Confucian merchant spirit

In the movement of life, there are actually only two kinds of people's survival and enjoyment, one is material and the other is spiritual. In fact, the process of "being a Confucian" is the process that the soul wants to be satisfied, and the process of "being a businessman" is the process that the body wants to be satisfied. Of course, body and soul are dialectical unity, and they are two sides of contradiction. For example, physical illness can lead to mental pain, and mental unhappiness can also lead to the aggravation of physical illness. There are also times when "Confucianism" and "Shang" are antagonistic. For example, "Confucianism" believes that "business" values profit over morality, only for profit, and will not achieve the atmosphere; And "Shang" thinks that "Confucianism" is sour and false, so it is mysterious, and it will only be an armchair strategist and will not be actually operated.

The pure pursuit of money in human survival activities will lose the best part of human nature. Human greed is innate, and business behavior is an activity to satisfy human greed. The success or failure of this activity, like other gambling activities, can stimulate the expansion of material desires. This kind of expansion and endless greed for material will sink the soul into dirty dirt. Some people get into the bad habit of gambling, lust and even taking drugs because they don't know how to stimulate their lives and get enough enjoyment and entertainment after getting enough money. In a life without Confucianism, it is really difficult for us to find a more suitable way of life consumption. Confucian businessmen are different. Material abundance only provides them with a guarantee of survival, because people can't talk about elegance and culture all day on an empty stomach. The more thorough pursuit is to let the soul enjoy. In this state, only culture can cleanse the dirt of the soul and make people noble.

Therefore, the beautiful realm of human existence is the realm of Confucianism and merchants. This is the most abundant and perfect living condition of human beings in "body" and "soul".

Spirit of Confucian Businessmen: A Flag of Chinese Businessmen in the World

The concept of Confucian merchant spirit refers to a unique business personality and code of conduct formed by Confucianism. The so-called Confucian businessmen mean that as businessmen, they should have the spirit, tolerance and moral standards of Confucianism, operate according to Confucian moral ideals and pursuits, and infiltrate the benevolence, righteousness, propriety and wisdom advocated and practiced by Confucianism in their business activities.

In the era of agricultural economy, people's understanding of the economy has been greatly restricted, social concepts tend to belittle and despise business, and the economic value of business has not been recognized by reality for a long time. This situation is even calling for the era of cutting the tail of capitalism and anti-speculation. At that time, although there was an order of industry, agriculture, soldiers, learning and business, their knowledge and status were very low, and business was even less important, which was not the same as the status of traditional businessmen in China. Commodity circulation does not increase social wealth, and no businessman is unscrupulous and unscrupulous, which has almost become an evaluation of businessmen and merchants. In this context, doing business is actually like committing an original sin. Businessmen should also regulate themselves according to the Confucian code of conduct and moral standards respected by society, or take Jia Er's Confucianism as a means to improve their social status. In this case, Confucian businessmen came into being.

When did Confucian merchants originate? It is difficult to answer this question directly, and it should be roughly inferred according to the width defined by Confucian businessmen. If literati and businessmen, that is, educated businessmen, are Confucian businessmen, then there were Confucian businessmen from the beginning, and Fan Li, Zi Gong, Bai Gui and Sang Hongyang in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period were all representatives of Confucian businessmen. However, this explanation is obviously not satisfactory. Because the real confluence of Confucianism and merchants can greatly improve the social status of merchants, create brilliant commercial civilization, and form relatively stable and socially recognized business ethics, the emergence of Confucian merchant groups will not be too early, but it is appropriate to take the Ming Dynasty, where capitalism sprouted, as the period when a large number of Confucian merchants appeared. The rise of Huizhou merchants as merchant groups in the middle of Ming Dynasty should be regarded as the real emergence of Confucian merchant groups. They have a clear Confucian moral business philosophy, but also the practice of Confucian businessmen doing business. They think that good people should not be ashamed of Confucianism, and that Confucianism is as important as business. In business practice, they regard the Confucian moral principles such as honesty and trustworthiness, gentleman's love for money, proper access, benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom and trustworthiness as business ethics, pay equal attention to being a man and doing business, and do business with the pursuit of being a man. This makes the Huizhou merchants generally have a progressive business ethics even today. Many Huizhou merchants have a strong moral cultivation, and their moral consciousness and self-discipline reached an amazing level at the beginning of China's commercial civilization, because it is rooted in the fertile soil of Confucianism and is a purely localized civilization.

