Business Ethics and Early Modern French Philosophy at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

This chapter presents possible implications for business ethics and philosophy of management of French philosophy at the start of the twentieth century with focus on philosophers and social theorists like Henri Bergson, Emile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Alexandre Kojeve and Georges Bataille. Modernity was developing, but nothing like contemporary globalized capitalism with its large corporations existed. This period marks the beginning of contemporary French philosophy and many of the conceptions of ethics and society that are important today were developed at that time. In France, the Cartesian philosophy of subjectivity was influential on the formulation of the most important questions in French philosophy concerning the relation between body and mind, about the status of the external world, and about the relation between philosophy and the natural and social sciences. With this horizon for philosophical reflection we are confronted with new and astonishing perspectives for business ethics and philosophy of management.