MANUSCRIPT

(GOOD GOVERNANCE/ GROUP 3)

Review of Philosophy and Theories Applied in Business

1. Philosophy defined. (Alyza Lazaro)

Good Governance and Social Responsibility

Philosophy is the study of fundamental questions about existence,
knowledge,values, reason, mind, and language. It is an ancient discipline,
deeply intertwined with the development of science, religion, and culture, that
seeks to understand the underlying principles of reality and the nature of
human life.

 Branches of Philosophy

Philosophy is typically divided into several key branches, each of which

addresses specific types of questions:

 Metaphysics: The study of reality and existence. It seeks to answer

what is real, what exists, and the nature of objects and their
properties. It includes questions about the nature of the universe,
time, space, causality, and the self.
 Epistemology: The study of knowledge and belief. Epistemologists
explore the nature of knowledge, how it is acquired, what justifies
belief, and the limits of human understanding.
 Ethic: Also called moral philosophy, it examines questions about right
and wrong, good and evil, and moral responsibility. Ethical theories
seek to understand what it means to live a good life and what
obligations humans have to others.
 Logic: The study of reasoning and argumentation. Logic is concerned
with the structure of arguments, the validity of inference, and the
principles that guide correct reasoning. It is foundational to other
branches as it ensures coherence and rational analysis.
 Aesthetics: The study of beauty, art, and taste. Aesthetic philosophy
questions the nature of beauty and art, how we experience and
evaluate it, and the value of artistic expression in human life.
 Political Philosophy: The study of government, justice, rights, liberty,
and the role of the state. It looks into what makes a just society, the
role of citizens, and the nature of authority and power.

 Methodology

Philosophy is distinguished by its method of inquiry, which is typically

conceptual analysis and rational argumentation. Philosophers do not rely on
empirical observation or experimentation like scientists but instead use reason
and critical thought to examine abstract concepts. This process often involves:
  Asking Fundamental Questions: Philosophers focus on the "why"
and "how" rather than just the "what." For example, instead of just
observing that people behave ethically, a philosopher asks why they
should behave ethically.
 Conceptual Clarification: They seek to clarify what is meant by
certain terms and concepts (e.g., what does it mean to "know"
something or to "exist"?).
 Critical Examination: Philosophers evaluate the assumptions behind
common beliefs, questioning widely accepted ideas and offering
alternative perspectives.
 Systematic Thinking: They attempt to create coherent systems of
thought, where the ideas are internally consistent and logically related
to one another.

 Historical Context

Philosophy has a long and rich history, beginning in ancient civilizations:

 Ancient Philosophy: The pre-Socratic philosophers (like Thales and

Heraclitus) laid the groundwork for metaphysics and natural
philosophy, while later thinkers like *Socrates*, *Plato*, and *Aristotle*
shaped the tradition with dialogues on ethics, politics, and
epistemology.
 Medieval Philosophy: Philosophers like *St. Augustine* and *St.
Thomas Aquinas* incorporated religious doctrines (especially
Christianity) into philosophical discourse, focusing on reconciling faith
with reason.
 Modern Philosophy: Thinkers like *Descartes*, *Kant*, and *Hume*
explored new ways of understanding the mind, knowledge, and the
nature of reality, heavily influencing fields like science and politics.
 Contemporary Philosophy: Modern philosophers engage with
current social, political, and scientific issues, including existentialism
(Sartre, Camus), analytic philosophy (Wittgenstein), and post-
structuralism (Derrida, Foucault)

2. Philosophies and Theories applied in Business. (Benedict Bartolome

& Mark Reyes)

Philosophies

Philosophy, derived from the Greek words “philo” (love) and “sophia”
(wisdom), is the study of fundamental questions about existence, knowledge,
values, reason, and reality. Over centuries, different philosophical schools of
thought have emerged, each addressing various aspects of human life and
the universe.

