Spirituality and Sustainability:
A New Path for Entrepreneurship
Abstracts
Annual Conference of the European SPES Forum
September 21-23, 2012, Visegrad, Hungary
Laura Sarolta Baritcz, OP (Sapientia Theology College)
The Three Dimensioned Economy
Alternative Approach to the Mainstream Economic Theory
The mainstream economic order is based on a utilitarian way of thinking and profit maximization as a goal function of economic activity. The economic theory is formulated upon these two pillars. The presentation will introduce another paradigm of the economic thinking, which is based on the Aristotelian, Thomistic ethics, with virtue ethical way of thinking and the common good as a goal of the economic activity.
The main difference between the two paradigm – utilitarian profit centered and virtue ethical, common good centered – is, that the perception of the human being differs substantially. Stefano Zamagni in their book with Luigino Bruni, Civil Economy, calls the course of human thinking “reductionism” in the modernity, which means, human being looses his/her wholeness, which was complete by his/her spirituality, morality and sentiments before the times around the Enlightenment. Adam Smith, in his book “Theory of Moral Sentiments” speaks of the wholeness of the human yet: reciprocity, gratuitousness, fraternity have place on the market, but in his work, “Wealth of Nations” he describes the reductionism: the market and the economic activity is based on exchange of equivalents and contracts, and profit maximization only. Reciprocity, gratuitousness, fraternity have no place on the market, they are ceased into the private sphere of the human. The same idea is described by Wicksteed, one of the representative of the subjective economics in the 19th century, with his principle of non-tuism.
The presentation will introduce the difference between the “homo oeconomicus” and the “homo reciprocans”, and their origin: the tradition of the civil economy, which goes back to Aristotle’s concept of economy (based on his book “State” and Nicomachean Ethics) and Thomas Aquinas’s concept of economy and money, base on his Summa Theologica. Civil economy blossomed in the 16-18. century Italian civil humanism, with the human concept of homo reciprocans. The tradition of modern economy is based on Ockham’s, Hobbes’s, Locke’s, Mandeville’s and Adam Smith’s theories on humans, they are the fathers of the homo oeconomicus, who, according to the virtue ethical logic, is unhappy, reduced, is not able to love and missed his/her goal.
After having described the historical background and the two concepts of the human, the presentation turns to the introduction of the “three dimensioned economy”, which is based on the civil economic and virtue ethical approach. The specialty of it is the third dimension, the “infinite values”, like relational goods, trust, cooperation, loyalty, reciprocity, solidarity, etc., that are based on a whole man’s concept and a hierarchical order of the “good”’s (values) Together with Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas describes an (analogues) order of the “good”’s, which is as follows: the bottom of the order are the “useful goods” which, in the Aristotelian term are the “external goods”, that is, the material goods. They are tools and not ends, and do not have their own value, they serve the other goods that have intrinsic value and can be ends. On the first place of the order we can find the moral goods, which have the biggest importance among the goods, pointing to the Ultimate End of the human existence. The pleasant goods accompany both the useful and moral goods, but they are not ends in themselves, as they are in the hedonistic concepts. This order serves as a base for the alternative economic order. As we can see, this order of the goods is different from that of the order we can find in the contemporary economic, social thinking. (See “consumer society” or eco-ethics)
At the end of the presentation it will be confirmed by practical examples, that this alternative economic model, which brings back spirituality and value based thinking into the economic thinking and operation proves to be sustainable and serves as a “useful” vehicle for sustainability.
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Laura Sarolta Baritz OP, member of the Order of Dominicans, Hungary, was born in 1960 and has diplomas of economics (1983), religion teacher (2002) and ethic teacher (2004) specialized herself on the alternative economics, which combines economic science with ethics and theology. She works on his doctorate dissertation at the BudapestCorvinusUniversity presently, which introduces an alternative economic model based on the virtue ethics. The model will be certified by a quantitative empirical research. Baritz runs a faculty called “Christian Social Priciples in Economy” at the Sapienta College of Theology, Budapest, and she teaches there at the same time. She is active in familiarization of this alternative approach and the principles of the Church’s Social teaching, by publications, presentations and media activity.
