CHAPTER 3
DOING THE RIGHT THING IS A
Realizing values has two meanings:
Focusing on the realization of values is what cultural institutions (such as museums, theatres, and orchestras), religious communities, and academic institutions do, at least in principle, and what they need to assume their stake-holders are capable of doing. Good museum directors strive to make great exhibitions to make real what is important to them and presume that museum visitors are looking for great art because that is important to them. All kinds of other organizations do the same. Charities do, but also accounting firms and law firms are doing so in the sense that good lawyers want to be just that, good lawyers, and good accountants want to be good accountants.
When I use the term valorization, I refer to the making real of the relevant values. It is often interpreted as implying only the realization of financial or exchange value (i.e. by selling something for a price), but I explicitly include the important values, such as artistic and social values. When someone made a painting it is one thing to sell it and quite another thing to get it recognized as a serious work of art. Valorization is the realization of relevant values, financial or not.
I focus in this book on the cultural, academic and, less explicitly, religious institutions because it is their goal to do good, that is, to do the right thing.
What interests me is what it takes to do the right thing and what it is that pre-vents people in those institutions from doing the right thing.
Take the university. Focusing on the realization of values is what I do with my colleagues at the university when we practice science and when we teach.
Sure, we scientists can be jealous, passive aggressive1 (I plead guilty!), eager 1 Passive aggressive is when you agree to some action and then don’t do it as a way of protesting or obstructing. It is what I do when the administration of my university issues new rules without consulting me. I do not protest but try to ignore them.
AWARENESS
Being aware of one´s own values Being aware of the values of others
MAKING REAL
Making one´s own values actual Making the values of others actual
Valorization Realizing values
Diagram 3-1: Meanings realizing values
A MATTER OF REALIZING VALUES 23
for attention and money, and rude to colleagues who think differently and to students who do not do the work, but if we sit down in a sensible mood, we will affirm our commitment to the pursuit of truth, the need for collegiality as an important value, and to honesty. See Merton, The Matthew Effect in Science, he describes the contrast between the scientific values of scientists and their actual behavior (Merton, 1968). By doing all that, we valorize scientific and social values.
At times my colleagues and I may confess our weaknesses. Psychologists will tell us that they are part of our shadow side. I have found the notion useful. No need to pretend that I am perfect. Yet, when I test my craving for attention, and my need of external rewards with my impartial spectator, I do not feel proud. Shame is the more appropriate feeling. I feel so much better in the pursuit of truthfulness, good conversation and good teaching.
Focusing on the realization of values is what the cultural sector is all about, at least what the “serious” leaders of cultural organizations and “seri-ous” artists are aspiring to do. An art museum is dedicated to the arts, a thea-tre group to theathea-tre. The artistic director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra wants to have the best musicians and the best conductor to perform Mahler’s Fifth as it never has been performed before. Or he wants to perform experimental music of a new composer because he truly beliefs in its power.
His goal is to make great music at its best.
In the pursuit of his goals this director of the orchestra has to battle a lack of interest among regular visitors. He may have to deal with a skeptical busi-ness manager, and reluctant musicians. And he has to face the overwhelm-ing preference for the usual, for recognizable music that makes listenoverwhelm-ing easy.
That is, he is up against the desire for amusement and entertainment. And because entertainment sells tickets, he has to be creative in realizing his music while avoiding bankruptcy.
The Dutch poet Lucebert once noted: “everything of value is vulner-able.” People in the Dutch cultural sector have embraced this saying to char-acterize their recurrent dilemma. In trying to do good, to realize that what is important to them, like great art, great music, great theatre, they risk losing everything. The question is then whether they have to compromise on their values in order to be able to continue their activities. Some will tell them to pay more attention to what the public wants. Others will admonish them to be forceful in expressing their values, to stand for the art they want to make, and to persuade or seduce others to pursue great art.
Nothing new.
With this approach to the subject of economics I follow a rich tradition to which a great range of authors and endless practices have contributed. I
name the works of Thomas Aquinas and Adam Smith, any religious work, quite a bit of work in psychology (Maslow, for example) and more recently the works of Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, Charles Taylor and Deirdre McCloskey. Other economists are picking up the theme like Robert Skidelsky. (These authors all operate in the “economy is embedded in culture”
conversation.) A favorite source of mine is Aristotle, and then in particular his Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle & Ross, 1959).