1. Western Philosophy: Originating in ancient Greece, it includes key figures

like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
2. Eastern Philosophy: This encompasses systems from Asia, such as
Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism.
3. Contemporary Philosophy: In the modern era, philosophy has evolved to
engage with science, politics, and language.

PHILOSOPHIES AND THEORIES APPLIED IN BUSSINESS

Ideas and concepts used in business. In business, there are many ideas and
concepts that govern decision-making and strategy.

Here are some important points:

1. Utilitarianism - focuses on maximizing general happiness and utility.
Companies often use this to assess the results of their operations for
stakeholders.
2. Stakeholder theory emphasizes the importance of considering all
stakeholders (employees, customers, suppliers, society) and not just
shareholders.
3. Porter's five forces a framework for analyzing industry competition and
market dynamics to help companies understand their positions and strategies.
4. SWOT analysis identifies internal strengths and weaknesses and external
opportunities and threats to inform strategic plans.
5. Lean Management focuses on reducing waste and increasing value, and
is used in production and operations.
6. The agile methodology emphasizes flexibility and sensitivity to change, and
is often used in project management and software development.
7. Theory X and Theory Y present two opposing views on employee
motivation. Theory X thinks that employees are always lazy, while Theory Y
believes that they are motivated.
8. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) encourages businesses to act
ethically and contribute positively to society, balancing profits with social
impact.
9. Game theory analyzes the strategic interaction between competitors with
an understanding of prices, product offerings and negotiations.
10. The Diffusion of Innovation Theory It explains how, why, and how quickly
new ideas and technologies spread to the market and guide product
development and marketing strategies. These concepts and ideas help
companies navigate complex environments, optimize operations and adapt to
ethical standards.

3. Immanuel Kant and his categorical imperative. (Aira Montoya Marfil )

Immanuel Kant and his categorical imperative:

1. Deontological Ethics: Kant's categorical imperative is foundational to

deontological ethics, which prioritizes the morality of actions over their
consequences, contrasting with consequentialist theories like utilitarianism.
2. Moral Autonomy and Rationality: Kant emphasized moral autonomy,
asserting that individuals can make rational decisions independent of external
influences, thus grounding his ethical principles in the ability to rationally
endorse universal laws.
3. Good Will and Duty: For Kant, the "good will" is the only intrinsically good
aspect of morality, where moral worth is determined by acting out of duty
according to the categorical imperative rather than by consequences.

Kant vs.Utilitarianism

Kant's deontological ethics contrasts sharply with utilitarianism, which

measures morality by outcomes.This juxtaposition sparks significant debate
about rule-based versus outcome-based ethical decisions.

Moral Absolutism vs.Moral Relativism

Kant advocates for moral absolutism, positing that some actions are
universally right or wrong, in contrast to moral relativism, which considers
cultural and individual perspectives.

Kant's Influence on HumanRights

Kant's principle of treating individuals as ends in themselves underpins
modern human rights discussions, emphasizing the intrinsic dignity.

Practical Reason and Moral Law

Kant distinguishes between practical reason (the basis for moral action) and
theoretical reason (knowledge), emphasizing that practical reason allows
individuals to determine and follow the moral law.

4. John Stuart Mill and his utilitarianism (Kate Cruz)

Who is John Stuart Mill?
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was the most influential English-speaking
philosopher of the nineteenth century, as well as a political economist and a
prominent politician. Born in London to a family of intellectuals, Mill was
educated by his father, James Mill, who was a philosopher and economist
himself. He was a child prodigy, learning Greek at age three and Latin at age
eight before delving into advanced philosophical works as a teenager.

Mill’s father was a close friend and follower of the philosopher Jeremy
Bentham(link is external), the founder of utilitarianism, a moral theory that
emphasizes the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people as the
guiding principle for ethical behavior. The education he gave John Stuart Mill
aimed to mold him into a utilitarian philosopher, and Mill’s most famous work,
Utilitarianism (published in 1861), is a detailed explanation and defense of the
theory against a range of objections.

