Philosophy as a Resource for Sustainable Business Transformation and Entrepreneurs’ Well-Being

It is well known that businesspeople, investors, and managers tend not to occupy themselves with philosophy because they do not have the time to spend on such things. The Little School of Philosophy, founded in 2017 by the Antalya Businesspeople’s Association (ANSIAD), proved that this prejudice is hollow. For more than 6 years, businesspeople have been meeting once a week in the evenings to read philosophical texts and discuss their relevance to the lives they live today, demonstrating that philosophy is not only the domain of academia. In the effort to combine the practical experience of business life with the theoretical side of philosophical thought, the participants found the opportunity to explore areas of experience that they were not previously aware of in relation to their own lives. The fundamental question of philosophical ethics “how should one live this life?” made the participants reconsider their relationships with people at all levels and realize that business life is not only based on the axis of profit and loss. It can easily be said that the lives of the participants, who were particularly influenced by the teachings of the philosophical schools of antiquity which taught that the union of praxis and theoria could be a kind of wisdom of life or the art of living, were enriched by the philosophical thinking. By enriching the philosophical texts they read in classes with philosophical excursions and public philosophy meetings and panels, these participants learned to examine words they hear or utter in daily life, such as justice, friendship, virtue, and freedom as concepts of philosophy. The experience gained at the ANSIAD Little School of Philosophy has demonstrated that the business world can benefit from philosophical thinking in many ways, both as individuals and as organizations, if the right communication approach is taken.