Money. It’s either the root of all evil or the best thing ever. We’ve all faced the question of if we should pursue money for its own sake or if we would be better off without it. Philosophers have asked the same question about money and how it relates to the good life.
Aristotle
While he saw money as merely a tool to promote other goals, he is open about the fact that the good life requires that you have a fair amount of it.
- He warns against the life dedicated to pursuing money, however, as this is a life spent chasing something which is “useful for some other end” without ever reaching that end.
Ben Franklin
Franklin was independently wealthy and wrote a book on how to earn and save money
- He associated having wealth with having a least a few virtues
- While money is good to have, money is at best a tool for getting other things
- His list of virtues does not require wealth to live life to the fullest
The Buddha
The founder of Buddhism, Gautama Buddha lived in both extreme wealth and obscene poverty
- His time spent on the extremes showed him the wisdom of “The Middle Way” which became a core element of Buddhism
- Extreme poverty is no solution either
- Having nothing isn’t too much fun either though
- Faith is the best wealth for a man in this world
Jacob Needleman
While money might assure that we have access to necessities, it won’t cure us of worrying about having them
- He reminds us that there are things that money can’t buy, like happiness, that we must never lose sight of.
- Those who criticize the wealthy don’t realize that money is needed to do good things.
Soren Kierkegaard
Desiring too much money is a symptom of not living fully
- Life is an abstraction, and money is the abstraction of real value
- We should dive headfirst into life and live it fully, not desiring more money is an indication of not doing so
Thoreau
He lived a simple, self-sufficient life in the wilderness
- His time in the woods showed him the benefits of living simply
- Much humanity can gain by spending more time in nature
- Getting away from material pleasures can help us live a fuller life
- We can all stand to learn from his ideas on how to earn less and live more
Schopenhauer
Opined that most people were doomed to unpleasant lives
- Most people were better off not being born
- His solution to the endless miseries of life was to withdraw from them and live ascetically
- Money, that cause of infinite desire, labor, and strife, is to be avoided
- Wealth is like sea-water: The more we drink, the thirstier we become
- The same is true of fame
Karl Marx
The father of modern communism, and the favorite philosopher of many a penniless left-winger.
- Marx reminds us that money, for all the bad things philosophers often say about it, is extremely useful
- His philosophy of communism isn’t so much against wealth as an attempt to tame it and make it the servant of humanity rather than the problem it frequently can be
Epicurus
Epicurus was a philosopher with some bold ideas on how to make people happy
- He argued that the path to happiness was moderation, strong friendships, and philosophy
- While he wasn’t opposed to having some wealth, he feared that having too much of it would lead a person to live immoderately
- If you wish to make Pythocles wealthy, don’t give him more money; rather, reduce his desires
Nietzsche (Getty Images)
Nietzsche was one of the prominent members of the chronically asking for money club.
- While he never sought out riches, he didn’t preach against them, and he had a lot to say about people who declared wealth to be evil
- He argued that the morality of the gospels was a slave morality which was based on a sort of sour grapes approach to things
- The authors of the Gospels didn’t have money or power, so they declared those things evil and the poverty and weakness they had to be good
