key: cord-0060805-wb36jivw authors: Rendtorff, Jacob Dahl title: Conclusion: Toward Moral Thinking Unlimited date: 2020-05-06 journal: Moral Blindness in Business DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-48857-4_11 sha: 8829eee11eefd63f61d9db69f2b2456f07fcb51d doc_id: 60805 cord_uid: wb36jivw This chapter presents conclusions and perspectives of reflections on moral blindness and banality of evil in private business and public administration. The chapter argues for the necessity of moral thinking unlimited in organizations and bureaucracies and in research and theoretical reflection. The main challenge of management education and teaching of political administration is how to teach managers, bureaucrats and administrators “how to think” and have the capacity of moral thinking in the context of their professional life and work. In this context, the chapter discusses the danger of moral blindness of philosophy and of theoretical reflections in social sciences and humanities. laughter of course did not exclude empathy, but rather expressed a coping strategy for dealing with the most radical evil of the twentieth century. In addition, she thought that exaggerated pathos of sincerity of belief in the deep demonic character of criminal perpetrators may close for the real of understanding of banality of evil Moreover, also Arendt's political and historical judgment on specific political events, for example her essay on the race conflicts in the United States in 1960s were criticized for theoretical blindness in the understanding of the case. The problem was that Arendt failed to recognize the violence and racism in the United States when she argued that there has not been imperialism and genocide in the United States in the same way as Nazism was based on European colonialism and racism (Howell & Richter-Montpetit 2020) . Moreover, critics argue that Arendt remained a classical philosopher who based her political theory on traditional politics of the Greek city state of Athens combined with Kant's enlightenment philosophy of practical reason and judgment. As a response to these criticisms of the blind spots of Arendt's political theory, it could be argued that she herself would be open to revisions from the point of view of ethical judgment. However, this raises the question whether there is moral blindness of Arendt's philosophy? More generally how can we deal with moral blindness of philosophy and theory? The answer is that also thinking needs self-reflection. In addition, the theoretical reflection about moral blindness in business and administration can be characterized by a certain blindness of the reflection itself where there is the problem that you cannot see the blind spots of your own perspective and horizon of your point of view. Therefore, it is important to remind ourselves about the need for critical self-reflection. There can also be blindness and blind spots in thinking and philosophical reflection. This means that ethical judgment can be limited and it may be necessary to revise judgment. Sometimes, even Arendt made wrong judgments and there were blind spots in her thinking that needed to be revised. This is also the case with the reflection on the moral blindness and banality and evil in management and bureaucracy. Sometimes we may need to revise our judgments of ethics. Thus thinking itself must be aware of its limits and through self-reflection focus on the blind spots of theory and scientific practice in order to protect the dignity and humanity of persons. This challenge to thinking is present in the contemporary debate about Martin Heidegger and his relation to Nazism. Thus, French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy argues that the banality of Heidegger was exactly that he was a convinced Nazi and that this marked his whole philosophy of being with the idea of a new beginning (Nancy, 2015) . Even though Heidegger was an established philosopher, he was also member of the Nazi party and his recently published Black notebooks contain anti-Semitic remarks. Moreover, Heidegger's silence about Nazism and his lack of apologize or reflections on his own political opinions can be seen as an expression of moral blindness. Here, there is a clear resemblance between the ordinariness of Heidegger and Eichmann. Both the bureaucrat and the philosopher were captured by the ideology of Nazism and incapable of moral thinking. Thus, the case of Heidegger demonstrates the need for moral self-reflection of theory and it shows that the challenge of moral thinking and judgment is essential for all dimensions of society. In addition, during the finalization of the manuscript for the book, the corona-virus outbreak as a pandemic in the world in 2020 gave a new perspective on the discussion of banality of evil and moral blindness. The famous Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben proposed a critical perspective on state of exception in Italy, which shows the actuality of the political and social ethics, but also raises the question, whether there can be a specific moral blindness of philosophy and theory in the discussion of moral blindness in business and public administration (Agamben, 2020) . Inspired by Foucault's analysis of biopolitics in his work on discipline and punishment, Agamben argued in a short essay during the coronacrisis that the crisis demonstrated totalitarian elements in the biopolitical defense of pure life in contemporary society. At the same time, Agamben is inspired by Arendt in his philosophy of the "Homo sacer," bare life, where he argues that the evil of Nazi bureaucracy was to strip human beings of every quality so that they ended as bare life, as "sans papiers" or refugees without papers who have no humanity left. In reflections about developments of the pandemic of COVID-19, in an essay from 26 February 2020, Agamben found many resemblances between the coronavirus and the plague in the seventeenth century that was described by Foucault who argued that the fight against the plague gave the state much more power through the disciplinary fight against the disorder of the disease. Agamben argued that the corona-epidemic was not worse than the flu and that this was an example of the intensification of state power over the individual. According to Roger Berkowitz this is a good example of the moral blindness of theory since Agamben dismisses the human suffering in the corona-epidemic and only focuses on the biopolitical dimensions of the disease (Berkowitz, 2020). In addition, Agamben argued that the response from authorities to the coronavirus used the situation to create a state of exception that reinforced the power of the state and created this situation as a normal situation for public safety. Thus, the coronavirus was used to restrict human democratic freedoms in society with the closure of schools and kindergarten, universities and schools, but also of cultural and other democratic institutions in society. For Agamben, the disproportionate reaction illustrates how society will do everything to protect bare life in a state of exception which leads to a perverse vicious circle between increasing state power to protect human life and restricting individual freedoms with more human insecurity as the result. However, the paradox is that Agamben's theory also risks to disregard the horror of the virus killing thousands of vulnerable human beings. Thus, deeper moral thinking is needed to understand the complexities of actions in business, administration, and bureaucracies. Arendt introduces her late work Life of the Mind. Thinking and Willing as directly related to her analysis of Eichmann in Jerusalem. She had thought that Eichmann was like the fallen angel Lucifer, an evil demonic person who with personal wickedness and evil intentions would be the roots of all evil. Nevertheless, even though his actions were monstrous, Eichmann was an ordinary person who followed the Nazi ideology without personal deep convictions or evil motives (Arendt, 1978, p. 4) . He was rather a cliché, a clown in a joke and caricature of a trail and characterized by a kind of thoughtlessness that made it impossible for him to "stop and think." Therefore, Arendt announces the need to study the phenomenon of thinking. What we can learn from the analysis of the banality of evil and moral blindness is that we need to "stop and think" in management and leadership. From this point of view, it is important to emphasize that "virtue can be taught" and that morality and ethics is related to our capacity of thinking and to our conscience (Arendt, 1978, p. 5) . Arendt is convinced that the activity of thinking can make human stop doing evil. This means that managers, leaders, bureaucrats, and administrators can overcome their moral blindness through the activity and practice of moral thinking and judgment. Thus, thinking is not only contemplative as argued in the philosophical tradition from Plato to Descartes. Thinking requires a link to common sense and morality. Thinking must go beyond instrumental rationality, understanding, and knowledge. Thinking is also different from traditional metaphysics, as Arendt suggests when she emphasizes that highly intelligent people can be morally stupid and blind, since they are not able of putting themselves in the place of the other. In addition, the moral thinking that we need requires a combination between practical and theoretical reason, which is closely related to the capacity of judging, which implies ability to relate to common sense and see the deeper moral meaning of the situation. 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