Transcendent Unity and Common Home: Medieval Teachings for Today's Economy and Business

Abstract

Transcendent Unity and Common Home:Medieval Teachings for Today's Economy and Business Giovanni Maria de Simone The pandemic has shown us that we live in one world. The themes of unity and diversity have emerged with even greater force, and social and economic interactions have made questions about the nature and purpose of corporations more urgent. A corporation is an organization involving human beings, but the differing ways of conceiving and fulfilling its purpose are rooted in a variety of anthropological conceptions. Of the theoretical orientations regarding ethics and human relationships, two have emerged that apply most clearly to our conception of a corporation. According to one, ethics concerns the relationship between human beings and is extrinsic to human nature. Among the proponents of this view is Thomas Hobbes, who considers the natural human condition to be one of mutual opposition.1 In this framework, human beings emerge from the state of nature through a contract that constitutes society. Among the sustainers of this contractualist view are John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Neoclassical economic theory takes up this view, and the same applies to various conceptions of Corporate Social Responsibility and to the shareholder theory proposed by Milton Friedman.2 In a now classic article that appeared in the New York Times in 1970, Friedman argued that in a system of free enterprise and private ownership, management's only responsibility is to act according to the wishes of property owners. Their wishes might also be to earn as much money as possible in compliance with the basic rules of society, both those embodied in the law and those embodied in ethical custom.3 According to Friedman, the doctrine of "social responsibility" makes all human activity political, and is therefore fundamentally subversive in a free society.4 William M. Evan and R. Edward Freeman, in A Stakeholder Theory of the Modern Corporation: Kantian Capitalism, introduce the idea of a transition to "Kantian capitalism."5 According to Kant, the only foundation of morality is duty, and the principle that every human [End Page 77] being must love God above all else and his neighbor as himself agrees with the moral law.6 For him, there is a clear contrast between duty and the goal of personal happiness.7 The second theoretical orientation, a different anthropological vision, holds that the ethical dimension is constitutive of human nature and as a result the flourishing of one human being not in fundamental opposition to the flourishing of others. This view, which developed especially during the Classical and Middle Ages, reflects the thoughts of Thomas Aquinas. Knowledge is viewed as articulated and unitary8 and the Philosophia prima, first philosophy, deals with first causes and provides general principles to all other parts of knowledge.9 This paper, most informed by the thought of Aquinas and some of his interpreters, will show that the transcendental unity of being, that is, indivision, finds its ultimate reason in the creation of everything by the Creator.10 The relationship of dependence on the Creator, which constitutes a form of unity, is not such as to absorb differences but presents a condition of being. This relationship grounds the natural love of every human for the Creator and every other creature. Corporate activity, as a human activity, is distinct but not isolated from other activities, and finds its meaning in light of these considerations. In order to ground corporate theory, this study will argue, influenced by gnoseology (intentional oneness), that being is transcendental, the relationship of all beings to being itself subsisting through itself, the common good and the virtues. Unity and Difference in Thinking: Intentional Oneness and Being Perfected In the context of the research related to unity, this first section considers oneness in relation to the intellectual operation. As highlighted by Aquinas, anyone who intends something knows that such a thing is manifest to him, and therefore knows that he intends.11 In the act of thinking, unity does not rule out differences. When thinking, I think the thing as thought by me and I know myself as a concrete real thinker.12 What is thought, even a mathematical formula, is thought in relation to me as thinker...