Ethics as Critical Practice: The “Pentagon Papers”, Deciding Responsibly, Truth-telling, and the Unsettling of Organizational Morality

Abstract

This paper contributes to the development of a practice-based understanding of ethics. Ethics is here conceived as a critical practice of questioning and problematizing moral orders and moral rules-in-use in which subjects (re)define their relations to self and others. Situating this conception of ethics in the context of practice theory, we draw upon ideas of responsible decision-making (Derrida) and truth-telling (Foucault) to examine Daniel Ellsberg’s leaking of the “Pentagon Papers” as illustrative of ethics as critical practice.