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Marián Bednár (Pavol Jozef Šafárik University, Košice, Slovakia)
Franciscan Values for Spiritual Leadership in Business
We have twenty two years old experience with unrestricted business and free market after the fall of socialistic society in Slovakia. This post socialistic period brings some positives experiences like freedom, more money and higher quality of life. But also some negatives come with those changes, like wild privatization, very cruel contest, unemployment and corruption [10]. After amoral period of jungle a lot of entrepreneurs (and theirs younger followers) would like to have a success on global international markets. Some of those leaders realize that business is a mission and is needed to be a moral person. Ethics and spirituality plays the essential role in their life, management and business. Hence we would like to propose a new path for spiritual leadership in business – Franciscan spirituality and its values.
The person of St. Francis of Assisi [2] and his life is the start point for a comprehension of Franciscan spirituality and values. St. Francis of Assisi, as the fundator of Franciscan tradition, was living as consistent with evangel of Jesus Christ. Testimony of his life talks about the restoration of Jesus’ teachings. His spiritual experience with God (through the penitence, meeting with a leper and the stigmatisation) was not abstract and intellectual but it was corporal and sensible existential experience, therefore very human. His spirituality and values as well as Regula bullata fratrum minorum [5] always were and still are surprisingly radical and innovative. Testament of St. Francis was an ideal for people in the Middle Ages and thousands in the past and still is an inspiration for many modern people. It follows from this observation that ideas of St. Francis could serve as the essence of leadership models.
The spiritual experience caused by meeting with Jesus Christ is that point where the Franciscan spirituality begins [6, 8, 9]. This inner and deep mystical experience brings visible change and personal transformation. A metanoia means the answer to Jesus’ love, consequences following from this meeting and the process of systematic change. Created values are penitence, poverty (independence), humility, liberty, peace, and joy. This change necessary leads human being to another “Thou”. The relationship is characterized by love (act of kindness to enemies), deep humanity, and communication. This love and humanity between I and Thou creates fraternitas (communion). Also the fraternity is the primary spiritual experience and the strategic goal. The culmination of new described attitude to all being is a harmony and unity with nature.
We can answer the actual business challenges by Franciscan values which mainly are: to live an evangel – it implies to accomplish the spiritual experience, then to realize the personal transformation, and this authenticity can finally make spirituality accessible as a good for life and business [1]; poverty and liberty – to make the business not only for the money and the greedy profit but like a mission, with some sense and for the others [4]; humility – to accept truly overview to each thing, to see things objectively as they really are, not to be a human-god but to have critical self-reflection; humanity – not to be a dictator and use people for selfish interests but to have an empathy and kindness to others and also to their demands; peace and joy – not to be in depression and stressed of work but to have an inner peace and joy, which goes along with smile [3]; fraternity – not to build a complicate systems of management bureaucracy but to create a simple and an effective decentralized and flexible team [7]; harmony and unitywith nature – not to polish environment and exploit the others but to live in harmony and make balanced business, including the protection of the nature.
As we see from those applications, Franciscan spirituality and its values could be the alternative and new path for sustainability of entrepreneurship.
Notes
- Assländer, F. and Grün, A. 2011. Práce jako duchovní úkol. Kostení Vydří, Karmelitánske nakladatelství.
- Františkánske pramene I. Spisy sv. Františka a sv. Kláry z Assisi. 2005. Bratislava, Serafín.
- Grün, A. 2006. Pracovat i žít. Kostelní Vydří, Karmelitánske nakladatelství.
- Novak, M. 1998. Biznis ako poslanie. Bratislava, Charis
- Regula Menších bratov. 1996. Bratislava, Serafín.
- Rotzetter, A. 2003. František z Assisi, Spomienka a vášeň. Bratislava, Serafín.
- Warnecke, H.J., Košturiak, J. et al. 2000. Fraktálový podnik. Žilina, Scp.