Confucianism, which has been circulating for a long time, has been in the same strain for more than 2,000 years, which has greatly influenced the thinking of China people and formed the unique behavior and thinking mode of China people. We compare the spirit of Confucian businessmen with Confucianism, which is helpful for us to further understand the connotation of the spirit of Confucian businessmen. There is a cloud in The Analects of Confucius: "Richness is all you can ask for. Although I am a scapegoat, I will do it. " It can be seen that Confucianism is not "on profit", but "unjust and letting wealth and fame drift by like clouds". In discussing the debate between "righteousness" and "benefit", we need to distinguish what is consistent with "righteousness" and what is not. The former's pursuit of profit belongs to "taking the right path", while the latter's pursuit of profit is "villain metaphor", which directly leads to another theory of Confucianism, namely "not demanding", "not demanding a penny" and "taking the right way". Moreover, Confucianism has serious moral judgments on "demanding" and "not demanding". It is a villain and should be regarded as a Confucian businessman. The spirit of Confucian businessmen is essentially against wealth and ruthlessness, and emphasizes taking advantage. From the poor and generous point of view of Confucianism, assisting Confucian businessmen to do business is to benefit the society, that is to say, poverty is good and generous. To make real Confucian businessmen have a strong sense of social responsibility and charity spirit, that is to say, assisting Confucian businessmen to do business also requires a spirit of "altruism", at least considering themselves. It can be said that Confucian businessmen should engage in purely utilitarian business, but they always have super-utilitarian moral pursuit, which makes their business behavior always have a very strong moral color. This is a typical business philosophy of Confucian businessmen, and it is also a unique contribution of Confucian businessmen's spirit to world business civilization. Therefore, aiding Confucianism to enter the business is a commercial practice of Confucianism and a good Confucianism.

From the comparison between Confucian classics and Chinese traditional business ethics, we can see the influence of Confucianism on traditional business ethics. Confucianism emphasizes courtesy and harmony, and the traditional business concept is to use and make money; Confucianism emphasizes that don't do to others what you don't want others to do to you. You want to be a man, and you want to be a man. Whether it is traditional or modern business ethics, it emphasizes that you can consider problems from the standpoint of customers. You are sincere and innocent, and you can get business benefits while customers get perfect service. Confucianism emphasizes the debate on benefits, and progressive business ethics also emphasizes that the interests of businessmen cannot be placed above the overall interests of society, and the interests of consumers and even the interests of the country cannot be harmed by self-interest. It is immoral to do whatever it takes to seek personal gain, which is a kind of greed and vicious expansion. Classical Confucianism emphasizes that a person must keep his promise, and his actions will have results. Honesty and trustworthiness is a basic business ethics. In essence, the meaning of Confucianism is appropriate, that is to say, we should do what we should do and do things that conform to social justice, such as helping the poor, helping each other and loving each other, and being enthusiastic about social welfare undertakings. These are all obligations that people should fulfill to society. One of the biggest characteristics of Confucianism is that it always puts people in the social background, considers and regulates the relationship between people, and regulates the relationship between people with the power of morality. It never talks about natural persons and requires a person to realize his own interests without harming the public interests or the interests of others. The same is true of business philosophy, which emphasizes cooperation and does not harm others and benefit themselves. Confucianism emphasizes the golden mean, while traditional business ethics emphasizes not profiteering, predatory management, commercial ecology and coordinated development among businessmen and between businessmen and customers. Confucian businessmen actually pursue the theory of business moral order, and pay attention to maintaining business order with moral power. Confucian businessmen talk about business, but their taste exceeds business. They always hope to improve their spiritual world in the process of engaging in purely utilitarian business activities. This is the spirit of Confucian businessmen.

