Research On Yan Fu's Economic Ethic

Yan Fu was the first person to systematically introduce Western learning into modern China.In contrast to the strong economic power of the West,Yan Fu’s modern China was weak and vulnerable.In order to seek the country’s wealth and strength,Yan Fu had to look to the West,especially to England,which was the most advanced country at that time,and introduce advanced political systems and ideas to the people of China by translating works of Western progressive thought.The works he translated,such as Huxley’s Theory of Heavenly Evolution and Adam Smith’s The Original Wealth,became deafening voices in Chinese society at the time,stirring up a strong sense of worry and competition among the Chinese.His translations were not only a way to convey the ideas of the English originals in another language,but also a way to express his own thoughts.In his translations,Yan Fu adopted an approach that was not entirely faithful to the logic and syntax of the original language,and translated the original text according to his own understanding.At the same time,Yan Fu also added a number of "presses" not found in the original,for example,he added more than eighty pages of presses representing his personal views to the original Fu.Thus,these translations contain not only the essence of the original authors’ ideas,but also Yan Fu’s own insights.Through the introduction of economics,sociology,and philosophical ideas popular in the Western intellectual circles of the time,as well as the critical integration with his own cultural traditions,Yan Fu formed his own ideological system.Yan Fu’s ideas were strongly enlightened,and these advanced ideological perspectives provided a great deal of theoretical support for the transformation of economic ethics in modern China.This paper examines Yan Fu’s economic ethical thought from the perspective of modern economic ethical transformation.Based on the backward development of productive forces in modern China,people’s economic ethical ideology needed to be updated.Yan Fu fused East and West and recast a set of economic ethical ideology for modern China that was adapted to the actual social situation.The starting point of Yan Fu’s economic ethics ideology was economic liberalism.He inherited Adam Smith’s view of economic liberalism and believed that all economic activities in the market have their own order and external intervention would destroy the balance of this natural order and be counterproductive.He advocated economic laissez-faire,encouraging free competition,and that the government,as a governing body elected by the people to represent public opinion in the division of labor,should not forcefully interfere with the market order,and that the market would regulate the balance of supply and demand as long as it complied with the natural order in the economic field.Yan Fu pointed out that the traditional concept of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce had destroyed the balance of social and economic development and harmed the free development of the market economy.On the one hand,Yan Fu acknowledged the rationality of the traditional concept of the end and the beginning,and believed that agriculture was certainly the basis of the economy,but on the other hand,Yan Fu insisted that commerce and industry were also the source of wealth,and only by emphasizing both the end and the beginning could the economy develop steadily.In line with the importance of the rationality of the natural order,Yan Fu believed that the government should not forcefully interfere with the employment choices of the people,and that the industry should respect the freedom of the participants in the market economy,regardless of their ranking.With the help of utilitarianism,Yan Fu argues for the moral justification of profit-seeking motives in transaction behavior,so that people’s profit-making impulses can be ethically justified.He accepted the utilitarian morality of Bian Qin and advocated that "humanity is the ultimate in suffering and happiness",while appreciating the Moist idea of "love and harmony" and praising the spirit of dedication of "the man who is willing to benefit the world".He also admired the Moist idea of "love and harmony" and praised the spirit of dedication of "the man who is willing to benefit the world.He took into account and combined the ethical and moral views of the East and the West,unified the relationship between righteousness and profit,and put forward the "enlightened self-employment" concept of righteousness and profit,advocating that people actively pursue profit on the premise of morality and righteousness.After the moral legitimacy of profit-seeking motives was confirmed,the rationality of consumption as a means of satisfying desires was also realized.Yan Fu criticized the traditional mainstream concept of frugality and extravagance,arguing that this extravagant and frugal view suppressed people’s desire to consume and prevented the counterproductive effect of consumption on production,which restricted the productive motivation of laborers and was an important reason for the stagnation of production development in modern China.He believed that consumption was not conducive to the circulation of wealth,so he put forward the idea that thrift should be "productive and nurturing",and that the purpose of thrift was to enable people to reinvest the wealth saved from consumption into production,thereby expanding reproduction and growing more wealth.Yan Fu encouraged people to actively consume and use consumption to stimulate production development,but he advocated reasonable consumption and rejected excessive consumption.On the one hand,Yan Fu’s economic ethics thought has a strong enlightenment color because its theoretical basis is the original philosophy of Tian Yi.On the other hand,Yan Fu’s economic ethics thought combines Western theories with traditional Chinese philosophical thought and the specific conditions of modern China,which makes economic ethics thought have Chinese characteristics.This combination of Chinese and Western economic ethics thought still has profound implications for many issues faced in contemporary socio-economic development.