virtue involves having the necessary attitude toward pleasure and pain. For instance, when faced with danger, a coward will suffer excessive fear while a rash person will least likely suffer enough fear. A person who is virtuous exhibits all the virtue principles that were listed by Aristotle. These virtues include temperance, courage, magnanity, liberty, proper ambition, magnificence, wittiness, patience, modesty, truthfulness, indignation, and friendliness. Although all these virtues are important, leaders in professional and educational organizations would need the value of proper ambition, patience, courage, magnificence, friendliness and truthfulness. In leadership, thus, professions involve dealing with young people who are experiencing life and what it has to offer. Therefore, dealing with them will require all these virtues (Dudley,

In a professional and educational setup it can be translated as excellence. For instance a good manager has a virtue of excellence if he or she is good at handling his employees and other duties of the organization. This again is related to what Ciulla (2003) has said with regard to virtue. Moral value, on the other hand, is just a commitment to perform well in any undertaking. A manager will therefore be motivated to do good based on there virtues and moral obligations.

Aristotle had vast writings on society, justice and economic thinking. The great value that Aristotle’s economic thoughts motivated others to think about the economy. Initially people only thought about the economy in official ways. Although Aristotle was a great thinker, his thoughts and values about the economy could not have been of so much relevance to the world of today. His main economic idea was centered on just price, which literally implies common evaluation (Dudley,