A BUDDHIST CRITIQUE OF LIBERALISM’S APPEAL TO GLOBAL JUSTICE
Keywords:
GLOBAL JUSTICEAbstract
The prominent business ethics scholar Manuel Velasquez describes business ethics as “The application of an understanding of what is good and right to transactions and pursuits that we call business. It begins with providing a framework of basic principles for understanding what is meant by the terms good and right.”1 The global financial crisis raises concerns about the principles guiding social systems in their attempt to produce and distribute the materials needed so that the members of the society enjoy an enriched quality of life. From the Buddhist perspective individual ingenuity is intended to increase personal and social benefits. For this reason the increase of prosperity is not only viewed as the concern of the private business individual, but also a concern shared by the entire social system. Thus there is necessarily a dimension to the study of business ethics that relates to concerns about social justice – as there must be guidelines to insure that business benefits (does not hurt) public interests.
References
Manuel G. Velasquez, Business Ethics: Concepts and Cases, New Jersey: The Pearson Education International Division of Prentice Hall Publishing, 2006, 1.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. H. Rackman, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994, VI ix.
John Fullerton, “The Relevance of E. F. Schumacher in the Twenty First Century,” www.smallisbeautiful.org, 1.
Julia Kollewe, “Fear is the New Mindset in the Irrational World of Finance,” www.guardian.co.uk, Thursday 23 October 2008, 2.
Dalai Lama, His Holiness (Tenzin Gytso), Ancient Wisdom, Modern World, London: Little, Brown and Company, 1999, 5.
E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, New York: Harper Perennial, 1989, 64.
William, R. Polk, “The Cleveland Century Club Lecture,” September 2008, 1.
“United Nations Global Compact,” The United Nations and Business, http://www.un.org/partners/business/index.asp.
Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, New York: Simon and Schuster Publishing, 1990, 42.
John Rawls, The Law of Peoples, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002, 32-33.
Sungtaek Cho, “Selflessness: Toward a Buddhist Vision of Social Justice” Journal of Buddhist Ethics, vol. 7, 2000, 4.
Hinichi Inoue, Putting Buddhism to Work: A New Approach to Management and Business, trans. Duncan Williams, Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd., 1997, 1. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1981, 149.
Robert Smith, Japanese Society: Tradition, Self and the Social Order, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, 55.
Nancy W Ross, Three Ways of Asian Wisdom, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969, 91.
Medagoda Sumanatissa, “Buddhism and Global Economic Justice,” Business Ethics, 12-9-2003, 1.
