Moral Imagination: How Literature and Films Can Stimulate Ethical Reflection in the Business World

The business world is sometimes unfairly caricatured, as a world where everyone knows the price of everything and yet appreciates the value of nothing. It is our moral imagination that allows us to become sensitive to the dimensions of a situation that are likely to lead to the harming of human welfare. The essays gathered in The Moral Imagination: How Literature and Films Can Stimulate Ethical Reflection in the Business World show how, through literature, art, and film, society might learn to develop a sense of moral imagination.

The premise of this collection is that the more interesting and prior question is Who are we? rather than What shall we do? Cultivating the imagination through art, literature, and film illuminates our understanding of what it means to be human and thus brings us closer to answering this fundamental question. By having a genuine sense of self, one can expand an impoverished moral vision and open the way for the greatness of heart that is needed to guide us through an ethical life in business.

The focus on moral images in business ethics is credited, in part, to Aristotle. Some of these essays can be seen as arguing for a retrieval of the Aristotelian insight on ethics for the business ethics of our time. Ethics in this perspective is not primarily concerned with analyzing situations so that we can make correct decisions but rather with reflecting on what is constitutive of the good life. The fostering of this philosophical tradition can bring a crucial corrective to the way business ethics is practiced today.