Economic Ethics Of Guanzi And The Construction Of Modern Economic Ethics

In Chinese Spring and Autumn Period,there were many scholars who assembled and formulated academic atmosphere. By writing works, they expressed their different ideas about how to govern their countries, and aimed at influencing their kings. In the era, there were many theories that demonstrated contrasty opinions as the water and fire, but they were complementary to each other through the way in which they mutually debated and affected. Their opinions promoted and developed their own theories .The greatest of them were Confucianism, Mo, Daoism, and Fa. All of them had left a great number of masterpieces of the time for future generations. One of them was Guanzi.Guanzi, was a classic work in pre-Qin dynasty, including a profound philosophy and abundant contents .It blended diverse thinking such as Confucianism, Fa, Daoism, Yin and Yang ,etc. and covered philosophy, economics, management, ethics, military science and so on. Most contents of this book were concerned about economic problems. Meanwhile, it was the ancient classic that earlier interpreted the economic philosophies that economic issues had wide range ,exact arguments, far-reaching effects, and were even rare among the pre-Qin classics .From them, not only the policies, measures and programs which Guan Zhong governed for 40 years could be acquired , but was not lack of amendments by the newcomers. Except for the abstruse language expression, the work manifested thoughtful ideas of the writer, morality and skills of the decree, and policy ideas which pursued for the economic development and ethical demands.The emphasizing on economic issues has become a tradition since the Qi dynasty. Economic philosophy in Guanzi projected the cultural value of Qi dynasty in the economic field, generalized the thinking theory of Qi dynasty of how to enrich people, and it was highly cared by the ruler of Qi dynasty .In effect, economic thoughts in Guanzi, with distinctive ethical characteristics, were far beyond the economic field. They showed that agriculture was the foundation, considered the ethics which were all kind of the production, mutually beneficial exchange, differential but fair wealth distribution, thrifty and extravagant consumption as well .Economic ethics were the major ideological source of traditional economic ethics in our country.The so-called learning from history is that the recalling history must return to reality at last and be beneficial to direct the future with the ancient knowledge or experience. It had the same effect on the interpretation of economic ethics in Guanzi. Currently, benign operation of market economy cannot be inseparable from regulation and guidance of economic ethics .In order to guarantee the sound development of market economy and ethics, we are supposed to integrate deeply and absorb the theories of traditional economic ethics appropriately on the ground that the advantages and disadvantages of the economic order in the reality ought to be profoundly reflected. Economic ethics in Guanzi provides profuse and important resources for the ethics of our ascendant system, especially the modern economic ethics. Besides, they have considerable reference value to the construction of Chinese socialist economic ethics and the development of Market Economy. At the same time, they have the effective function to rectify how to eliminate the expansion of instrumental rationality and crisis of human value.