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Marián Bednár, PhD. (1975)
Marián Bednár comes from Slovakia. He finished his doctoral studies in theology in 2005 by his thesis "Postmodernism, the value of human life and Evangelium vitae". He gave lectures of moral theology and applied ethics at the Faculty of Theology, University of Trnava.
Nowadays, he is lecturer at the Department of Applied Ethics, Faculty of Arts, Pavol Josef Šafárik University in Košice. He gives lectures of applied ethics (Basis of Ethics, Ethics of Science, Ethics of Manager, Business Ethics, Christian Ethics, and Ethics of Politics). He is mainly interested in spiritual and ethical leadership in business and management.
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Katalin Botos (Pazmany Péter Catholic University, Budapest, Hunagary)
Christian business ethics and sustainability
Europe’s acheavements in economics were dependent on its Jewish-Christian cultural and religious heritage. (Jonathan Sacks) Not only the development of capitalism is strictly connected with the religious ideology but the sustainability of the created welfare state and the sustainability of the ecological system of the world is also connected with the same. Without internalized sens eof duty and morality liberal democracy and narket economy cannot be defended by force of law and regulation alone.The contemporary financial crises has drown our attention to the moral barriers wich were taken aside
Fundamental market economy doesn’t acknolidge that there are values without price , wirhout wich the market economy cannot function smoosly. If Europe looses its spiritual values, the Jewish.Christian heritage in beleaiving in the allmighty God who created the world and who measures our activity wether it is morally acceptable cannot survive contemporary challenges The salt will be tasteless. Europe looses its creative energy Religious part of Europe has to be a c”rative minority „( XVI Benedict) to save both soul and competitiveness of Europe.
„Creativity” in financial innovation without stable moral fundings has led to such financial products where the innovators themselves knew it will have a destructive effect: NINJA-loans, waste products, infected products. But governments, too, have lost their moral responsability and they have promised in the elections champaigns such benefits to the voters which they were unable to realize without severe indebtedness. They havyly burdened the future genarations and it has led some of them to near bankrupcy. It is true at the same time that not only debtors but creditors are responsible for the current crises. Both financial sector, and business sector was led by a short sited profit motivation .Goverments, too, had no longer perspectives ,just their 4 years in power. This has led to the „Predator State” (Galbraith Jr,) where the government chanells tax money to the supporting lobbies.
The market if it stays on „economic imperialism”destroyes the very virtues on it depends.
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Katalin Botos
Born: in Nagyvarad 13.12. 1941.
Education: University of Economics (MKKE), Budapest, 1960-1964. Univ. Doctor: 1970
Academic carrier:
1973. CSc. of HASc (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) in economics
1975. Honorary assotiate Prof. of University of Economics Bp.
1987 DSc of HASc
1989, Honorary prof. Of economics and political sciences ELTE
1995 Ordinary Prof. Budapest Pázmány Péter Catholic University (PPCU)
1995. Ordinary Professor of Szeged University (SZU) (2
Head of doctoral school (PHD) in economic history at PPCU (1999-2004)
Professor of doctoral school (PHD) in history at PPCU (2005-)
Head of doctoral school (PhD) in economics at SZU (2005-)
Professor of doctoral school at SZU (2001-)
Professor of doctoral school (PhD) in Law and political studies at PPCU (2004-)
Guest professor: University Glasgow, Frankfurt, Hamburg, LSE, Milano, Bonn
Professional carrier: Economist Hungarian Investment Bank (1964-1971); Head of section in Ministry of Finance and Finance Research Institute (1971-1987) senior research fellow Agricultural Research Institute (1987-1990). deputy finance minister (1990) minister without portfolio (1991), head of state Banking Supervision as state secretary (1992-1994). Head of Institute of PPCU Heller Farkas Economics Institute (1995-2008 )Professor at PPCU(2008-), Head of Department of Finance in SZU (2005-2007) Professor at SZU(2008-)
Politics: MP 1990-92
Publications: 8 books, more than 100 articles in Hungarian, English, German, Spanish, and Russian
Memberships: EBHA, EASA, HA Sc. Development Committee and Economic committee ,Club of Rome Hungarian Association, Hungarian Economic Association
Awards: State Award for Work 1985., “Prudentia Prize” of SSFI (State Supervision of Financial Institutions) (2006), Jubilee award of PPCU (2005) State Award 100 Excellent Women(2008).
