La filosofía en las Investigaciones Filosóficas

The research participants depict their participation in the work setting in terms of the pursuance of fundamental horizons which are open to individual interpretation from within the work setting. What counts as improving the world, in this context, is thus not fixed and settled nor is it seen as prescribed. Rather, interviewees in white collar, service sector occupations frame their work in liberating terms within which they can move and explore their utopian ambitions implicitly supported organisationally by both the Quaker church and work. These Quakers in the work setting espouse horizons which match Dandelion’s depiction of the liberal perspective in progressive and experiential terms, as ‘tied to nothing in terms of doctrine, to no particular text, no

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particular rendering of the tradition’ (2007, 133). Research participants’ intentions are not depicted as unconstrained in the work context. Instead, the affiliates frame their religious and work enterprise as a single project conjoined by an ongoing view that a final utopian horizon is in practice unreachable.

Dinah, a self-employed financier, depicted her participation in the work setting as continually ‘searching and re-challenging’ in order to find ‘the ultimate right answer that God would have come to’. As an employee in her former job, Dinah had become disillusioned with that particular work context and was now ‘much more comfortable working for myself; running your own business’. Decision-making in self-employment was understood by Dinah as an onerous responsibility because:

the boss will always carry the can at the end of the day…there are more pressures which challenge you as a Quaker in my position; pressures on employees are from a line manager; they are different from the ones I have.

However, Dinah also framed the responsibilities of her work in Quaker terms as liberating. Her increased personal responsibility also apparently entailed more control over the work process and this enabled her to perform good works as well as sustaining her business. Dinah portrayed her engagement with her job in ‘ethical’ terms. She considered herself scrupulous and honest in how she executed her responsibilities.

Other rival businesses were depicted as not always as scrupulous and might be willing to cut corners to suit the clients’ interests rather than pursue an honest path. Dinah said:

Truth and integrity, I think it is just the emphasis that Quakers put on that side of things; integrity is probably the biggest challenge of all; because that is very demanding on different levels; it challenges what you stand for as a person; how you represent yourself.

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Dinah suggested that she was not interested in working outside the boundaries of integrity as she saw it. However, there were pressures within her business which made this approach less than straightforward.

In order to serve the clients best interests, she depicted a context of competing pressures. Her professional body ‘would probably take a fairly ethical stance on most issues but then what is an ethical stance on issues?’ In order to help clients fully, Dinah said that she had to provide them with comprehensive information upon which they could make an informed decisions. Whilst not illegal, the advice which Dinah proffered to clients provoked wider concerns for her, especially with regard to proposing

individually advantageous financial affairs without compromising her social conscience.

Dinah suggested that she did not have an answer to this and other dilemmas she deemed ethical in her workaday world. However, the belief that there was no single solution to these ethical issues was not framed by her as compromising her Quaker horizons. As a Quaker, she felt able to individually decide how to interpret integrity in the everyday and, fundamentally, she said, in her everyday work context, ‘there’s no conflict with any sort of religious or Quaker stance’. The complication in Dinah’s view was not that her work was ethically compromised but rather how manageable were her individual horizons in the everyday. Dinah suggested that the Quaker testimonies were helpfully ‘fundamentally right’ and depicted her interpretation of them as integrated into her workaday world. She said:

So very definitely, Quaker faith has a place in business; it influences what you do, how you treat people, employees as well as clients; everything is so

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intertwined and one thing affects one aspect of your life and then impinges back on something else.

However, the Quaker tradition was not understood to fix the terms which defined

Dinah’s ethical stance in this setting. Rather, Quaker horizons were depicted by her as subject to individual interpretation. She said that, in general terms, ‘business puts pressure on you, challenge to truth and integrity; I haven't found a perfect answer; life and business is so many shades of grey; you struggle for solutions but don't always find them.’ In Dinah’s view, seeking particular solutions was framed as a ‘journey’ and that this path was effectively without end. She said:

You may come to a wrong conclusion in someone else's view, which is equally valid; which is why you have got to continue searching and re-challenging;

because you never know whether you have got to the right answer; the right answer in terms of the ultimate right answer, that God would have come to;

because we are only human; so we come to our conclusion honestly and people have to accept that if arrived at honestly; I may come up with the wrong answers, but if you are honest with yourself, it is difficult for anyone to criticise you.

Scully suggests that the highly individualised boundaries in terms of which affiliates construct what counts as Quaker lacks theoretical coherence (2008, 109). However, this lack of coherence in these terms is not framed as problematic when conceptualising the contemporary liberal tradition. Insofar as research participants can re-imagine the tradition in highly individualised terms, Quakers can be understood to pursue a utopian impetus to improve the world from within the context of contemporary work. This

disinclination to depict in fixed terms, relational to the liberal church, utopian horizons within the work context supports Scully’s conceptualisation of the contemporary Quaker tradition. Instead, Scully argues, the Quaker tradition can be framed in practice as a

‘moral collage’ (2008, 109). In other words, Quakers’ ethical responses tend to be

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based provisionally on what ‘seemed right’ (2008, 110). In Scully’s terms, Quakers do not rely on the substantive content of their moral judgements to define their ethical engagement with the world. Rather, what counts as Quaker in this sense is not collectively prescribed but is framed by affiliates as an authentic individualised re-imagination of the church.

From this point of view, what counts as Quaker does not depend on following particular rules or the employment of a ‘killer argument’ (Scully 2008, 109). Quaker horizons are not depicted by affiliates in fixed or settled terms. Nor are they constructed in terms prescribed by the Quaker church, Christian texts or other belief traditions. Instead, according to Scully, Quakers’ horizons are shaped in the particular and are articulated in a pragmatic sense. What counts as Quaker within the social context, however, is that affiliates frame their everyday horizons and responses in moral terms. In this highly individualised sense, then, what counts as Quaker is a process of conceptualising one’s relationship to the world in moral terms. Affiliates, therefore, can make a Quaker claim in the social setting by individually interpreting and pursuing ‘the best way forward’.

Coherence in Quaker collective terms is marginalised and, in this sense, within the contemporary work context, affiliates are able to pursue utopian horizons from an individualised point of view whilst maintaining their Quaker claims.

In the next section, I explore how affiliates conceptualise the individual rather than the Quaker perspective as primary in the work setting. I suggest that the research

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participants do not pursue their horizons as Quaker in the workaday but in individualised terms as if they were Quakers.