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Moral individualism of moral collectivism?
Santora, Michael
Santora, Michael
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Abstract
The moral status of artificial entities is much discussed in philosophy of social science, law, public policy and applied ethics. Especially after the polemical article by Peter French ascribing moral agency to corporations, a robust debate ensued about whether corporations can be treated as moral persons and whether they have the rights and duties regularly conferred to human beings. Philosophers (May, Donaldson, Werhane, De George, Ladd) have been mainly interested in establishing the ontological and moral status of corporations and its implications on moral responsibility. Other authors (Phillips, Nesteriuk, Velasquez) have been concerned with the application of this framework to determine legal and criminal responsibilities. In this paper I hope to demonstrate that the activities of MNCs in the global economy offer a useful context for evaluating the merits of the two contrasting theories on corporate moral responsibility. I present the emblematic case of Unocal Corporation in Burma to test the two contrasting theses on collective responsibility, to wit moral individualism (MI) and moral collectivism (MC), and to determine whether these theses matter to our moral judgement. The paper concludes that it is worthwhile to revisit the lively controversies over moral agency in the wake of French’s audacious claim of corporate moral responsibility. While it might seem tempting to abandon these fundamental issues and “get on” with the task of doing business ethics. In fact, as illustrated in the case of Unocal and the Burma Pipeline, the resolution of these fundamental questions has enormous practical implications for moral progress in the global economy.
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2008
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With permission of the license/copyright holder