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Corinne Boureau (artist, The Netherlands)
Our Common Light
The history of humanity begins in a garden.
The garden germinates from an infinitely small seed.
This pit contains a wise magic: matter, energy, space and time.
‘ The Dreamtime ’ … That's what the Aboriginals call the primal blackness, before the Big Bang.
Did abyss carry the ancestral dream, the promise of the Garden of Eden? Did this sleep contain the path to be followed to accomplish the desire, the plan? These are questions that only humans ask themselves.
Certain dreams are audacious and limitless...
The pit swells, explodes, distends itself, giving birth to time.
Stars, galaxies and our solar system organize itself.
The fabulous promise is finally fulfilled when rains of dust of the stars sow the primitive oceans. The pure white energy of the stars impregnates the earth with life, which appears in the form of seaweed. Now, it so happens that this ‘seaweed-mother’ contains in its cells the seven colours of the rainbow. It is therefore, the atoms forged in the constellations to whom we owe colour, which represents the passage to life.
Green was the firstborn: Chlorophyll is a natural green pigment in the plant cells, whose role is essential in the process of photosynthesis. Green arrives long before the fish and the birds because it is the colour of origin.
The ancient cultures already knew the relationship between life and light. Between colours and energy.
We are beings borne of light.
The work of life travelled the mystical intuition of our ancestors, and keeps something impenetrable and intangible, like the art of any genius.
The ancestral knowledge is transmitted through myths and fairy tales, but also through the etymology of words. They illuminate the earth and humanity’s origin story and sometimes draw us towards surprising discoveries.
Let us take the word colour. Color is a Latin word and its etymology helps us to go back up to the source of life.
Color is linked to the group: celare which means: to hide, to hold secret, to hide from the eyes, from knowledge…
Is it possible that the word colour contains the great secret of the creation of the world and that this mystery is to remain forever inaccessible? The word celare has an Indo-European root: Kel, present in a number of Latin words: cell and cilia of: flagella.
Is it not striking to discover in the word colour, the terms: hiding, cell and cilia, especially when we know that the ancestral seaweed, the first form of life on earth, engendered an animal cell provided with a flagella with which to swim and to feed itself. Humans come from this animal cell.
Plants and their colours rooted their energy deep in the tissue of those living on Earth. In the blood of the human slips salt of the sea, our first mother, in our branches and in our veins flow the shadows of plantlife.
In ancient times, the forest protected humans by giving them shelter, fruit, bark and even the air they breathed.
Only the strongest survived, but every vine, every sprig reflected the picture of their humility. Attached to a tree, humans shared their shelter with other beings in creation; they lived in the rhythm of seasons, with the rain, glow-worms living in their dreams.
Today, the ‘ law of another jungle ’ rules the human heart. By basing the system on an economy of competition, we eliminate the weak so that the strongest survive. But this time, it is the whole planet, which is the source of profit, and we even parcel off sections of the moon.
The human, pyromaniac consumer, lives in a frenzy, never done «
Consuming » burning his hanging gardens.
Every minute, a primary forest disappears forever.
Every minute, precious manuscripts disappear, destroyed by fire, forever lost to science.
The parasite that destroys his host cannot survive on a massive loss of life. Liberalism, which exhausts its natural resources implicitly, condemns itself and goes against the wellness of humanity.
The biggest lie of our time, it is that consumption is necessary for our happiness and putting the human in the service of the economy rather than the other way around.
The plant and animal world speak of altruism and symbiosis. We know today that trees help each other, that animals are capable of compassion, living with a high degree of mutuality. Nature tells us that solidarity is the only valid shield, able to protect life.