Jacob Dahl Rendtorff

This article summarizes some of the results of the BIOMED II project “Basic Ethical Principles in European Bioethics and Biolaw” connected to a research project of the Danish Research Councils “Bioethics and Law”. The BIOMED project was based on cooperation between 22 partners in most EU countries. The aim of the project was to identify the ethical principles of respect for autonomy, dignity, integrity and vulnerability as four important ideas or values for a European bioethics and biolaw. The research concluded that the basic ethical principles cannot be understood as universal everlasting ideas or transcendental truths but they rather function reflective guidelines and important values in European culture. The method of the research was conceptual, philosophical analysis of the cultural background of the four values or normative ideas that people use and find important in their existence. Moreover, this was combined with analysis of empirical legal material and policy documents. Also, a number of qualitative interviews with relevant experts were carried out. Another important result of the BIOMED project was the partner's Policy Proposals to the European Commission, the Barcelona Declaration, unique as a philosophical and political agreement between experts in bioethics and biolaw from many different countries. The Policy Proposals are reprinted here at the end of the article

From 1995 to 1998, the European Commission supported the “Basic Ethical Principles in European Bioethics and Biolaw” research project. The project was based on cooperation between 22 partners coming from most EU countries. Its aim was to identify the ethical principles relating to autonomy, dignity, integrity and vulnerability as four important ideas or values for a European bioethics and biolaw. An important resume of the BIOMED project was the partner’s Policy Proposals to the European Commission, the Barcelona Declaration of 1998, which is unique as a philosophical and political agreement between experts in bioethics and biolaw from many different countries. In this article, we want to compare the Barcelona Declaration with some other recent international Documents on bioethics and biolaw. We will relate the Barcelona Declaration to the framework of different international documents and codes of conduct about bioethics and biolaw. In particular, we will look at the similarities and differences when compared with the Council of Europe’s Convention for the Protection on of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with Regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine, adopted by the Committee of Ministers in 1996. Moreover, we will look at The UNESCO Declaration on the Humane Genome from 1997. Thus, the Barcelona Declaration does not only represent European ethical principles for bioethics and biolaw, but the document should also be conceived as a conceptual clarification and articulation of major ethical principles, which are central to international concerns for a universal bioethics and biolaw.

This paper presents a theoretical and practical approach to teaching business ethics, stakeholder management and CSR within the framework of the thematic seminar on business ethics and corporate social responsibility at Roskilde University. Within our programs in English of business studies and Economics and Business Administration the author of this article is responsible for this seminar that integrates issues of CSR and the ethics of innovation into the teaching ofcorporate social responsibility, stakeholder management and business ethics. This research oriented seminar provides a unique possibility for teaching CSR with an integration of methodological, theoretical and practical dimensions of business ethics. The idea is that the thematic seminar represents a tutor supported frame for extended studies of business ethics, stakeholder management and the social aspects of business and entrepreneurship. Each student shall present a paper on the basis of a collection of articles on the topic of ethics and social dimension of business. Moreover, it is required that the student is discussant of two other papers during the course. In addition, students shall prepare interactive participation in discussion of each paper. The sessions begin with a short introduction to the topic by the professor, then student presentations, after this discussant remarks, and finally general discussion followed by an evaluative assessment by the professor. During the seminar the student shall present both theory and case discussion so that we find a close interaction between theory and practice in the presentation. In the following, the paper elaborates on this development, in particular in the relation between theory presentation and case studies

This article discusses Michael Porter’s paradigm of creating shared value based on the criticism of corporate social responsibility by Milton Friedman in the perspective of contemporary debates on legitimacy and good corporate citizenship. This is a development of the argument presented by Jacob Dahl Rendtorff concerning the liberal property rights paradigm of business ethics in his book Responsibility, Ethics and Legitimacy of Corporations. This article discusses the work that Michael Porter has developed together with Mark Kramer, which can be presented as a strategic approach to business ethics and corporate social responsibility. This work began with Porter’s concept of Strategic Philanthropy Harvard business review on corporate social responsibility, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2003) which became Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility :78–92, 2006) and gradually developed into the concept of Creating Shared Value :62–77, 2011). We see how Michael Porter integrates the critical perspective on CSR from Friedman in a strategic concept of philanthropy, corporate social responsibility and creating shared value. Accordingly, the concept of creating shared value should be considered as a development of the ideas of strategic philanthropy and corporate social responsibility in the perspective of capitalism and freedom. At the same time, however, the concept of creating shared value is broader and more oriented towards society and towards the idea of profit-based CSR since it integrates the values of society and business in corporate legitimacy.

