KEYNOTES

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Philosophy and Stakeholder Theory

Throughout the development of Stakeholder Theory there have been a number of philosophical ideas that have motivated various pieces of the approach.  This talk will make those philosophical commitments explicit and suggest how they have informed the development of stakeholder theory.  Included are ideas from Freud and Psychoanalysis, Wittgenstein and Ordinary Language , de Beauvoir and Existentialism, Dennett/Tomasello and Evolutionary theory, and James/Dewey/Rorty/Putnam and Pragmatism.

The Naturalness of Capitalism

Deep critics of capitalism either predict its impending collapse or propose its abolition and transformation. Neither prediction nor proposal is plausible. Capitalism is a part of the natural order of things, being the product of human action but not of human design. If capitalism is transformed, it will not be because of its alleged internal contradictions or problems rather than because of unforeseeable changes imposed by exogenous forces. Efforts to transform it by deliberate human action will fail for the same reasons that earlier attempts to abolish it have foundered: the refusal to accept the naturalness of capitalism.