Honors Why Business? - The Role of Business in a Just and Humane Society

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

What is the role of business in a just and humane society? Many of you are about to dedicate your lives to business, and the rest of you will work, in one way or another, with business. Yet many people believe that business is a morally suspicious activity, a suspicion evident in the common belief that business people need to "give back" to society. Is business an activity for which one must atone? Are people right to be suspicious of business? This course is designed to engage ideas from the Catholic tradition with perspectives drawn from moral philosophy, business, and economics. We will engage issues of faith and normativity both critically and constructively. Students will consider competing positions on faith and normative questions, will reflect on (or discover elements of) their own faith or non-faith, and will describe the extent to which they believe various claims are supported by faith or reason. This course responds to Pope John Paul II's Centesimus Annus (1991) and Pope Francis's Laudato Si (2015), which called on Catholic education to "safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic 'human ecology'" (Centesimus Annus, 38). *FOR BUSINESS HONORS PROGRAM STUDENTS ONLY.*