Taking an embodied approach to ethics, I draw upon Brady’s (1986. Aesthetic components of management ethics. Academy of Management Review 11/2: 337–344) idea that ethical action is largely determined by the prevailing aesthetics. I then trace the prevailing aesthetics of modern businesses from the aesthetics of craft, to a more impoverished aesthetics of efficiency, and finally to an even more impoverished aesthetics of ideas. A broader, fuller, richer aesthetic is better than a narrower, impoverished aesthetic—the richer aesthetic includes ethics, while the impoverished aesthetic does not