段落A

‘I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any subject.’ That was the founder’s motto for Cornell University, and it seems an apt characterization of the different university, also in the USA, where I currently teach philosophy. A student can prepare for a career in resort management, engineering, interior design, accounting, music, law enforcement, you name it. But what would the founders of these two institutions have thought of a course called ‘Arson for Profit’? I kid you not: we have it on the books. Any undergraduates who have met the academic requirements can sign up for the course in our program in ‘fire science’.

段落A：

“我将创办一个任何人都可以在任何学科中获得教育的机构。”这是康奈尔大学的创始人的座右铭，它似乎也是我目前所在的美国另一所大学的一个恰当描述，我在这里教授哲学。学生可以为度假村管理、工程学、室内设计、会计学、音乐、执法等职业做好准备。但是，创办人们会如何看待一个名为“为了利润的纵火”的课程？我并不是开玩笑：我们的课程中确实有这门课。任何达到学术要求的本科生都可以报名学习我们的“消防科学”课程。

段落B

Naturally, the course is intended for prospective arson investigators, who can learn all the tricks of the trade for detecting whether a fire was deliberately set, discovering who did it, and establishing a chain of evidence for effective prosecution in a court of law. But wouldn’t this also be the perfect course for prospective arsonists to sign up for? My point is not to criticize academic programs in fire science: they are highly welcome as part of the increasing professionalization of this and many other occupations. However, it’s not unknown for a firefighter to torch a building. This example suggests how dishonest and illegal behavior, with the help of higher education, can creep into every aspect of public and business life.

段落B：

当然，这门课程旨在培养潜在的纵火调查员，他们可以学习所有检测纵火的手段，发现纵火者，并为有效起诉建立证据链条，以在法庭上获得成功。但这门课程对于潜在的纵火者来说也是完美的选择，他们可以报名参加。我的观点并不是批评消防科学的学术课程：作为职业化的趋势，这些课程在这个和许多其他职业中都非常受欢迎。然而，消防员纵火案并不罕见。这个例子揭示了在高等教育的帮助下，不诚实和非法行为如何渗透到公共生活和商业生活的方方面面。

段落C

I realized this anew when I was invited to speak before a class in marketing, which is another of our degree programs. The regular instructor is a colleague who appreciates the kind of ethical perspective I can bring as a philosopher. There are endless ways I could have approached this assignment, but I took my cue from the title of the course: ‘Principles of Marketing’. It made me think to ask the students, ‘Is marketing principled?’ After all, a subject matter can have principles in the sense of being codified, having rules, as with football or chess, without being principled in the sense of being ethical. Many of the students immediately assumed that the answer to my question about marketing principles was obvious: no. Just look at the ways in which everything under the sun has been marketed; obviously it need not be done in a principled (=ethical) fashion.

段落C：

当我被邀请在我们的市场营销课堂上发表演讲时，我突然意识到这一点，市场营销是我们的另一个学位课程。该课程的常任讲师是我的一位同事，他欣赏我作为哲学家能够带来的道德视角。对于这项任务，我可以有无数种方法来进行，但我从课程的标题“市场营销原理”找到了灵感。这使我想问学生们：“市场营销有原则吗？”毕竟，一个学科可以有所谓的原则，就像足球或国际象棋那样有规定、有规则，而不一定是在伦理上有原则。许多学生立刻认为，对于我关于市场营销原则的问题，答案是显而易见的：没有。只需看看一切皆可市场化的方式，显然并不需要以有原则（即伦理）的方式进行。

段落D

Is that obvious? I made the suggestion, which may sound downright crazy in light of the evidence, that perhaps marketing is by definition principled. My inspiration for this judgement is the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who argued that any body of knowledge consists of an end (or purpose) and a means.

段落D：

这是显而易见的吗？在事实证据面前，我提出一个也许听起来非常疯狂的建议：也许市场营销本质上就是有原则的。我的这一观点的灵感来自哲学家康德，他认为任何一门知识都由一种目的和手段构成。

段落E

Let us apply both the terms ‘means’ and ‘end’ to marketing. The students have signed up for a course in order to learn how to market effectively. But to what end? There seem to be two main attitudes toward that question. One is that the answer is obvious: the purpose of marketing is to sell things and to make money. The other attitude is that the purpose of marketing is irrelevant: each person comes to the program and course with his or her own plans, and these need not even concern the acquisition of marketing expertise as such. My proposal, which I believe would also be Kant’s, is that neither of these attitudes captures the significance of the end to the means for marketing. A field of knowledge or a professional endeavor is defined by both the means and the end; hence both deserve scrutiny. Students need to study both how to achieve X, and also what X is.

段落E：

让我们将“手段”和“目的”这两个术语应用于市场营销。学生们报名这门课程是为了学习如何有效地进行市场营销。但是这样做的目的是什么？对于这个问题，似乎有两种主要态度。一种态度是答案显而易见：市场营销的目的是销售产品和赚钱。

段落F

It is at this point that ‘Arson for Profit’ becomes supremely relevant. That course is presumably all about means: how to detect and prosecute criminal activity. It is therefore assumed that the end is good in an ethical sense. When I ask fire science students to articulate the end, or purpose, of their field, they eventually generalize to something like, ‘The safety and welfare of society,’ which seems right. As we have seen, someone could use the very same knowledge of means to achieve a much less noble end, such as personal profit via destructive, dangerous, reckless activity. But we would not call that firefighting. We have a separate word for it: arson. Similarly, if you employed the ‘principles of marketing’ in an unprincipled way, you would not be doing marketing. We have another term for it: fraud. Kant gives the example of a doctor and a poisoner, who use the identical knowledge to achieve their divergent ends. We would say that one is practicing medicine, the other, murder.

段落F：

另一种态度是目标是无关紧要的：每个人都带着自己的计划来参加该项目和课程，这些计划甚至不必关注获取市场营销专业知识。我的提议是，这两种态度都不能完全捕捉到市场营销手段对目的的重要性。一门知识领域或职业活动是通过手段和目的同时定义的，因此两者都应该接受审查。学生们需要研究如何实现X，以及X是什么。

就在这一点上，“为了利润的纵火”变得极其相关。这门课程显然都是关于手段的：如何检测和起诉犯罪活动。因此，假设这个目标从伦理角度来说是良好的。当我要求消防科学的学生明确他们学科的目的时，他们最终会概括为“保障社会的安全和福祉”，这似乎是正确的。正如我们所看到的，有人可以利用同样的手段来实现一个远非高尚的目标，比如通过破坏、危险和鲁莽的活动获取个人利润。但我们不会称之为消防。我们有另一个词来称之：纵火。同样地，如果您以不正当的方式运用“市场营销原则”，您将不会进行市场营销。我们会使用另一个术语来描述它：欺诈。康德举例说，一个医生和一个毒贩使用相同的知识来实现他们不同的目标。我们会说其中一个在从事医学，另一个在从事谋杀。