Corporate Risks and Leadership

5

Ethical Debates

The Spanish philosopher Fernando Savater in one of his books tells a story of Swiss philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) that is about an ethical decision, a matter of conscience, which reads:

Rousseau invites us to imagine that there is a Mandarin over ninety years old, cruel and wicked to intolerable extremes in China.

Suddenly you get a button and if you press it, the Mandarin will die and, also, you will win the lottery. The next day you will be rich and the Mandarin will be dead. No one can accuse you of anything. You don’t have any relation to either China or the Mandarin.

You do not know him; you’ve never seen him and only you know that there is a link between a lottery prize and the death of an old despot ...