In a doctoral seminar on corporate social responsibility
(CSR), the professor turned to me, perhaps because by then I was also taking
courses in the religious studies department, and asked, “What is enlightened
self-interest?” In my answer, I argued that such self-interest is distinctly
oriented to the long-term, rather than, for example, immediate profits.
Alternatively, I could have stressed the ethical connotation of the word,
enlightened, but the self-interest component would seem to invalidate an
ethical basis. In line with the notion of love as caritas, which is human love (eros) sublimated up directed to God,
as distinct from agape, which excludes
lower, self-interest inclusive, love, doing good can go along with long-term
self-interest. In other words, doing good has value because good is done even
if self-interest is salient in the motive. In regard to CSR, the self-interest
that coincides is long-term-oriented. Amazon, for instance, giving the poor
(i.e., Medicaid recipients) 50 percent off on the monthly charge for Amazon
Prime is in line with gaining full-paying customers eventually, for it usually takes a while for poor people to move up
the economic ladder.
The full essay is at "CSR at Amazon."
