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Greed (or avarice, ) is an insatiable desire for material gain (be it food, money, land, or animate/inanimate possessions) or social value, such as Social status or power.
Modern economic thought frequently distinguishes greed from self-interest, even in its earliest works,Charles de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 338Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (New York: Modern Library, 1965), p.651 and spends considerable effort distinguishing the line between the two. By the mid-19th century – affected by the phenomenological ideas of Hegel – economic and political thinkers began to define greed inherent to the structure of society as a negative and inhibitor to the development of societies.Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1934 ed.), p. 36Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, London, 1848 Keynes wrote, "The world is not so governed from above that private and social interest always coincide. It is not so managed here below that in practice they coincide."Keynes, The End of Laissez-Faire, http://www.panarchy.org/keynes/laissezfaire.1926.html Both views continue to pose fundamental questions in today's economic thinking.
Max Weber posited that the spirit of capitalism integrated a philosophy of avarice coloured with utilitarianism. Weber also says that, according to Protestant ethic, "Wealth is thus bad ethically only in so far as it is a temptation to idleness and sinful enjoyment of life, and its acquisition is bad only when it is with the purpose of later living merrily and without care."
As a secular psychological concept, greed is an inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one needs. The degree of inordinance is related to the inability to control the reformulation of "wants" once desired "needs" are eliminated. It is characterized by an insatiable desire for more, but also a dissatisfaction with what one currently has. Erich Fromm described greed as "a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction". An individual's tendency to be greedy can be seen as a personality trait that can be measured. With measures like these, greed has been found to be related to financial behavior (both positive in earning and negative in borrowing/saving less), to unethical behavior, and to negatively relate to well-being.
Greed (as a cultural quality) was often imputed as a racial pejorative by the ancient Greeks and Romans; as such it was used against Egyptians, Punics, or other Oriental peoples;The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity, Benjamin Isaac, Princeton University Press, 2004; and generally to any enemies or people whose customs were considered strange. By the late Middle Ages the insult was widely directed towards Jews.
In the Torah, the ten commandments of the sole deity are written in the book of Exodus (20:2-17), and again in Deuteronomy (5:6-21); two of these particularly deal directly with greed, prohibiting theft and covetousness. These commandments are moral foundations of not only Judaism, but also of Christianity, Islam, Unitarian Universalism, and the Baháʼí Faith among others. The Quran advises do not spend wastefully, indeed, the wasteful are brothers of the devils..., but it also says do not make your hand as chained to your neck..." The Christian Gospels quote Jesus as saying, ""Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions",Luke 12:15 and "For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.".1 John 2:16
If a man has thirteen talents, he has all the greater ardour to possess sixteen; if that wish is achieved, he will want forty or will complain that he knows not how to make both ends meet.Aristophanes. Plutus. The Internet Classics Archive.
And greed, again, and the blind lust of honours ''Which force poor wretches past the bounds of law,'' ''And, oft allies and ministers of crime,'' ''To push through nights and days with hugest toil'' ''To rise untrammelled to the peaks of power—'' ''These wounds of life in no mean part are kept'' ''Festering and open by this fright of death.''[[Lucretius]]. [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/785/785-h/785-h.htm#link2H_4_0013 ''Of the Nature of Things''], Book III. Project Gutenberg.
Nay, what a price the rich themselves, and those who hold office, and who live with beautiful wives, would give to despise wealth and office and the very women whom they love and win! Do you not know what the thirst of a man in a fever is like, how different from the thirst of a man in health? The healthy man drinks and his thirst is gone: the other is delighted for a moment and then grows giddy, the water turns to gall, and he vomits and has colic, and is more exceeding thirsty. Such is the condition of the man who is haunted by desire in wealth or in office, and in wedlock with a lovely woman: jealousy clings to him, fear of loss, shameful words, shameful thoughts, unseemly deeds.Epictetus. The Discourses of Epictetus, Book IV, Chapter 9. Translated by Percy Ewing Matheson.Internet Sacred Text Archive.
