Nothing Without Philosophy – Not Even HR
- September 21, 2025
- Posted by: Jelena Viskovic Vasic
- Category: Invisible Bridges
From Plato to KPIs: how philosophy shapes human resources
(Editor’s note: This is a bonus Sunday edition! The newsletter remains monthly, with the next regular issue coming in late October.)
Introduction: philosophy as the beginning
What better time to pause than on a Sunday morning? A moment for coffee, September strawberries fresh from the garden, a piece of chocolate, a bit of reflection … and philosophy: a discipline so often underestimated, and too quickly dismissed as boring.
But have we forgotten? Philosophy is the science behind every science. Without it, there is no psychology. And without psychology, there is no human resources – our beloved HR.
If we neglect to ask what is man and what is justice in the community, HR easily slips into being just administration, numbers, or procedures. But HR has never been just that. It has always been a field of meaning … a field of multidisciplinary meaning.
Plato’s Republic: golden, silver, and bronze people
Let us remember Plato – a rather popular fella – and his often-cited “The Republic”, a work most of us have heard of, though few have actually read.
In it, Plato tells the myth of metals, a story used to explain the foundation of a just society.
- Golden people – those who rule through wisdom.
- Silver people – those who bravely guard.
- Bronze people – those who create and work.
For Plato, justice was not about everyone doing everything, but about each person fulfilling the role they were naturally suited for. Harmony came when each class contributed in line with its nature, and the value of a person was measured by their service to the whole.
This picture may seem archaic. Yet if we look more closely, we see that the logic of functional division has never disappeared – it simply changed its language.
From the Industrial Revolution To Human Resources
Centuries later, the Industrial Revolution gave new language to old ideas. (?) The community was no longer imagined in myths, but in factories, railroads, and markets. People became workforce, manpower, and later, human resources.
At first glance, this seemed like progress and finally, people were recognized as a key resource, alongside land and capital. Yet the word resource has two faces:
- Recognition – because it says people are indispensable.
- Limitation – because it reduces a person to a means, placed in the same row as machines, capital, and technology.
And here philosophy raises its voice again. Kant would remind us: a person must never be merely a means, but always an end in themselves. To forget this is to reduce humanity to function, efficiency, and numbers … a temptation as strong in the age of factories as it is in the age of algorithms today.
Closer to measuring the human being
And today, we live the same logic. Instead of golden, silver, and bronze people, we have A-talents, high-potentials, and key players. Instead of myths, we have KPIs, targets, and scorecards.
All this brings us closer to measuring the human being – but never close enough to capture what a person truly is. Numbers can show results, but not meaning. And meaning unfolds over the long term, as people move through different phases of their lives, producing different results at different times.
Potential: a new form of old limitation
Today we often speak of potential. At first glance, the word sounds positive, almost inspiring. But if we strip it down, we see the same logic as behind the word resource.
- Resource reduces a person to a means of production.
- Potential reduces a person to a promise of future usability.
Both are limiting concepts. Or misleading ones. Or perhaps both at once. And both miss what is essential, that a person is neither a resource nor a potential, but a living being with a story, relationship, process.
And I’m afraid that if HR remains in the language of resources and potential, it will not accomplish much. Because outstanding results come only when we also see what cannot be measured: meaning, dignity, humanity.
Talent: the myth of perfection
Along with potential, the word talent has become the new currency of HR. At conferences we hear of “talent management,” “talent pools,” and “wars for talent.” But if we look honestly – what is talent if not another label that creates division?
Psychology teaches us: the “average” is normal. Excellence is an exception. And a system cannot rest on exceptions.
Exceptions are valuable because they point to abnormality, open space for learning and shifts. But if they dominate, they create the illusion of a “new normal.”
In my work, I have not seen that this business of exceptions – the obsession with exceptional individuals – is sustainable. (?) After all, if everyone were “exceptional,” who would remain to do the everyday work that sustains any organization?
Value is created in steadiness, in everyday contribution, in the ordinary that quietly carries organizations. And what does this obsession with the search for “extraordinary individuals” mean for recruitment? Most often – an illusion. We look for unicorns, while neglecting the steady foundation of the many.
Philosophically, that is idolization. Nietzsche would say: we have created an idol and then worship it. But Aristotle reminds us – virtue lies in the middle. Organizations are not carried by rare exceptions, but by collective contribution.
And philosophers knew this:
- Nietzsche warned us of idols and talent in corporate language often becomes an idol of perfection that blinds us.