Acting upon values implies the striving for the good.
Aristotle (384-322BC) is the pragmatic Greek philosopher who had a profound influence on civilization. That influence began in the 12th and 13th century when scholars translated his work in Latin. Aristotle’s works became a major source for philosophers through the 19th century. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) used the bible and Aristotle, to whom he referred as the Philosopher, as his main references when he addressed moral issues in economic situations.
Aristotle was more or less ignored during the major part of the 20th century but is now back in vogue. Alasdair MacIntyre and Martha Nussbaum are two prominent contemporary philosophers who have brought his work back to life (MacIntyre, 1981; Nussbaum, 1986). In particular his Nicomachean Ethics receives a great deal of attention nowadays (McCloskey 2007, 2011, 2016;
van Staveren 2001). There are even business handbooks that instruct manag-ers how to apply Aristotle in their work.
It may be interesting to realize that Aristotle probably wrote the text to instruct his son Nicomachus. He began the instruction as follows:
“Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.” (Aristotle &
Ross, 1959, p. 1094a)
A contemporary reader may have some difficulties here. At least that is my experience when I read this sentence with students and professionals.
Especially the notion of the good triggers questions and doubts – as if there would be a good out there for you and me to be realized. I do not want to pursue the philosophical discussion at this point and suggest staying prag-matic by interpreting the good as the purpose that a person, a community or an organization is seeking.
In an organization the purpose is expressed in the mission that some organizations have articulated and most have not. (The mission cannot be the maximization of profit, as we will see in a moment.)
Aristotle continues by suggesting that the good varies:
“But a certain difference is found among ends; some are activities, others are products apart from the activities that produce them.
Where there are ends apart from the actions, it is the nature of the products to be better than the activities.” (Aristotle & Ross, 1959, p.
1094a)
An actor wants to be a good actor. His good is in the acting, in the perform-ing on stage: by actperform-ing he can realize his good. A craftswoman whose craft is making hats seeks to produce great hats.
Aristotle affirms such a reading when he continues:
“Now, as there are many actions, arts, and sciences, their ends also are many; the end of the medical art is health, that of shipbuild-ing a vessel, that of strategy victory, that of economics wealth. But where such arts fall under a single capacity – as bridle-making and the other arts concerned with the equipment of horses fall under the art of riding, and this and every military action under strategy, in the same way other arts fall under yet others – in all of these the ends of the master arts are to be preferred to all the subordinate ends; for it is for the sake of the former that the latter are pursued. It makes no difference whether the activities themselves are the ends of the actions, or something else apart from the activities, as in the case of the sciences just mentioned.” (Aristotle & Ross, 1959, p. 1095a)
Aristotle admonishes his son to distinguish means from ends. It is a lesson that seems pertinent in a wide variety of situations today. It is a lesson for business managers who mistake the instrument of profit as an end in and of itself, or youngsters who seek money (lots of it!) as their goal.
Asking about ends or goals can, therefore, be a therapeutic intervention.
(As I noted in the preface, my intentions are therapeutic and edifying and not, let that be clear, normative or moralizing.) It is what coaches do when they help professionals, and it is what therapists, priests and ministers do in their therapies and ministries. When I consult artistic organizations we invariably begin with figuring out what its mission is, what it is after. The answer usually requires a bit of probing.
Swapping instruments for goals is all too common. A director of an American art museum declared in a seminar for art managers that he has three goals and they are 1) fundraising, 2) fundraising, and 3) fundraising.
A MATTER OF REALIZING VALUES 25
(I was told this anecdote by a Dutch banker who had picked it up in an arts management course at New York University. He cited it in approval. So now you can imagine how I responded.) That sounds tough and he probably tried to unnerve his audience. Even so, he might be asked in the spirit of Aristotle what purpose the fundraising serves. It would be strange to set up a museum in order to raise funds. Such a goal also seems to make a bad proposition to those providing the funds. This director was swapping means for ends.
Money is never an end. The pursuit of money is always a means to some end or another, even if it is sometimes difficult to articulate that end. (If you disagree, tell me a case in which the pursuit of money is an end in itself.)
Asking others and yourself about what is worth striving for is probing for the good(s) that you and others are pursuing. It is the Aristotelian question.
CHAPTER 4