The Routledge Companion to Business Ethics

p.113

7

Can profit seekers be virtuous?

Michael C. Munger and Daniel C. Russell¹

Cicero, in On Duties III.15, tells of a man who asked the price of an estate he was trying to buy. When the seller named the price, the buyer replied that the price was too low and insisted on paying more. “There is no one,” Cicero writes, “who would deny that this was the act of a good man, but people do deny that it was the act of a wise man, just as if he had sold for less than he could have. This, then, is that mischievous doctrine: they consider some people to be good, and other people to be wise,” that is, worldly-wise: shrewd, sharp, and calculating.² Is that mischievous doctrine correct, or can profit seekers be virtuous people as well as clever people?