Maybe We Need to Say Less About Ethics

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Those starting to question the utility of heavy investments in diversity, equity, and inclusion to form complex and overtly politicized approaches for solving the ethical dilemmas they face need to know that the time is ripe for a simpler, nonpartisan, back-to-basics approach.

The least we can do

Ethical minimalism has a long history in philosophy as a practical tool for addressing concerns of moral and social dysfunction in an environment not particularly open to extensive ethical theorizing. Perhaps most well-known in this tradition is John Stuart Mill’s harm principle. Seeking to limit the power of the government, Mill argued that people should be free to act however they wish unless their actions cause harm to somebody else. Unlike a more comprehensive approach that would have dictated extensive rules for action as it wrestles with high-minded notions of pursuing the common good, in a minimalist approach to ethics most ethical decisions become matters of personal choice, as ethics is reduced to autonomy and our formal relations with others in a political context. Only when there is the possibility of harm to others, is moral judgment activated.

What we owe each other

Some other notable efforts of developing minimalist ethics were born in the ashes of the Holocaust. Levinas’s ethics of the face is an example of ethical minimalism inspired by Jewish theology. Like Mill, Levinas developed his ethics without formulating an extensive theory, motivated by a primary concern of reinstituting humanity’s responsibility to each other after a horrific global moral failure to do so. Yet unlike Mills, Levinas held that our political responsibility extended far beyond not causing harm.

Influenced by the biblical story of the Israelites accepting the responsibility of the Torah without knowing what was written in it, Levinas argued that encountering the face of the other as a lived experience commands a massive responsibility.

Another notable example of ethical minimalism is Adorno’s Minima Moralia, a secularist wrestling with the possibility of ethics after the destruction of the Holocaust. Despite being horrified at the efforts to rebuild culture as if the murder of millions of Jews was some recoverable blip, Adorno continued to search for some minimal semblance of the good that might be actualized by small changes in behavior.

Convince me

More contemporary efforts at constructing minimalist ethics include Rorty’s ethical ironist. The ironist carries a continuous skepticism regarding the finality of a guiding ethical vocabulary. The ironist knows that anything can be re-described to appear more persuasive or appealing to a given audience and consequently does not seek society-wide buy-in to some noble ethical system. Well-intentioned normative arguments run the risk of having an aversive effect.

In that same spirit, by rejecting the business sucks argument, we can construct a robust, apolitical, and viable ethical system, more likely to be widely adopted, built on just three simple principles to replace the complex and controversial DEI calculus, while still pursuing ambitious ethical ends.

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Business need not suck

Perhaps the oldest and most consistent claim of those in the business sucks camp is that capitalism is exploitative, privileging profits over people. To respond, businesses can adopt an objective of humanistic stakeholder management. Consider Cisco, a firm constantly acknowledged by its employees as a welcoming place to work, treating all employees with dignity and respect regardless of their place in the institutional hierarchy.

Another major critique is that capitalism entrenches the power of the upper class, currently rich. If so, then ethically minded companies can commit to the social mobility of their stakeholders. Think of how Google has been in the news recently for its paradigm-shifting decision to hire people with potential straight out of high school, with no degrees, thereby increasing opportunities for those who have been shut out of the Ivy-league universities, the traditional path to upward mobility.

Finally, we hear how capitalism destroys the planet. As such, a principled commitment to harm reduction needs to be centred. McDonald’s continuously sets near-term goals aimed at improving environmental performance which it has consistently met. Recently, McDonald’s achieved its goal of sourcing 100 percent cage-free eggs in the U.S. by 2025, two years ahead of their original timeline.

With simple principles reframed as generic corporate objectives, we can build a minimalist, nonpartisan, business ethic as an alternative to the politicized and maximalist DEI. Businesses would then be empowered to work these principles into clear, nontechnical, multifaceted value propositions that instill ethical commitments deep into their DNA.