The Moral Imagination

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. Cultivating the imagination through art, literature, and film illuminates our understanding of what it means to be human. 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.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction, Philosophy. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.