46 D
EFINING
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OMENTS
T
HE
B
OTTOM
L
INE
Suppose that a manager asked Aristotle, as he neared the end of his
sojourn in America, for his ‘‘bottom line’’ on the version of sleep-
test ethics we have been discussing. He would likely respond with
three comments.
The first is that it makes little sense to tell business managers to
follow their ethical instincts in right-versus-right situations. A basic
feature of these problems is that the men and women who must
solve them are pulled in different directions by their ethical instincts.
This was the problem for Rebecca Dennet, Steve Lewis, Peter Adario,
and Edouard Sakiz. In these cases, intuition did not point to the
answer, but highlighted the difficulty of the problem.
Second, even if managers’ intuitions seem to give a strong, clear
indication of the right thing to do, they should not leap into action.
Even if some pure ethical signal is transmitted from deep in the
human heart, it can easily be distorted—by an individual’s wants
and needs, by the surrounding culture, and by the pressures and
demands of an organization. A thoughtful manager cannot simply
ask: What is my moral intuition about the problem in front of me?
Other questions also need answering: How can I really know what
my moral instinct is in a complicated, uncertain situation? How do
I know that I’m not rationalizing or denying important elements of
the situation? Will my intuition lead me across the boundaries defined
by the law and by basic moral principles?
The final problem with the sleep test is that managers, like others
in positions of power in a society, must explain and justify their
decisions in terms that others can understand. They are not high
priests reading entrails. Even if a manager has a firm, clear, authentic
ethical instinct about a particular problem, he or she can’t simply
announce, ‘‘This is my decision. My heart tells me it’s right, and I
know I can live with it, so there it is.’’ Managers are accountable for
explaining their decisions and for describing why their responsibili-
ties have led them in a particular direction. And, if they expect
others to follow them, their explanation must be convincing and
compelling.
In short, the counterfeit version of sleep-test ethics is a close
cousin of Ernest Hemingway’s view that ‘‘I only know that moral is
Sleep-Test Ethics 47
what you feel good after and immoral is what you feel bad after.’’
8
It relies on simple, quick, highly subjective, intensely individualistic,
and allegedly self-validating personal reactions to ethical problems.
Aristotle would vigorously reject this approach to ethical problems.
He would warn managers, and everyone else, that it is a snare and
a delusion.
E
XPLOITING THE
I
NEVITABLE
At this point in the analysis, sleep-test ethics seems to be buried
under an avalanche of powerful criticisms. Why bother to dig it
out? There are two reasons for doing so. The first, which is examined
in this section, is that we must be realistic about sleep-test ethics.
We cannot outlaw it, because human beings will almost inevitably
rely on their intuition when they face difficult moral decisions.
We do so because we are beings of a particular kind: creatures
of flesh and blood, spirit and emotion—not calculating machines.
As the old adage puts it, ‘‘We see the world not as it is, but as we
are.’’ The grand principles try to wring the feelings, gut instincts,
and intuitions out of ethical decisions. A better alternative is to
understand the near-inevitability of such feelings and find ways to
turn them to our advantage. Aristotle understood this, as have almost
all religious leaders.
The other reason to reconsider sleep-test ethics, which is exam-
ined in the next section, is that intuition can play a valuable role
when managers must resolve right-versus-right issues. As we have
seen, these problems have significant personal and emotional dimen-
sions. Sleep-test ethics recognizes these vital aspects of serious ethi-
cal issues and draws insight and guidance from them.
The crucial issue is not whether we should rely on our ethical
intuitions, but how to do so—thoughtfully and responsibly. Sleep-
test ethics is both inevitable and potentially valuable, given the kind
of creatures we are and the kind of problems we sometimes face.
What accounts for the near-inevitability of sleep-test ethics? A
good way to begin answering this question is by examining an
extraordinary example of sleep-test ethics and business ethics. This
is the heroism of Oskar Schindler, the German businessman made
48 D
EFINING
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OMENTS
famous by Steven Spielberg’s highly acclaimed film Schindler’s List.
During the Nazi occupation of Poland and Czechoslovakia, Schind-
ler owned and managed two factories. He persuaded the Nazis to
designate them as labor camps, and then he ran the factories as safe
havens for more than a thousand Jews. Schindler’s efforts saved them
from almost-certain death, in Auschwitz or another concentration
camp, and put his own life at grave risk.
How did Schindler—lapsed Catholic, bon vivant, chronic adulterer,
and war profiteer—rise to these moral heights? What led him to
risk his life, not just once in a single heroic act, but day after day,
month after month, for more than three years? The answer seems
to be that Schindler simply knew what was right, and he knew it
directly, swiftly, and intuitively. This conclusion emerges from a
process of elimination. Nothing in Schindler’s life presaged his brave
deeds. Moreover, Thomas Keneally, who wrote the book on
which Spielberg’s film is based, interviewed many of the people
Schindler rescued; none of them had heard Schindler explain his
actions.