Xunzi believed that selfishness and greed were fundamental aspects of human nature and that society must endeavor to suppress these negative tendencies through strict laws. Zhao 2015, p. 181 This belief was the basis of legalism, a philosophy that would become the prevailing ideology of the Qin dynasty and continues to be influential in China today.
Conversely, the philosopher Yang Zhu was known for his embrace of total self-interest. However, the school of Yangism did not specifically endorse greed; rather, it emphasized a form of hedonism where individual well-being takes precedence over all else.
Mencius was convinced of the innate goodness of human nature, but nevertheless warned against the excessive drive towards greed. Like Laozi, he was worried about the destabilizing and destructive effects of greed: "In a case where the lord of a state of ten thousand chariots is murdered, it must be by a family with a thousand chariots. In a case where the lord of a state of a thousand chariots is murdered, it must be by a family with a hundred chariots. One thousand out of ten thousand, or one hundred out of a thousand, cannot be considered to not be a lot. But if righteousness is put behind and profit is put ahead, one will not be satisfied without grasping from." Van Norden 1997
Greed is not a defect in the gold that is desired but in the man who loves it perversely by falling from justice which he ought to esteem as incomparably superior to gold ...
, line 426 however the Pardoner himself serves us as a caricature of churchly greed.
Therefore, is there, on this earth, no greater enemy of man (after the devil) than a gripe-money, and usurer, for he wants to be God over all men. Turks, soldiers, and tyrants are also bad men, yet must they let the people live, and confess that they are bad, and enemies, and do, nay, must, now and then show pity to some. But a usurer and money-glutton, such a one would have the whole world perish of hunger and thirst, misery and want, so far as in him lies, so that he may have all to himself, and everyone may receive from him as from a God, and be his serf forever. To wear fine cloaks, golden chains, rings, to wipe his mouth, to be deemed and taken for a worthy, pious man .... Usury is a great huge monster, like a werewolf, who lays waste all, more than any Cacus, Gerion or Antus. And yet decks himself out, and would be thought pious, so that people may not see where the oxen have gone, that he drags backward into his den.In Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 1, Chapter 24, Footnote 20. Translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling. Edited by Frederick Engels. Marxists Internet Archive.
'tis the greatest folly imaginable to expect that fortune should ever sufficiently arm us against herself; 'tis with our own arms that we are to fight her; accidental ones will betray us in the pinch of the business. If I lay up, 'tis for some near and contemplated purpose; not to purchase lands, of which I have no need, but to purchase pleasure:
''"Non esse cupidum, pecunia est; non esse emacem, vertigal est."''
''["Not to be covetous, is money; not to be acquisitive, is revenue."'' '' —Cicero, Paradox., vi. 3.]''I neither am in any great apprehension of wanting, nor in desire of any more:
''"Divinarum fructus est in copia; copiam declarat satietas."''
''["The fruit of riches is in abundance; satiety declares abundance."'' ''—Idem, ibid., vi. 2.]''And I am very well pleased that this reformation in me has fallen out in an age naturally inclined to avarice, and that I see myself cleared of a folly so common to old men, and the most ridiculous of all human follies.Michel de Montaigne. Essays of Michel de Montaigne. Book I, Chapter XL. Translated by Charles Cotton. Project Gutenberg.
This result is the fault only of those, who seek money, not from poverty or to supply their necessary wants, but because they have learned the arts of gain, wherewith they bring themselves to great splendour. Certainly, they nourish their bodies, according to custom, but scantily, believing that they lose as much of their wealth as they spend on the preservation of their body. But they who know the true use of money, and who fix the measure of wealth solely with regard to their actual needs, live content with little.Spinoza. The Ethics, Book IV, Appendix, XXIX.