This book presents a selection of articles with focus on the theoretical foundations of business ethics, and in particular on the philosophy of management and on human rights and business. This implies identifying and discussing conflicts as well as agreement with regard to the philosophical and other foundations of business and management. Despite the general interest in corporate social responsibility and business ethics, the contemporary discussion rarely touches upon the normative core and philosophical foundations of business. There is a need to discuss the theoretical basis of business ethics and of business and human rights. Even though the actions and activities of business may be discussed from a moral perspective, not least in the media, the judgments and opinions relating to business and management often lack deeper moral reflection and consistency. Partly for this reason, business ethicists are constantly challenged to provide such moral and philosophical foundations for business ethics and for business and human rights, and to communicate them in an understandable manner. Such a challenge is also of scientific kind. Positions and opinions in the academic field need to be substantiated by thorough moral and theoretical reflection to underpin normative approaches. Far too often, business ethicists may agree on matters, which they approach from different and sometimes irreconcilable philosophical standpoints, resulting in superficial agreement but deeper-lying disagreement. In other cases, it may be of high relevance to identify philosophical standpoints that despite conflicting fundamentals may arrive at conclusions acceptable to everyone.

The present book comprises thirteen chapters written by Nordic scholars in the human and social sciences, and developed out of conference papers presented at regular winter and summer symposia held by two research groups emanating from the Nordic Summer University. Born within and informed by this specific milieu, the chapters address significant sociopolitical implications for contemporary societies emerging from the ethical reflections of leading 20th century thinkers (e.g. Michel Foucault and Jürgen Habermas), important procedural as well as substantive aspects of democracy, and pivotal ethico-political issues arising from the abstract logic and concrete manifestations of market economies. Though by no means devoid of their own economic, cultural and political problems, the Nordic countries are still paramount examples of humane prosperity, democratic civility, environmentally sound policy, and peaceful resolution of social and industrial conflicts. Year after year, if not decade after decade, they keep topping the international charts for socio-economic indicators about sostainable development, healthcare quality and accessibility, educational levels, crime control, preceived happiness and much else. As such, the scholarly and scientific reflections orginating within the Nordic Summer University might prove to be useful sources of insight for policy-makers, intellectuals and interested persons outside the Nordic context, and not solely inside it.

This Handbook forms part of wider research in responsibility, ethics and legitimacy of corporations. Through an interdisciplinary perspective with comparative integration of sociological, politological, philosophical, theological, ethical, economic, legal, linguistic and communication theoretical approaches this Handbook will clarify how the interrelation between company and environment is mediated by legitimating notions in public spaces and public relations; how and why these notions have changed radically; how these transformations strike on the epistemological as well as practical dimension of business companies; and the problems involved in these transformations at the macro-, meso- and micro levels. The Handbook begins with a historical introduction and chronology of the development of business legitimacy, providing a comprehensive assessment of the concept’s evolution and identifying the most influential authors and their works. These may be divided into authors who follow a philosophical, sociological, or conceptual tradition in management and leadership in their treatment of legitimacy and those who belong to the research tradition of application of the concept in management science and leadership as well as in organizational theory and business practice in the interdisciplinary perspective of the different approaches. The Handbook continues with systematic approaches and major themes developed in the concept of business legitimacy. Contributions here may be conceptual, empirical/applied or case studies. The different parts of the volume deal with the different topics to which business legitimacy has been applied, with how legitimacy is relevant in the various operational areas of the firm, and with the legitimacy theory’s responses to some of the most important issues that businesses and organizations currently face.

L’article se concentre sur la pandémie de covid-19 dans une tentative d’évaluer la contribution éventuelle de l’analyse philosophique à la compréhension et à la résolution des problèmes éthiques, juridiques et sociopolitiques qu’elle soulève. On aborde une série de dilemmes cruciaux qui requièrent des décisions pratiques, avant et après la production et la disponibilité des vaccins, à la lumière des théories éthiques et politiques contemporaines. Il s’avère que dans la plupart des cas les conceptions déontologiques semblent l’emporter sur les considérations conséquentialistes, qui ne s’imposent à notre raisonnement que dans des situations d’urgence immédiate. La pandémie nous permet également d’apprécier le rôle important des vertus éthiques et épistémiques dans la prise des décisions critiques.

