Emotions and Practical Reasoning

Abstract

Although the emotions or passions are said often to be in conflict with reason, this view underestimates the importance of the emotions in life and, indeed, their relevance to the proper functioning of practical reason.2 It is this latter point I wish to develop in the first section of this paper. In the second section, I argue that the relation between emotion and practical reasoning developed in section one suggests that a characteror virtue-based ethics should be seriously considered by business ethicists; I discuss Aristotelian moral virtue and practical wisdom.3 The relevance of this paper to discussions of contemporary business ethics should be clarified before I continue. There is a consensus, at least among philosophers who do business ethics, that some knowledge of ethical theory is necessary in order to deal intelligently with moral problems in corporate business. Contemporary moral theorists who write on business ethics often rely upon a division of normative ethics into teleological and deontological.4 Both of these theories attempt to answer the question: What ought I to do? There fore, their object is actions rather than agents. The most common teleological theory in morals is utilitarianism; utilitarian moral theory