Faculty of Humanities
School of Basic Social Sciences
Department of Philosophy
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
In the field of business ethics, a lot of research has been done on ethics management and corporate social responsibility in large firms. The same cannot be said of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This is the case despite the fact that SMEs are the largest providers of employment and the key to poverty alleviation globally. In this project, it was decided to gather research papers on ethics in SMEs from various parts of the world (Africa, Europe, India, Latin America, New Zealand and Australia and the USA). This proved to be no easy task, as most SMEs do not describe their ethical activities in terms of corporate social responsibility (CSR) or ethics management. In fact, the research indicated that in SMEs, ethical considerations seem to be dealt with without the use of any of these labels. In SMEs, ethics presents itself as a much more integrated part of business activity. It was found that in SMEs a strong sense of normativity emerges out of everyday business interactions with a variety of stakeholders. The kind of stakeholder interactions that large businesses spend a lot of time analysing, nurturing and monitoring, happens as a matter of course in SMEs. In fact, creating reputational value, building networks and nurturing community interactions are very much part of securing their bread and butter. The research further found that the main threats to ethics in SMEs include corruption in the environments in which they function, a lack of peer networks and government support, and prohibitive policies, procedures and structures that were designed with large companies in mind. Besides co-authoring (with Kris Dobie) an article on ethics and sustainability in SMEs in sub-Saharan Africa: enabling, constraining and contaminating relationships, the researcher also co-edited a special edition of the African Journal of Business Ethics with Dr Laura Spence (UK), in which perspectives on the ethics of SMEs from various parts of the world were published.
Contact person: Prof MJ Painter-Morland.
This study aimed to fill a hitherto unattended gap in Nietzsche studies, namely his relationship with the English-speaking world. While he gladly acknowledged the French roots of his thought and his use of his own German tradition – both literary and philosophical – very little has been said about the English giants whose influences abound in his work. Shakespeare, for example, is mentioned over a hundred times in the Nietzschean oeuvre, and makes his first appearance even before Goethe does. The English world was as important to Nietzsche as were the French and German traditions, particularly if one takes into account that no other country embodied the vices of modernity against which Nietzsche railed quite to the extent that imperial Britain did. No other country had so much at its disposal to aid them in turning their values into the values of the world. The grand narrative of British philosophy, with its persistent theme of “progress”, constitutes a case of undiluted modernism. The research project examines Nietzsche’s engagement with this tradition, what he loved and loathed about it, and how it helped to form the philosopher that we today know as Nietzsche. The study was published in the book Nietzsche and the Anglo-Saxon tradition as part of Continuum Publications’ Studies in Continental Philosophy series. The book follows a negative to positive trajectory, beginning with the thinkers that Nietzsche evaluated negatively, such as Bacon, Hobbes and Darwin, and concludes with those whom he deemed worthy thinkers, such as Shakespeare, Emerson and the great Romantics.
Contact person: Dr L Mabille.
The French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical metaphysics is essentially a meditation on what makes ethical agency possible – that which enables us to put the well-being of another before our own. This line of questioning found its inception in and drew its inspiration from the mass atrocities that occurred during the Second World War. The Holocaust, like the Cambodian genocide, or those in Rwanda and Srebrenica, exemplifies what have come to be known as the “never again” situations. Yet, atrocity crimes are still rampant. In our present-day world, hate crimes motivated by racial, sexual or other prejudice, and mass hate, such as genocide and terror is on the rise. Within this context, this project sought to critically reflect upon Levinas’s notion of a radically passive ethical agent as opposed to the commonplace notion of an active autonomous agent with the freedom to act independently without an inherent imperative steering its actions. Levinas claims that taking responsibility for others in need follows from neither sympathy and compassion nor a free, rational weighing of options. Rather, ethical action is made possible by a primordial responsibility that is preconsciously felt. We are passively obligated before we can actively choose to help. Levinas therefore argues that the “needy other” incapacitates our customary egocentric ways, and that this “radical passivity” enables us to recognise our inherent responsibility to others in need. This project resulted in book entitled Radical passivity: rethinking ethical agency in Levinas, edited by Dr Benda Hofmeyr, which brought together a number of internationally renowned Levinas scholars. The book was published in the prestigious Springer book series, Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy.
Contact person: Dr AB Hofmeyr.
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