This article presents Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of the tension between existence and politics and the role of political commitment in existentialist philosophy. Based on Sartre’s concept of engagement, the article analyzes the transition from the personal to the political perceived as a movement from personal moral consciousness to the awareness of the importance of the individual as a social actor and citizen in society. Sartre’s concept of political engagement can be characterized as critical intellectual commitment and “Socratic Citizenship.” Accordingly, this article is also an acknowledgment of the two important philosophers of ecoethica, Tomonbu Imamichi and Peter Kemp, both committed public intellectuals who said that the role of the philosopher is to contribute to the public affair of cosmopolitan society. Thus, the article presents the political engagement in four major parts: (1) From the existential to political engagement, (2) Political commitment as a struggle for human freedom, (3) The Socratic Citizenship, and (4). Conditions of authentic political action. Political engagement represents an effort to realize the respect owed to each individual as a universal singular, as well as that owed to freedom and democracy in the Kingdom of Ends.

This article presents the influence on Danish philosophy of the French phenomenologist and hermeneutic philosopher Paul Ricœur. Paul Ricœur’s poetic hermeneutics was an inspiration for Danish phenomenology and existentialist thought. Moreover, Ricœur had an influence on the development of poetic and narrative research in theology and the human and social sciences in Denmark. In addition, Ricœur provided a hermeneutic framework for research in the different disciplines of bioethics and biolaw, philosophy of law, philosophy of education and nursing philosophy. In particular, Peter Kemp has been important for presenting and promoting Ricœur’s narrative philosophy. The article gives an overview of the influence of the different aspects of Ricœur’s philosophy in Denmark, related to different schools of thought and to individual philosophers and researchers in theology and the human and social sciences in Denmark.

The market requires more focus on responsibility and business ethics. This article discusses the vision of the business company as a responsible company with focus on good corporate citizenship as an expression of the limits of the market with regard to social responsibility and values of business organizations. This includes discussion of the challenges of business legitimacy in a global society. These must also be seen in the relation between economics and religion. Social, spiritual and cultural values lie behind the search for business legitimacy and the republican conception of corporate citizenship, and this is also an expression of ethical values at the limits of economic rationality. But cosmopolitan business ethics can be criticized for moralizing the market so we move from economic religion to moral economy forgetting the importance of economic rationality.

Due to the global environmental crisis and problems of climate change, but also the economic problems of neoliberalism and inequality, it is important to rethink our ideas about society, business, and economic organization in the context of a transition to a more sustainable society. Important themes of a political economy of sustainability are Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the philosophical underpinnings of governance and sustainability management. Reforming global economic and political institutions means finding new, creative, and imaginative solutions for managers, administrators, and members of government critically to evaluate our political economy and management concepts and values. It is important to rethink policies and strategies in the light of challenges of the global society. We will do this in what follows by focusing on important topics such as 1) The origin of our contemporary crisis 2) The political economy of the crisis 3) The transformation of governance for lasting change.

This article gives an overview of my book French Philosophy and Social Theory. A Perspective for Ethics and Philosophy of Management, published by Springer 2014. As an extension of my earlier work on French philosophy, this book provides an application of important concepts from contemporary French philosophy to business ethics and the ethics of organizations. Although the book covers a wide range of philosophers and philosophical movements, there is a core and deep unity of the book. This is the demonstration of how the conceptual resources of contemporary French philosophy from the early 20th Century to the present day can be applied to give us new perspectives on business ethics and the ethics of organizations.

This paper demonstrates the importance of the concept of responsibility as the foundation of an ethics of the environment, in particular in the fields of politics and economics in the modem civilization marked by globalization and technological progress. We can indeed observe a moralization of responsibility going beyond a strict legal definition in the development of an ethics of the environment. Accordingly, the concept of responsibility for the environment and for sustainability is the key notion of international development in order to understand the ethical duty of a modem technological civilization.

This article is based on an exchange between Peter Kemp and Jacob Dahl Rendtorff on the occasion of Peter Kemp’s seventieth birthday in 2007. It presents the development of Kemp’s ethical philosophy from his philosophy of technology and technology ethics to his philosophy of bioethics and biolaw. It also discusses Kemp’s relation to Existentialism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, and Marxism with the development of a critical hermeneutic philosophy of engagement. This is related to Kemp’s work on humanistic ethics of technology in his book on the ethics of the irreplaceable. The article presents Kemp’s long discussion with Paul Ricœur about the ethics of the good life and about narrative ethics. Finally, it elaborates on the bioethical turn towards an ethics for the living world and discusses the role of basic ethical principles of autonomy, dignity, integrity, and vulnerability in relation to cosmopolitan and global responsibility for sustainability and humanity.