- Heidegger would say: talent easily leads us into inauthenticity, because people begin to live the expectation of being “special,” instead of being themselves.
Perhaps it is time to stop turning talent into a deity and return to what is human – the ordinary, steadiness, and meaning.
HR is not a clinic, not a factory, not bureaucracy and not a court
We often hear limiting beliefs: “You’re turning HR into a clinic.” But such remarks reveal more about misunderstanding – and lack of true knowledge – than about HR itself.
HR is not a clinic. Not a factory. Not bureaucracy.
And not a court … because its purpose is not judgment, but justice in Plato’s sense: harmony between different parts of the community.
Aristotle would add: HR is not pure technique either. It is the field of phronesis or practical wisdom, which helps us decide humanly, not only efficiently.
And perhaps we can go even further. HR is not a toolbox to be opened only when needed, nor a stage for procedures. It is not a “people-pleaser unit,” and it is not a group of “magicians” expected to solve what others will not face.
HR is a space where philosophy, psychology, and practice meet; where numbers must serve meaning, and where people are seen not as resources but as beings. If we forget this, we reduce HR to a mechanism. If we remember it, HR becomes what it was always meant to be: a field of humanity – and a main contributor to the sustainability of both the company and its people.
Paradigm shift: from resources to meaning
Thomas Kuhn reminded us that science does not advance by the slow accumulation of facts, but through sudden paradigm shifts – those moments when anomalies pile up, the old logic can no longer hold, and a new one must emerge.
Perhaps that is exactly what awaits HR.
We have lived long enough in a paradigm that sees people only as resources, potentials, and talents – measured, categorized, and optimized through KPIs, scorecards, and targets. This paradigm has given us useful tools, yes, but it has also trapped us in a language that reduces more than it reveals.
And if we are honest, this language is frightening. For decades we have been taught to produce, produce, produce … to get results, results, results. But what remains when everything is extracted? We already know this story from nature: when resources are treated only as means, they are consumed, depleted, and finally thrown away. Is that really the future we want for people?
The next step is not a more refined KPI, nor the invention of another buzzword. It is a different way of seeing.
A paradigm where people are not reduced to resources, but recognized as beings. Not only as potentials, but as partners. Not only as talents, but as purpose and meaning.
In this new paradigm, HR will not be just a function. It will be a bridge:
- a bridge between philosophy and practice,
- between organizations and people,
- between efficiency and humanity,
- and a bridge between generations.
And perhaps this is what Plato intuited when he spoke of harmony, what Kant demanded when he said people must never be mere means, and what Aristotle described as phronesis. HR, in its best form, is not administration – it is wisdom in practice.
Multidisciplinarity: in HR you are either everything – or nothing
HR has never been one science, nor one tool. It is a multidisciplinary field, always functioning at crossroads and through bridges, rarely as just one discipline on its own.
- Philosophy brings the questions of meaning and justice.
- Psychology explores behavior, motivation, and emotions.
- Sociology examines relations and dynamics.
- Economics reminds us of efficiency and value.
- Pedagogy teaches us about learning and development.
- Art gives us stories, symbols, and culture.
- Technology adds AI, data, and digital tools.
- Organizational design emerges where sociology, economics, and psychology converge … shaping the structures that allow people and organizations to function together.
Each of these disciplines alone can say something about people, but never the whole truth. HR exists in the space where they intersect, where questions of justice meet emotions, where efficiency meets learning, where symbols meet technology, and where design gives form to it all.
HR has never been either-or. HR is always both-and.
Conclusion: a pinch of nihilism
Plato taught us about function and order. Industry taught us to call people resources. KPIs taught us how to measure what is visible. But philosophy teaches us that there is also the immeasurable.
Heidegger would say: man is not only a producer, but a being that dwells in language and meaning. And Buber reminds us: the true relationship is not I-It, but I-Thou.
That is where the power of HR lies. HR is not a clinic. Not a factory. Not bureaucracy. Not a court.
- In HR you are either everything – or nothing.
Some may say: “Why is she philosophizing on a Sunday morning?” Let them.
Philosophy has always been suspicious to those who believe only in numbers. Or, to be fully nihilistic – maybe it’s all just a play of words. But if we are playing, then I choose the game in which HR has meaning.
This text was originally published on LinkedIn as part of the Invisible Bridges newsletter and is republished here as part of my professional blog archive.