Why philosophy?"

"Philosophy is radical. It digs down below the surface, strikes at the root. It doesn't offer easy help or cosy reassurances. It demands that you re-evaluate your life and your projects, leaving no stone unturned. Philosophy demands everything that you can give without promising anything in return.

"That is how the true business philosopher approaches the business world. Not as a datum but as a problem, a worrying question mark, a concept which is required to go to strenuous lengths to justify its very existence.

The first question of business philosophy is, 'How is business possible?'...

"I don't have a recipe for business success, nor am I trying to rally people to a cause. I just want to understand what is going on...

"This is how philosophy begins, in a state of 'aporia' or bewilderment, not knowing one's way about. Economic life and competition are so familiar to us that we have ceased to be aware the phenomenon as something to wonder at or put into question.

"And yet there must have been a time when this was new. Something happened to make homo sapiens mutate into homo economicus. What was it? How did economic thinking gain such a hold? Is there any alternative? These are the kinds of questions that grip me."

From On Being a 'Business Philosopher' (2006).