Therefore, the spirit of Confucian businessmen should include business ethics such as keeping promises, honesty-oriented, honesty without bullying, righteousness and benefit, taking money with righteousness and saving money with loyalty. It is to carry out ethical principles such as honesty, righteousness, forgiveness and concession in business operations, and try to wash away the habit of businessmen blindly seeking profits with Confucian spirit. In other words, the purpose of doing business is to pursue profits and maximize profits. Isn't advocating the spirit of Confucian businessmen at the expense of commercial efficiency? In fact, there is a question of whether to pursue the individual interests of businessmen or maximize local interests or social interests. However, in the social system, individual businessmen disregard public morality, seek profits by hook or by crook, and even pursue profit maximization, which is precisely the chief culprit of the deterioration of business ecology. Efficiency seems to exist, but as far as society is concerned, fairness is put aside. Losing the efficiency of so-called fairness and justice is a disaster for society. The value of the spirit of Confucian businessmen lies in emphasizing the principle of fairness, which does not come from an external compulsion, but from the moral consciousness of businessmen infiltrated by Confucianism. There is a debate between good and evil in Confucian classics. Advocating the spirit of Confucian businessmen is to maintain a kind of good nature in business operation, so that the beautiful things in human nature, such as honesty, faithfulness and benevolence, can be transformed into excellent business character and into the conscious behavior of businessmen, not just relying on the constraints of systems and laws. The spirit of Confucian businessmen is essentially the moral self-discipline of businessmen influenced by Confucianism in their business activities, not heteronomy. From a macro perspective, advocating the spirit of Confucian businessmen can greatly reduce the operating cost of the whole social management system. As far as businessmen themselves are concerned, it is also unfavorable to let commercial activities fall into the whirlpool of complaints and commercial disputes. We can firmly believe that with the development and expansion of the ranks of Confucian businessmen in our society, the commercial order will be fundamentally improved.

In other words, the spirit of Confucian businessmen, as mentioned above, is actually advocating a kind of self-discipline rather than heteronomy, and using moral self-discipline to resist the almost instinctive desire for profit. Is it practical? In fact, this is the essence of the spirit of Confucian businessmen. A large number of Confucian businessmen with lofty business ethics and extraordinary achievements have proved that Confucian businessmen can be combined. Confucianism and law are two different theories in China's ancient thoughts, emphasizing self-discipline and heteronomy. Confucianism is to help people's hearts and rectify society by advocating moral ethics and awakening people's moral consciousness. Of course, once these ethics are fixed, they are mandatory, such as neo-Confucianism and etiquette in later generations. Legalists use harsh laws to regulate people's behavior. Confucianism emphasizes that moral consciousness leads to the front and legalists' harsh laws lead to the rear, so Confucianism is essentially a knowledge of moral order, which pays attention to maintaining social order with moral power and makes people pursue a kind of spiritual consciousness. Confucianism has always only emphasized people's social attributes, and human relations are actually interpersonal relationships. Only by adjusting interpersonal relationships can social development be harmonious and stable. Today's society has entered the era of commodity economy. The harmonious development of man and nature, the commercial ecological civilization in which people live in harmony, and the business ethics spirit of harmonious unity of righteousness and interests, cooperation and competition, self-improvement and self-discipline advocated by the spirit of Confucianism and businessmen have very strong significance of the times. The spirit of Confucian businessmen is the progressive business ethics of Confucian businessmen, their unique understanding of the essence of production, management and exchange under the influence of Confucianism, their unique humanistic spirit and humanistic thought formed in business operation immersed in Confucianism, and their unique contribution to world business culture.

Culture, especially business culture, is the reflection of economy, and economy is the foundation of culture. What kind of economy will produce what kind of culture, and culture will act on the economy in turn. Healthy culture will promote the economy, while backward culture will hinder it. Since its birth and increasingly clear, the spirit of Confucian businessmen has played a positive role in regulating commercial behavior, which shows that in our ancient country, although our commercial civilization has not reached the developed level in the West, our commercial cultural spirit has not lagged behind those developed countries in the West. Today, we have entered the era of commodity economy. In order to make China's economy develop healthily and orderly, we must advocate the spirit of Confucian businessmen and progressive business ethics. Otherwise, our economy cannot develop healthily, orderly, continuously and steadily.

Pure Confucian businessmen are not simple businessmen and literati, and have nothing to do with the kitsch behavior of dressing up with knowledge after some businesses make profits. The key of Confucian businessmen lies not in their profound knowledge and education, but in their practice of Confucian ethics. Although some businessmen have low academic qualifications, they have the idea of doing good in essence and have a natural wisdom for the thoughts of Confucian businessmen, just as Buddhists say. They naturally insist on not demanding, take the right path, and are good at handling the relationship between public interests and personal interests in business activities. They don't take profit as their sole and ultimate goal, and they can also be called Confucian businessmen, who are gentlemen.

