On Wealth Ethics

Wealth, in its essence, is the condensation of common interests; therefore, it has not only economic meaning, but also ethical and social significance. Wealth ethics aims at the harmonious co-existence of wealth and the nature, of wealth and human beings, and of wealth and the society so as to promote the progress of the society and the free and overall development of the human. This dissertation, starting from the theoretical premises of ethics and economics, adopts a methodology combining historical investigation and discussion and integrating theory with practice.Wealth ethics refers to the moral connotation and ethical implication of the ways in which people obtain, possess and arrange their wealth and the relevant conceptions of right, production, exchange and distribution, etc. It is a kind of ethical and moral thoughts in the process of human's understanding, creating and controling the use of the process of wealth between individuals, individuals and nature, a value basis of social and economical behavior, an ability to recognise and act of creating, managing and spending wealth according to the nature of wealth. It includes three aspects:the impulse to creating wealth, inhibition of saving wealth, wisdom of rational use of wealth. Wealth ethics requires people from the starting position of the main body of people, to develop their personalities and potentials by creating wealth, and to obtain meaning and status, thereby realising their own values by using wealth rationally.In the current context, the existed wealth ethics has been out of date, while the new wealth ethics is under exploration, and the humankind is constantly confronted with dilemmas of development. Wealth ethics is supposed to solve three essential problems. Firstly, what is the legitimacy of acquiring wealth? In other words, in what ways can people acquire wealth and what are their ethical justifications? Secondly, in what ways should wealth be distributed can we say it is fair and just? Should the wealth created by people be possessed by a minority or by the people as a whole, be controlled by the country or by its citizens? Thirdly, how should wealth be used reasonably and acceptably? This involves the subject-object relationship between human and wealth, that is, which should the put in the first place, human or wealth?Wealth ethics is closely linked with the state, society and citizens.As far as a country is concerned, history tells us that the rise of a rich country is always determined by the mutation of the way of creating wealth, the flow of wealth, and the change of thoughts on wealth. For the society, if there is no breakthrough in the philosophy of wealth and historical outlook, and if there is no all-round knowledge about the secrets of the creation, expansion, flow, and distributing principles of wealth, the development of the society would get bogged down. For individuals, if we cannot achieve the wealth enlightenment and cultural self-awareness from "how to increase our wealth" to "how to dispose our wealth" and if we cannot comprehend the true nature of wealth and understand the true meaning of human's pursuit of wealth from the perspectives of philosophy and ethics, we would get lost. In the times of industrial civilization, with the increase of the number of rich persons, the ethics of rich people arouse people's questioning over wealth ethics, obligations and culture. In the meantime, phenomena appeared in modern industrialization like alienation, materialization, technological rationality and consumerism are all challenges we confront in establishing wealth ethics.How China, in its process of modernization, gets out of the historical mystery of wealth ethics and avoids the failures of Western countries constitute a major issue. The core problem is that we should construct the people-centered wealth ethics which advocates the prosperity of the people, common prosperity, and prosperity of the human kind, arid which gives full play to the safeguarding function of the institutions and the guiding function of institutional ethics, so as to achieve the peaceful and harmonious co-existence of the human beings, the society and the Nature and the overall and free development of all humans.A study in wealth, ethics consists in building the theoretical foundation, probing into its basic connotation, principles, value objects, and the obligations of its subjects. In regard to theory, we should solve the two questions of why wealth ethics becomes possible and how it becomes possible to enrich the studies in wealth ethics. In practice, it helps to resolve the predicaments in development, to realize justice of wealth, and to build a harmonious society.