As a political reformer (and Member of Parliament from 1865 to 1868), Mill

advocated for economic and social policies that would promote equality and
social welfare. He was a staunch advocate for women’s rights, publishing
“The Subjection of Women”, a groundbreaking work that argued for equal
social status between women and men. Mill was only the second Member of
Parliament to advocate for women’s suffrage, and wrote in support of the
abolition of slavery in the United States.

THE GREATEST HAPPINESS PRINCIPLE

The doctrine that the basis of morals is utility, or the Greatest Happiness
Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote
happiness, wrong in proportion as they tend to produce the reverse of
happiness. By ‘happiness’ is meant pleasure and the absence of pain; by
‘unhappiness’ is meant pain and the lack of pleasure.

Let’s break this down. In this passage, Mill says that morality is all about
promoting happiness (which he also calls “utility”). The more happiness an
action produces, the better it is, morally speaking; and the more unhappiness
an action produces, the worse it is. According to utilitarianism, then, we
should strive to maximize utility in the world, producing the greatest happiness
for the greatest number of people.

Mill also equates happiness with “pleasure and the absence of pain” and
unhappiness with “pain and the lack of pleasure”. This view of the nature of
happiness is known as hedonism.

The Importance of Sentience

The capacity to experience pleasure and pain is known as sentience. Human
beings are sentient, and so are many animals. Utilitarians like Mill hold that
the rightness or wrongness of an action depends on how the action affects all
sentient beings — not just humans. In other words, in applying the Greatest
Happiness Principle, we must factor in the pleasure or pain of sentient
animals as well as humans.

This doesn’t mean all sentient life is completely equal. Sentience comes in
degrees: different creatures — and even different individuals — can have a
greater or lesser capacity to experience pain or pleasure. For example, a toad
arguably cannot experience as wide a variety of pleasures and pains as a
human being — such as the pleasure of humor or the pain of heartbreak — or
experience them with as much intensity as humans sometimes do. Similarly,
someone who is under heavy sedation has less of a capacity for pleasure and
pain than you do right now.

The Felicific Calculus

For utilitarians, determining the right thing to do is a matter of adding up the
utility an action is likely to produce for the sentient creatures affected. For
instance, suppose Jeffrey wants to go on vacation, but nobody is available to
feed his cat, Whiskers. Mill would advise Jeffrey to consider whether the
pleasure he would get from the vacation outweighs the pain Whiskers would
experience from going without food and water.

As this illustrates, utilitarians try their best to approach moral decisions

mathematically. Jeremy Bentham called this the “Felicific Calculus”.

5. Jeremy Bentham and his utilitarianism (bryan vivero )

Jeremy Bentham was born in 1748 to a wealthy family. A child prodigy, his
father sent him to study at Queen’s College, Oxford University, aged 12.
Although he never practiced, Bentham trained as a lawyer and wrote
extensively on law and legal reform. He died in 1832 at the age of 84 and
requested his body and head to be preserved for scientific research. They are
currently on display at University College London. Jeremy Bentham is often
regarded as the founder of classical utilitarianism. According to Bentham
himself, it was in 1769 he came upon “the principle of utility”, inspired by
the writings of Hume, Priestley, Helvétius and Beccaria. This is the
principle at the foundation of utilitarian ethics, as it states that any action
is right insofar as it increases happiness, and wrong insofar as it
increases pain. For Bentham, happiness simply meant pleasure and the
absence of pain and could be quantified according to its intensity and
duration. Famously, he rejected the idea of inalienable natural rights—
rights that exist independent of their enforcement by any government—as
“nonsense on stilts”. Instead, the application of the principle of utility to
law and government guided Bentham’s views on legal rights. During his
lifetime, he attempted to create a “utilitarian pannomion”—a complete
body of law based on the utility principle. He enjoyed several modest
successes in law reform during his lifetime (as early as 1843, the
Scottish historian John Hill Burton was able to trace twenty-six legal
reforms to Bentham’s arguments) and continued to exercise considerable
influence on British public life.

