Seek Gains By Moral Forces

Utilitarianism is a kind of ethical theory opposite to virtue ethics. The chief characteristic of Utilitarianism is that it renders benefit above morality when it looks into the relationships between benefit and morality, but its real aim is to realize a kind of balance between benefit and ethical pursuit. Utilitarianism attaches great importance to economic development and people's pursuit of economic benefit in their economic activities, which turns out to be the inevitable result of its emphasis on benefit. What's more, utilitarianism is not instrumentalism that tends to use all possible ways to realize economic benefit. On the contrary, it holds that the acquisition of economic benefit should be based on moral forces. This kind of utilitarian idea is similar to the old saying in China--"seek gains by moral forces".There were rich utilitarian business ethical thoughts in ancient China, whose developing course is often divided into three stages, that is, the Pre-Qing Dynasty Period, the Han-and-Tang Period and the Song-and-Ming Period. The first period was marked by the fact that the appearance of utilitarian business ethical thoughts was closely related to the debate between benefit and morality, which led to various theories of utilitarianism. Those theories marked a beginning in the developing history of ancient Chinese utilitarian business ethical thoughts and provided the earliest form for the latter. The Han-and Tang Period was the prime of Chinese feudal society, which was characterized by an integration of Confucianism and Daoism. Accordingly, the utilitarian business ethical thoughts of this period of time took on a picture of mixture. The utilitarian business ethical thoughts of the Song-and Ming Period had the feature of Confucian asceticism on the one hand and some new development on the other.The ancient utilitarian business ethical thoughts had four features: (1) they were developed during the debate on the relationships between benefitand morality--ancient Chinese utilitarian business ethical thoughtsemerged from the debate arising in the Pre-Qing Dynasty Period, which hadgone around the issue of identifying the Priority of morality and benefit; (2) they were based on the theory of natural humanity, which proved to be the starting point of ancient moral philosophers who were preoccupied withutilitarian business ethical thoughts--these philosophers emphasized thatthe positive aspects of natural humanity could be used to bring into full play the human productivity and accordingly push forward economic development; (3) they emphasized the anti-effect of morality against economy; (4) they counted agriculture as the foundation of economy, but they did not neglect the development of side industries. To sum up, from the developing course of ancient Chinese business ethical thoughts, we may draw a conclusion that utilitarian business ethical thoughts can co-live with commodity economy and utilitarianism serves as the spokesman of the latter.It is true that ancient Chinese business ethical thoughts were not fully developed as virtue ethics, but, as a matter of fact, the two interacted on each other. The former emphasized the balance between benefit and morality, which put some kind of ethical consideration or tendency into the process of benefit pursuit and economic development. In other words, moral functions were greatly valued in utilitarianism. The above-mentioned ideas are instructive and therefore instrumental to the cause of constructing socialist market economy and related ethical system.