The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty - Pearson

Part 1 Marketing now2.2From Plato’s Republic to supermarketslaveryThere is good reason to search a long way back for the ethics to guide marketing. Asthe British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) commented, ‘All Westernphilosophy is really no more than a footnote to Plato’s (428–354 BC) great work TheRepublic.’ If that were true, our thinking on ‘marketing ethics’ is little more than asmudge on that footnote.The ancients were also practical, as Plato’s student explained:Ethics is a rough and ready business determined by ordinary practical men ofcommon sense, not by inbred ascetic ‘experts’ with their heads in a remote andaustere world.Aristotle (384–322 BC)Thinking’s the thingA lot of thinking went on in ancient Athens, a city state of about 400,000 people.Socrates (469–399 BC) thought that the most important thing about human beings isthat they ask questions. He also thought that real moral knowledge existed and wasworth pursuing. He did not think morality could be tough, but said that it was morethan just obeying the law. The newly democratic Athenians did not like this questioningof state morality, so they condemned him to death by poisoning.Good for the state and good for you tooPlato thought that Athens’ experiments with democracy were a shambles and lefttown. He believed in moral absolutes that were separate from the more sordid world.This led him to idealise regimes where right and wrong were well defined. He thoughtmilitaristic and disciplined Sparta was a much better place than freethinking Athensand that people should do what is good for the state. Lots of leaders have tried thisand very nasty it is too.Choosing the happy mediumAristotle rejected his teachers’ concern for absolute truths, suggesting that peopletake a middle road and learn how to behave from experience. People learn to become104