Bentham's Core Principles:

 Principle of Utility:

Bentham's central idea is the principle of utility, which states that an action is
morally right if it tends to promote happiness or pleasure and morally wrong if
it tends to produce pain or suffering. He believed that all individuals naturally
seek pleasure and avoid pain, and thus the best actions are those that result
in the greatest net happiness for the greatest number of people.

 Hedonic Calculus:

Bentham introduced the hedonic or felicific calculus, a system for

quantifying pleasure and pain in order to determine the moral value of an
action. This calculus considers several factors, including:

1. Intensity: How intense is the pleasure or pain?

2. Duration: How long will the pleasure or pain last?
3. Certainty: How certain is the outcome?
4. Propinquity: How soon will the pleasure or pain occur?
5. Fecundity: Will the pleasure lead to more pleasure in the future.
6. Purity: How free from pain is the pleasure?
7. Extent: How many people will be affected by the pleasure or pain?

 Egalitarianism:
Bentham’s utilitarianism is egalitarian in nature, meaning that everyone’s
happiness counts equally. The happiness of any one individual is not
considered more or less important than the happiness of another.

 Act Utilitarianism:

Bentham’s utilitarianism is often described as act utilitarianism because it

focuses on evaluating individual actions based on their specific
consequences. Each act is judged independently to determine whether it
maximizes happiness.

 Consequentialism:

As a consequentialist theory, Bentham's utilitarianism holds that the morality

of an action is determined solely by its results, not by the intentions behind the
action or by any intrinsic qualities of the action itself.

Applications of Bentham's Utilitarianism:

 Law and Punishment: Bentham argued that punishment should be used

as a deterrent to crime, minimizing pain for society by reducing the
likelihood of future offenses. He believed that punishment should be
proportionate to the crime and should not be based on revenge or
retribution.

 Social Reform: Bentham was a strong advocate for social reform,

believing that laws and institutions should be designed to promote the
greatest happiness for the greatest number. He advocated for reforms in
areas such as education, poverty, and criminal justice.

Criticism of Bentham’s Utilitarianism:

Bentham’s utilitarianism has faced several criticisms, including:

 Quantifying Pleasure: Critics argue that it is difficult, if not impossible, to

measure pleasure and pain in a precise and objective manner.
 Neglecting Justice: Bentham's focus on outcomes could, in some cases,
justify actions that violate individual rights or fairness, as long as the
overall happiness is maximized. For example, sacrificing one person’s
well-being to benefit a larger group may be deemed acceptable under
utilitarian reasoning.
 Short-term Focus: Bentham's utilitarianism does not adequately consider
long-term consequences, focusing more on immediate pleasure and pain.

6. Mill and Bentham’s utilitarianism (Jeriel Bugarin Francia )

Mill and Bentham's Utilitarianism, in normative ethics, a tradition stemming

from the late 18th- and 19th-century English philosophers and economists
Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill according to which an action (or type of
action) is right if it tends to promote happiness or pleasure and wrong if it
tends to produce unhappiness or pain—not just for the performer of the action
but also for everyone else affected by it.

Utilitarianism is a species of consequentialism, the general doctrine in ethics

that actions (or types of action) should be evaluated on the basis of their
consequences.Utilitarianism and other consequentialist theories are in
opposition to egoism, the view that each person should pursue his or her own
self-interest, even at the expense of others, and to any ethical theory that
regards some actions (or types of action) as right or wrong independently of
their consequences (see deontological ethics). Utilitarianism also differs from
ethical theories that make the rightness or wrongness of an action dependent
upon the motive of the agent—for, according to the utilitarian, it is possible for
the right thing to be done from a bad motive. Utilitarians may, however,
distinguish the aptness of praising or blaming an agent from whether the
action was right.

