A Brief Analysis On Ye Shi’s Thoughts Of Economic Ethics

In this dissertation, I mainly adopt text analysis methods to excavate Ye Shi’sthoughts of Economic Ethics based on his special status as an epitomizer of YongjiaSchool in the southern song dynasty. And the purpose of this essay aims at grasping thefundamental framework of Ye Shi’s thoughts of Economic Ethics, thus, revealing hisprimary idea of people-oriented and pragmatism. Admittedly, further to present thevalue commensuration of economic theory of Ye Shi’s thoughts. Finally, I will,combined with current situation of Wenzhou regional economic rise, make a discoveryon the practical value of his thoughts.The first part of this dissertation mainly talks about the background, respectivelyfrom three perspectives: dangerous politic situations of Southern Song Dynasty internaland external "troubles", high level of economic prosperity at that time and the reality offacing zhuxi’s neo-Confucianism ideology. Based on such kind of background, ye shihas presented the thoughts of humanistic pragmatism.The second part of this article will emphatically explain the main content of YeShi’s thoughts of Economic Ethics in detail. This part mainly elaborate Ye’s thoughts ofEconomic Ethics from four aspects. First, Ye has freed human’s nature from the hedgeof the transcendent idealism. Based on the theory of natural human nature, he hasestablished his idea of promoting utility and encouraging justice that guides people topursue a reasonable profit. What’s more, Ye Shi’s spirit of people first in serving thepeople deems that the principal role of the government is to promote the nationaleconomic development, and at the same time, the government should also play animportant role of executing the policy of enriching people and advocating the shareconcept of finance. Finally, as for business ethics, Ye explicitly opposes the concept thatthe government emphasis agriculture first and commerce second, instead, advocatingthe integrated values of agriculture and commerce.Ye’s Economic Ethics has the following three basic characteristics: First, hisEconomic Ethics is interlinked to the history and varies with the world，basicallyreflecting the concept of being pragmatic. And second, Ye stresses that the scholars,farmers, artisans and merchants are equal and they should be free to develop withoutoutside interference, in some case, presenting the ideal pursuit of making full use of these four kinds of people. Finally, Ye’s theory is inseparable from the social system, headvocates the idea “government for the people”, which embodies the people’s specialtythat the major part for governing a country is gain the support from the people.Ye Shi’s thoughts of economic ethics were rooted in Yongjia, an open andwell-developed county. As the core of his economic ethics thoughts, the idea ofhumanistic pragmatism is the generalization and extraction of the social mentality inYongjia area, and its important value lasts until today. The regional economic rising ofWhenzhou that once was the womb of Ye’s thoughts attracted the extensive attention.The research in this article will strive to provide footnote for the rising of the regionaleconomic rising of Wenzhou.