The End of Europe – And Some Thoughts on Its Future

Europe is exhausted. It is exhausted after long years of what is labeled as the Eurozone crisis. It is exhausted after pro-longed years of political failure. Every single attempt of deepening the political union of Europe after the enactment of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 and the common currency that followed in 1999, failed in consecutive referendums. Remember Ireland 2001 with the Nice Treaty, remember the Netherlands and France in 2005 with the European constitution. This elitist concept of Europe was too much rooted in an overtly rationalist model of economic necessities.… Read more

The risk and promise of business ethics

“The matter has a name: business ethics. And a secret, that is its rules. But my guess is that this matter belongs to the variety of phenomena like the raison d’etat or English cuisine that appear in the form of a mystery, because they have to keep secret that they do not exist.”*

When you look into the real world you can hardly find any substantial objection to Niklas Luhmann’s verdict. Quite on the contrary there is tantamount evidence that business behaves without any reference to ethics, not even to the ethics of rogues.… Read more