CONSEQUENTIALISM, In ethics, the doctrine that actions should be judged

right or wrong on the basis of their consequences. The simplest form of
consequentialism is classical (or hedonistic) utilitarianism, which asserts that
an action is right or wrong according to whether it maximizes the net balance
of pleasure over pain in the universe.

ETHICAL EGOISM, in philosophy, an ethical theory according to which moral

decision making should be guided entirely by self-interest. Ethical egoism is
often contrasted with psychological egoism, the empirical claim that
advancing one’s self-interest is the underlying motive of all human action.

7. Thomas Hobbes and his Social Contract Theory (Chelle Marcos &
Liscele Duerme )

Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes was born in 1588. He studied at Oxford and spent much of
his life working as a tutor for an aristocratic family. By the 1640s, he became
known for a number of philosophical works he had published. It is around this
time that Hobbes witnessed the horrors of war that would shape his political
views and beliefs. The English Civil War was fought between 1642 and 1651
and most likely influenced his ideas of the social contract. Hobbes spent much
of the war in exile in France. However, he looked on with horror at the death
and destruction in his native country. He had already been an outspoken
supporter of absolute monarchy. The events of the war only reaffirmed that
view and contributed to his ideas about human nature in what he called the
"state of nature."

Thomas Hobbes and Social Contract Theory

Thomas Hobbes' social contract theory was based on the idea that human
beings entered into an unwritten agreement with each other to escape from
this warlike state of nature. This is what he referred to as the social contract.
For Thomas Hobbes, social contract theory was necessary to allow society to
flourish. Without the social contract, humans could never move past the
simple day to day search for food and survival. There would be no reason to
develop agriculture or industry, because your hard work could just be taken
from you by someone else.

Thomas Hobbes Social Contract Definition

Thomas Hobbes's social contract's definition was based on what he thought
was the logical arrangement humans would make to escape this state of
nature. This is an abstract idea, and it shouldn't be thought of as a physical
contract everyone has signed. To help understand it, think about your school.
You and your classmates have not signed a contract that gives your teachers
power over you, but you generally accept it to be the case in a sort of social
contract.

“Continual fear, and danger of violent death, and the life of man,
solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"

8. Niccolò Machiavelli and the Machiavellian principle. (Aj Santos )

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) was an Italian diplomat, philosopher, and

writer best known for his political treatise The Prince, written in 1513.
Machiavelli's work has significantly influenced political thought, especially his
views on power, leadership, and the pragmatic use of authority, often
summarized under the term "Machiavellianism."

Key Machiavellian Principles

1. The Ends Justify the Means: One of Machiavelli's most controversial
ideas is that leaders must be willing to do whatever it takes to maintain power
and achieve their goals, even if their actions are morally questionable. This
pragmatic approach prioritizes results over ethical considerations.
2. Political Realism: Machiavelli's approach to politics is often described as
realistic or pragmatic. He argued that human nature is self-interested, and
thus, rulers must be shrewd, calculating, and sometimes ruthless to maintain
control.
3. Virtù and Fortuna: In Machiavellian thought, virtù represents a leader's
ability to shape circumstances through their skills, strength, and decisiveness.
Fortuna symbolizes chance or luck, which can favor or disrupt a leader's
plans. Machiavelliemphasized that a successful ruler must balance both.
4. The Appearance of Virtue: Machiavelli suggested that it is more important
for a ruler to appear virtuous than to be virtuous. A ruler should cultivate a
public image. of generosity, piety, and justice, even if privately engaging in
manipulation and deceit.
5. Fear vs. Love: In The Prince, Machiavelli famously stated, "It is better to
be feared than loved, if you cannot be both." He argued that fear is a more
reliable motivator than love because fear is within the ruler's control, whereas
love is not.
6. Manipulation and Deception: Machiavelli endorsed the use of
manipulation and deceit as tools for maintaining power. He believed that a
successful ruler must be like both a lion (strong and courageous) and a fox
(cunning and strategic).