9
Steven Spielberg was also puzzled about Schindler’s motives. His
response was to create, out of whole cloth, a decisive scene for his
film. It shows Oskar Schindler, on top of a hill, watching the brutal
liquidation of the Cracow ghetto by Nazi troopers. For several
seconds, his eyes follow a little girl as she wanders alone through
the mayhem and savagery. Spielberg suggests that some such inci-
dent was a wake-up call for Oskar Schindler, which led him to stop
exploiting the Jews who worked in his businesses and begin rescuing
them instead.
This story suggests why sleep-test ethics is such a compelling
way of resolving difficult ethical problems. First, sleep-test ethics is
deeply personal. It relies on ‘‘warm, breathing truths,’’ rather than
on abstract, incorporeal principles. It banks on truths and commit-
ments that are validated, not by principles presented in a book, but
their resonance with a person’s whole self. This approach follows
Nietzsche’s plea, ‘‘Oh, my friends, that your self be in your deed as
the mother is in her child—let that be your word concerning virtue.’’
10
This seems to describe Schindler, who was literally prepared to live
and die for his choices.
Sleep-Test Ethics 49
Sleep-test ethics seems to accept that difficult ethical choices are
often important life choices. It encourages people to ground deci-
sions in their core intuitions, passions, and commitments, rather
than in principles and calculations. A mother who sees her child
inside a burning building is justified in running in and saving her,
rather than three other children, if that is what her heart tells her
she must do.
The second attraction of the sleep test is its optimism. It helps
people feel better about themselves and about human nature, because
it supposes that morally good actions are natural and comfortable,
that we can trust our instincts, and that we will somehow know or
sense what is right and wrong.
The third reason that the ethics of intuition is so compelling is
that it may be hard-wired; that is, the confidence in human nature
that underlies sleep-test ethics may well have biological origins.
What humans, chimpanzees, moles, bees, termites, sponges, slime
molds, and innumerable other creatures have in common is that they
all create complex societies. This suggests something akin to a moral
instinct.
11
In fact, scientists may soon be able to pinpoint the location of
moral instincts in the human brain. A crude indicator of their position
resulted from the cruel accident suffered by a railroad worker named
Phineas Gage in 1848. An explosion drove an iron rod into his left
cheek, through the base of his skull, and out the top of his head.
Miraculously, Gage survived. His mental skills remained intact, but
unfortunately his character did not. Before the accident, he was
a reputable, hard-working family man; afterward, he became an
undisciplined, foul-mouthed drifter. The rod had apparently de-
stroyed the parts of the brain that govern morality.
12
Definitive proof of scientific theories about moral instincts lies
in the future. But, until then, the past will continue to legitimate
sleep-test ethics. In other words, the fourth reason for the power
and appeal of sleep-test ethics is cultural. As we will see, Aristotle
was the intellectual forefather of sleep-test ethics—at least of the
meaningful version of it. In the Western tradition, this is a powerful
cultural mandate. Moreover, Americans seem to have a special affinity
for this approach to ethics. Sociologist Robert Bellah’s widely ac-
50 D
EFINING
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OMENTS
claimed book Habits of the Heart shows that, for generations, Americans
have been evolving a worldview that he calls ‘‘expressive individual-
ism.’’ This is the idea that ‘‘each person has a unique core of feeling
and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is
to be realized.’’
13
This way of thinking is hardly unique to the United States. It
originated in Europe with the Romantic movement of the eighteenth
century. It migrated to America, where each generation has rediscov-
ered these ideas and made them its own. In the middle of the last
century, Emerson said, ‘‘Trust thyself.’’ Shortly after the middle of
this century, people ‘‘let it all hang out’’ and ‘‘did their own thing.’’
Now, at the end of the century, Nike ads exhort, ‘‘Just do it.’’ And,
like this slogan, expressive individualism is now spreading around
the globe, propelled by the seemingly indomitable force of American
popular culture.
The final attraction of the sleep test is that it seems extraordinarily
practical. Oskar Schindler didn’t get tangled up in debates about
grand principles. His moral instincts seemed to provide a shortcut
that was uncomplicated and user friendly, simple and direct. In short,
thoughtful people do not turn casually to sleep-test ethics. They
are responding to powerful, deep-rooted forces that are cultural,
psychological, emotional, practical, and perhaps even biological.
Each of these is strong, and each reinforces the others.
Hence, it is simply unrealistic to expect people—especially when
they face difficult, distressing decisions—to rise above their culture,
their history, their hopes and fears, their personal commitments,
their religious faiths, their urgent need for practical assistance, their
biological predispositions—in a word, their humanity—and enter
an abstract, Platonic realm of dispassionate ethical analysis.
Aristotle understood our deeply ingrained tendency to refract
ethical issues through the prism of personal feelings, concerns, expe-
riences, and instincts. His moral philosophy was not written for
androids, the science fiction creatures that look like human beings but
are actually computers. Aristotle’s moral philosophy deals extensively
with the development of moral character and with ways of refining
the intuitions that so often and so powerfully envelop our moral
reflection.
14
This is, in essence, a strategy of exploiting the inevitable.
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