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for whom first necessaries have to be provided, and then superfluities; delicacies follow next, then immense wealth, then subjects, and then slaves. He enjoys not a moment's relaxation; and what is yet stranger, the less natural and pressing his wants, the more headstrong are his passions, and, still worse, the more he has it in his power to gratify them; so that after a long course of prosperity, after having swallowed up treasures and ruined multitudes, the hero ends up by cutting every throat till he finds himself, at last, sole master of the world. Such is in miniature the moral picture, if not of human life, at least of the secret pretensions of the heart of civilised man.Jean-Jacques Rousseau. On the Origin of Inequality . Appendix. Translated by G. D. H. Cole. American University of Beirut.
The rich man consumes no more food than his poor neighbour. In quality it may be very different, and to select and prepare it may require more labour and art; but in quantity it is very nearly the same. But compare the spacious palace and great wardrobe of the one, with the hovel and the few rags of the other, and you will be sensible that the difference between their clothing, lodging, and household furniture, is almost as great in quantity as it is in quality. The desire of food is limited in every man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; but the desire of the conveniencies and ornaments of building, dress, equipage, and household furniture, seems to have no limit or certain boundary.Adam Smith. The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter XI, Part II. Project Gutenberg."It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
avarice is an insatiate and universal passion; since the enjoyment of almost every object that can afford pleasure to the different tastes and tempers of mankind may be procured by the possession of wealth. In the pillage of Rome, a just preference was given to gold and jewels, which contain the greatest value in the smallest compass and weight: but, after these portable riches had been removed by the more diligent robbers, the palaces of Rome were rudely stripped of their splendid and costly furniture.Edward Gibbon. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume III, Chapter XXXI, Part IV. Project Gutenberg.
the love of money is not only one of the strongest moving forces of human life, but money is, in many cases, desired in and for itself; the desire to possess it is often stronger than the desire to use it, and goes on increasing when all the desires which point to ends beyond it, to be compassed by it, are falling off. It may be then said truly, that money is desired not for the sake of an end, but as part of the end. From being a means to happiness, it has come to be itself a principal ingredient of the individual's conception of happiness. The same may be said of the majority of the great objects of human life—power, for example, or fame; except that to each of these there is a certain amount of immediate pleasure annexed, which has at least the semblance of being naturally inherent in them; a thing which cannot be said of money.John Stuart Mill. Utilitarianism, Chapter IV. Project Gutenberg.
Starveling. Away from me, ye odious crew! Welcome, I know, I never am to you. When hearth and home were women's zone, As Avaritia I was known. Then did our household thrive throughout, For much came in and naught went out! Zealous was I for chest and bin; 'Twas even said my zeal was sin. But since in years most recent and depraving Woman is wont no longer to be saving And, like each tardy payer, collars Far more desires than she has dollars, The husband now has much to bore him; Wherever he looks, debts loom before him. Her spinning-money is turned over To grace her body or her lover; Better she feasts and drinks still more With all her wretched lover-corps. Gold charms me all the more for this: Male's now my gender, I am Avarice! ''Leader of the Women.'' With dragons be the dragon avaricious, It's naught but lies, deceiving stuff! To stir up men he comes, malicious, Whereas men now are troublesome enough.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. [http://goethe.holtof.com/faust/Faust_II_04.htm ''Faust'', Part II, Section 4]. Translated by George Madison Priest. [http://goethe.holtof.com/select.htm Goethe (Re)Collected].
Near the end of the play, Faust confesses to Mephistopheles:
Use-values must therefore never be looked upon as the real aim of the capitalist; neither must the profit on any single transaction. The restless never-ending process of profit-making alone is what he aims at. This boundless greed after riches, this passionate chase after exchange-value, is common to the capitalist and the miser; but while the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser. The never-ending augmentation of exchange value, which the miser strives after, by seeking to save his money from circulation, is attained by the more acute capitalist, by constantly throwing it afresh into circulation.Marx. Capital, Volume 1, Part 2, Chapter IV.
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