Transcript How to make good decisions?

HOW TO MAKE GOOD
DECISIONS?
THE ROLE OF SPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT
BRUSSELS, JANUARY 22, 2015
Luk Bouckaert
KU Leuven & European SPES Institute
How to make good decisions?
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Are the monks of Tibhirine rational altruists? The limits of
rational choice theory.
Defining spirituality
Spirituality as a method to solve divergent problems
Hannah Arendt’s discovery of judgment as a faculty of the
mind
The modus operandi of judgment
Spiritual discernment in business
Are the monks rational altruists?
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As rational beings, the monks try to realise their
altruistic project of life and to find the highest state
of happiness.
Can Spirituality be reduced to rational altruism
aiming at a supreme form of bliss or wellness?
The case of friendship: maximising pleasure
undermines the genuine commitment of the relation
The dual nature of happiness
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Human happiness has a dual nature: maximising pleasure (egocentric) versus reciprocal commitment (spiritual self)
The spiritual self does not maximise anything. It is a form of
self-awareness that precedes rational thinking and can only be
disclosed through reflective meditation.
In our culture we may observe the tension between the two
ways of searching for happiness: the rational self claiming for
always more and bigger and the spiritual self claiming for less
and better.
Defining spirituality
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The pre- or meta-rational character of spirituality.
Spirituality is a way of thinking and living that
originates from deep experiences of
interconnectedness.
Experiences of deep interconnectedness can take
many shapes and expressions but they all have in
common a deep sense of being part of a greater
whole or flow
Spirituality in decision-making.
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In his Spiritual Exercises (1548) Ignatius of Loyola
distinguishes between a rational and a spiritual
method for making good decisions.
The limits of rational decision-making
Schumacher’s distinction between convergent and
divergent problems. (A Guide for the Perplexed)
Solving divergent problems
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“Divergent problems cannot be solved in the sense of
establishing a correct formula; they can, however, be
transcended.
A pair of opposites – like freedom and order – are
opposites at the level of ordinary life, but they cease to be
opposites at the higher level, the really human level, where
self-awareness plays its proper role.
It is then that such higher forces as love and compassion,
understanding and empathy, become available, not simply
as occasional impulses (which they are at the lower level) but
as a regular and reliable resource.” (Schumacher 2004,
p.126).
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)
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Königsberg (Kant), Marburg (Heidegger),
Heidelberg (Jaspers)
France and US
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of
Evil (1963)
The Life of Mind : Thinking, Willing, Judging.
Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy (1992)
Difference between reasoning and judging
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“…judgments are not arrived at by either deduction
or induction; in short, they have nothing in common
with logical operations …We shall be in search of
the ‘silent sense’, which – when it was dealt with at
all – has always, even in Kant, been thought of as
taste and therefore as belonging to the realm of
aesthetics “ (post-scriptum Life of Mind).
The role of taste, imagination and feelings
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It is said: de gustibus non disputandum est. But at
the same time, we like to communicate our feelings
of taste.
Utilitarian and aesthetic feelings of pleasure:
“The activity of taste decides how this world , independent of its
utility and our vital interests in it, is to look and to sound… its
interest in the world is purely ‘disinterested’” ( Arendt, Past and
Present: 222)
How to validate our feelings of taste?
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a statement of taste always implies communicability
and communicability requires a community of men
who can be addressed and who are listening and
can be listened to (See the Seventh Lecture)
The freedom to communicate is a condition to develop
a sensus communis
The freedom to communicate
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“It is said: the freedom to speak or to write can be taken away from us by
the powers-that-be, but the freedom to think can-not be taken from us
through them at all.
However, how much and how correctly would we think if we did not think in
community with others to whom we communicate our thoughts and who
communicate theirs to us! Hence, we may safely state that the external
power which deprives man of the freedom to communicate his thoughts
publicly also takes away his freedom to think, the only treasure left to us in
our civic life and through which alone there may be a remedy against all
evils of the present state of affairs (Was heisst: Sich im Denken
orientieren?(1786) – quoted in Arendt, p. 41).
Representative thinking & Exemplary validity
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Representative thinking: “ The more people’s standpoints I
have present in my mind while I am pondering a given issue, and
the better I can imagine how I would feel and think if I were in
their place, the stronger will be my capacity for representative
thinking and the more valid my final conclusions, my opinion”
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Exemplary validity: “The exemplar is and remains a
particular that in its very particularity reveals the generality that
otherwise could not be defined. Courage is like Achilles”.
Hannah Arendt
Spiritual discernment in business
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Although there are good practices of judgment in
business, we do not have a good theory of moral
judgment. Handbooks of B.E. are based on models
of moral reasoning.
The failure of business ethics in contexts of
divergent interests.
Spirit-driven versus market-driven leadership
Types of transformative leadership
Market
Market leadership
(shareholder value)
CSR Leadership
(stakeholder value)
Aristocracy
Aristocratic leadership
(top-down inspiration)
Democracy
Spiritual-based leadership
(co-creation of meaning)
Spirit
Spiritual-based leadership
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an effort to integrate a practice of moral judgment
or spiritual discernment in the decision-making
process.
The case of Oticon, a Danish company, selling
hearing-aids and related technologies worldwide
(F.D. Jensen, 1996)
communication and trust
‘The key lies in the notion of trust. No
one can resist trust. The basic
assumption that guides my notion
of leadership is that the personnel
will only take responsibility for
itself and look after the common
good if management is able to
create an environment that
promotes trust and autonomy.’
(Lars Kolind)
Conclusions
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spirituality is not an exclusively religious or
theological concept but also an interesting
philosophical concept. It originates from deep
experiences of interconnectedness
spirituality as a practice of judgment offer us a
method to manage divergent problems in
organizations and in society.
spirituality has to be considered as a public good
and not just as a private and religious affair