Honorable Business: A Framework for Business in a Just and Humane Society

By James R. Otteson

New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Pp. xii, 234. $35 paperback.

Honorable Business: A Framework for Business in a Just and Humane Society is an ambitious and worthwhile undertaking. In it, James Otteson, director of the Eudaimonia Institute at Wake Forest University, presents both a reasoned defense of commercial society and a useful guidebook for those individuals who participate in commercial life. He argues that one can simultaneously pursue commerce and the betterment of society and self. He presents the reader with solid arguments that ultimately promote and defend commerce. All the while, Otteson pays close attention to the individual as the ultimate actor and notes that to succeed at a societal level, individual actors must internalize the practice of “honorable business.” Otteson strives to join the individual pursuit of Aristotle’s eudaimonia—genuine human flourishing—with the bounty of the market.

This is not your traditional “business ethics” book,