VIRTUES AND VICES ABOUT MONEY

Abstract

According to the New Testament ‘the love of money’ is a root of all evil and a no-go for church elders. After the financial crises this warning and old virtues are re-discovered. The articles analyse virtues and vices dealing with money. Consulting insights from old texts such as Aristotle, the New Testament, Thomas Aquinas and modern authors like Comte-Sponville and Sofsky we develop a classification with two virtues, generosity and frugality, and two corresponding vices, meanness and greed. Due to the different facets of the topic we discuss these virtues and vices by combining explanations from philosophy, theology, psychology, sociology, and economy. These discussions are led by the question “how can we live these virtues in our modern society?”. Especially, we discuss the challenge of living frugal in a market economy, which regards greed as a ‘virtue in disguise’. doi: 10.7833/111-1-34