This book brings together different perspectives on economy and organisation in a debate about sustainability and the role of economy, politics and society in working towards a more sustainable future. The ecological crisis, accompanied by increasing global inequality and the realization that financial and economics systems are vulnerable, have led to an upsurge of political movements and theoretical interventions articulating possible solutions to the perceived crisis. This includes a manifold of suggestions for how to rethink economy based on representations of more sustainable visions of economy and society. In the age of the Anthropocene humankind is foregrounded as a geological force or agent, it relevant to consider our dispositions and ways of organizing societies and economies. Climate change is a wake-up call that our economies cannot go on with business as usual. This new situation calls for scrutinizing and rethinking practices, including economic practices of production, exchange, consumption, as well as distribution, and how we organize these activities. Some advocate “taking back the economy”, by giving way to post-capitalist principles of organizing the economy that serve the needs of people and societies and respect ecological concerns, and that radically challenge the existing political-economic order. Another new approach, Raworth’s Doughnut Economics, aims to develop economics and to learn how “to think like a twenty-first century economist”. Such approaches suggest the need for a new economy, one which is based on different principles than those usually associated with the mainstream market economy and the growth paradigm. New efforts entail re-orienting economics towards humanities’ long-term goals and taking explicitly into consideration a social foundation of human well-being and an economic ceiling of planetary pressure. In other words, it calls for a reorientation of economy towards more sustainable ways for humans, societies and nature as an alternative to the growth paradigm. Amsterdam is the first city in the world to adopt the principles of Doughnut Economics to emerge from the current Covid-19 crisis and “rethink the future”. At the same time suggestions for environmentally attuned and socially oriented economic alternatives come from activists, development agencies, grass-roots organizations and from other proponents of greener capitalist alternatives such as green capitalism, Green Economy, regenerative capitalism alongside more radically alternative visions of economy.

This book demonstrates how the conceptual resources of contemporary French philosophy from the early 20thCentury to the present day can be applied to give us new perspectives on business ethics and the ethics of organizations. In providing an overview of possible applications,the book covers a wide range of philosophers, philosophical movements and perspectives, and provides detailed analyses of core materials relevant to business ethics. It explores and analyzes French philosophy, taking into account phenomenology,existentialism, French epistemology, structuralism, post-structuralism,deconstruction and postmodernism as well as recent discussions of philosophy of organizations and management. Each chapter contains suggestions for further reading and educational illustrations of possible applications to the mainstream business ethics and ethics of organization literature.

This article searches to define a concept of the corporation that can function as the basis for a more sustainable concept of the economy. The chapter aims at discussing the possibility of a concept of the business organization that can deal with global problems of ecological crisis, introducing a sustainable vision of the business organization. In the context, the article proposes a heterodox concept of the business organization moving beyond the traditional neo-classical view of business as only being oriented towards economic returns for owners. The chapter proposes to move beyond the “shareholder corporation” towards a broader, heterodox concept of the “stakeholder corporation”. Given the present crisis of sustainability it is important to rethink the business corporation as situated in the social and cultural context of society. Thus, we need to situate the business corporation within the economy of the good life. With the new focus on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals businesses need to be directed toward the common good of society. Here, business organizations should contribute to make a difference for society. In order to provide the necessary basis for sharing economy, circular economy and community economics in business, we need a business organization that aims at the common good for human beings and society. Accordingly, the chapter proposes the concept of the stakeholder corporation as the basis for a new economy of responsible corporate citizenship.

The problem of the status of the embryo is central when considering genetic and reproductive technology. It is mainly about what is ethically justifiable in experiments with embryos at the earliest stages. However, ownership of the embryo, decisions about donation, and freezing of fertilized eggs are also important problems to discuss. Can embryos and fetal tissue be used for transplantation or in the pharmaceutical industry? The answer to these questions depends on the embryonal ethical and legal status of the embryo. This problem is one of the most controversial bioethical issues in Europe, where for religious and cultural reasons, there is a big difference between the perceptions of the various countries. Rendtorff argues that the embryo must be considered as a “third thing” between people and things. The legal policy discussion on embryo status shows that in the specific legal development, despite major differences between the perceptions of the status of the embryo, a pragmatic consensus on embryonal legal status between persons and things in the European countries can be traced. After having presented the ethical and philosophical issues relevant to embryo experiments and embryo research, he goes on to present a case study of the Danish debate about embryo experiments and embryo research. With this case example, he gives an overview of relevant issues concerning embryo experiments and embryo research in bioethics and biolaw, which concern the legal regulation of bioethical issues.

This article discusses the concept of globalization in relation to global justice with the aim of developing a cosmopolitan spirit as the basis for international justice. Globalization was in the beginning an economic concept but with the emergence of global problems of global poverty, environmental degradation, climate change and global social and political interdependence we need to rethink the concept of justice for the international community at a cosmopolitan level. The article considers that it is the task of political philosophy to reflect on this other concept of globalization, not only as a utopia but also as a real alternative for the global community. The dream of another globalization includes overcoming the misery of the world in the struggle for democracy and hope for cosmopolitan justice in the age of hypermodemity.