Business behavior always has two sides. First, promote commodity circulation, stimulate commodity production and bring social prosperity. But on the other hand, businessmen have a spontaneous tendency to pursue profits by hook or by crook. The spirit of Confucian businessmen can not only correct the self-interest of businessmen, but also play an important role in the whole commodity society. Rong Desheng, one of the founders of Rongshi Enterprise, once said: The ancient sages, whose words and deeds are nothing more than the wisdom of the university, the sincerity of the golden mean, self-cultivation and self-cultivation, will eventually rule the country and level the world. When starting a business, we should be sincere, realistic and successful. What can we do for Wang Mingyang if we blindly pursue profits and the bad guys are in power? From this passage, we can easily see some pursuits of Confucian businessmen. First of all, Mr. Rong Desheng, as a generation of Confucian businessmen, has such a consciousness: to be a good businessman and a moral and noble person at the same time, the two must be unified in business behavior, otherwise it is mercenary and only the villain is in power. Secondly, we should not only be a good businessman, but also be a noble person. The way to achieve this is to learn from the ancient sages and Confucianism, be honest, cultivate one's morality, seek truth from facts, rather than forget profits. In this way, our cause will be successful. This is just as Wang Mingyang, a great thinker in the Ming Dynasty, pointed out in "The University Question": Although businessmen trade all day long, they are not harmful as sages, and their reward lies in the way of benefiting others, as long as they can live with conscience in business activities and abide by Confucian teachings.

What is the connotation of Confucian spirit? We can learn from China's behavior as a representative of Confucian businessmen in history. Representatives of Confucian businessmen who surpassed personal utility included Fan Li and Ji Ran in the Spring and Autumn Period and Xian Gao in the Warring States Period. Bai Gui, who has improved his way of doing business with excellent cultural level, took abandoning me and taking others as my way of doing business and won the market essentials. Tang Zhen, a thinker in the early Qing Dynasty, regarded getting rich by doing business as a way to achieve peace. He said in the Book Collection Examination: Those who govern do not seek to enrich the people, but want to achieve peace through joy, and those who want to guide them are also appropriate. They are all for business, not for their own interests, but for enriching the people, strengthening the country and stabilizing the society. They all realize their life value in the process of doing business.

The spirit of Confucian businessmen is beneficial to the world. Most businessmen are not economic theorists, and their business purposes and ideas are the product of consciousness and subconsciousness based on a certain cultural background. Confucianism is beneficial to the world because it is noble and ordinary, and ordinary businessmen can practice it to varying degrees. Such excellent local culture can advocate spiritual source for our businessmen. A banker with the spirit of Confucian businessmen once said: the daily moral cultivation of the ancients is always the truth. Moral otherness is a necessary condition to maintain group cooperation. Loyalty, sincerity, honesty and concession are four words, which I think are related to the business group. Nowadays, with the social transformation, we have encountered a serious moral crisis, which has led to a large-scale commercial crisis. Fraud is rampant in the commercial field, extreme utilitarianism and extreme egoism prevail, and the movement of clearing triangular debts in previous years has become a serious social problem. Fakes are even harder to read. In business activities, the phenomenon of harming others and benefiting oneself, fraud and extortion is serious, which all reflect the quality of a businessman. Our economic order and moral order are facing the problem of reconstruction. Of course, strengthening the legal system is an important aspect of the healthy development of the market economy, but we must also grasp the two civilizations together. It is an effective way to improve the ideological and moral level of businessmen, explore the spirit of Confucian businessmen by using local culture, and advocate and carry forward it as a modern spirit. Du Weiming, a professor at Harvard University, said: At the turn of the century, the gap between the rich and the poor on our planet is widening. If the rich and powerful people have no sense of cultural responsibility and responsibility for human progress, there will be no peace and development on earth? quot。 It can be said that advocating Confucian spirit among businessmen is a great cause for businessmen to gradually assume cultural responsibility and an objective requirement for improving business ethics. We emphasize the modern value of the spirit of Confucian businessmen and the need to serve the real economic development by carrying forward the spirit of Confucian businessmen. This is the purpose and significance.

The spirit of Confucian businessmen will become a banner of Chinese businessmen all over the world. Confucian culture is a local civilization that has influenced China for more than 2500 years, and the spirit of Confucian businessmen is also an excellent commercial culture rooted in the local area. Confucianism has a profound influence on people's way of thinking and behavior in China. Chinese businessmen all over the world have the same cultural and ideological background, namely, Confucian merchant culture and Confucian spirit. Social practice has proved that Confucian culture has promoted the economic take-off of the four little dragons in Asia, and also made Chinese businessmen in the world play an increasingly important role in the global economic structure. We have reason to believe that the spirit of Confucian businessmen, as a progressive business ethics, will play an increasingly important role in the stability of economic order and the prosperity and development of the economy.