On Harmonious Consumption Ethics

Consumption is human's basic economic activity and a kind of ethic phenomenon too. The unrestricted growth of consumption desire has not merely caused the shortage of resources and deterioration of environment, but produced serious ethic problem, as well as aggravated disharmonious situation of the society. Harmonious consumption ethics is a new kind of consumption ethics based on harmonious social theory, which takes harmonious consumption as thecore and the three kinds of relations—the relations between man and himself, between man and man, and between man and nature—as the main line. The aim of which is to carry on moral education, morals appraising and code of ethics to consumer behavior. This ethics adheres to the principle of fairness, appropriateness, and healthfulness. It is a kind of harmonious, scientific, and healthy consumption ethics. Based on the analysis of the historical development of Chinese and Western consumption ethics thought and the reviews to reality, this paper for the first time puts forward the goal and concept of harmonious consumption ethics, and pays close concern to the natural value and natural right of the natural existences and to the relations between man and harmonious consumption in the process of man's reproduction. About which, little research has been carried out on theoretical circles, because the study before on ecological ethics only focused on the living environment instead of natural value and natural right. In addition, the study before on the relations of consumption ethics was mainly the fairness and justice between man and society and between man and man, but neglected the harmony between man and himself. At last, another innovation of harmonious consumption ethics is to have classified the health principle as one of the three basic principles of consumption ethics.