Values of the economic man

Abstract

The article analyzes the character of an economic man represented in the work of the German philosopher and pedagogue Eduard Spranger. The author of the article tries to identify this type of a man through his dominant value system. Whom can we regard as an economic man? Probably someone involved in economic processes. No, such a definition is not enough. We all are more or less involved in the economy. But there are people who seem designed for such activities. Such people are few. Not all may be successful in business matters. Thus, economic man is a character, a certain set of traits, represented as a kind of unity.
It is known that philosophers have often sought to create one or another typology of personalities. Philosophers and historians have searched in humans traits of similarity and difference. The individual appears before us as he expresses himself: how he moves, how he loves and how he is jealous, what is his lifestyle, what are his needs, aspirations and goals, what are his ideals and how he shapes them, what values move him, what and how he performs and creates. There are many approaches to the division of people as bearers of character or type.
E. Spranger has noted that the task of our isolating and idealizing study must resolve twin challenges. First of all, it should distract from the special forms of economy depending on the state of culture. It cannot refer only to the agricultural sector, or craft and industry, as cannot refer only to subsistence farming, cash or credit economy, but it must consider the eternal economic motive as some constant function between the subject and the world of goods, even if the subject and the world of goods are variable. And secondly, we need to get distracted from those particular historical forms of society in which production, exchange and consumption take place. Isolation needs to be implemented so strictly, as if a person could manage by himself, even if in reality people manage only in certain social and legal conditions. We believe, however, that a purely economic person as a part of the home or the urban economy, as a part of the national or world economy – in each case reveals the same spiritual type. And only this type is of interest to us here. The inner world of a theoretical person we found not only in professional scientists: the inner world seems known to us as the peculiar structure of the soul, which can occur also outside of science. Exactly the same is the case: people who have described by us structure of value life is not necessarily the people earning themselves a living (Erwerbsmenschen). Rather, the main motive of usefulness may permeate various aspects of personality and dominate its overall structure even in those areas where, in fact, one would expect other settings right up to the decisive ethos of the entire human existence. On the contrary, those who constantly insist that the economic element is defining everything as human beings are not always natural-born utilitarians. For example, Marxists are mostly theorists or politicians: their theory does not fit with their own existence – the circumstance which could be used for critics of the economic awareness of history, if this awareness did not work with the psychology of the unconscious certainty which represents not a description, but purely constructive metaphysics.

Thus, the economic man in the most general sense is one who in every relation of life puts the value of utility in the first place. Everything turns to him into the means of preservation of life, the means of the natural struggle for existence and a nice arrangement of life. He is frugal in his use of substance, of power, of space, of time in order to extract the maximum of beneficial effects. We, the people of modern times, maybe, would call him the practical person, because the whole area of technology is similarly subordinated to economic criteria (as we will see below). But his value is not the depths of mentality that make decisions about the values, but completely external beneficial effects. The Greeks, therefore, would call him albeit “doing” (poiounta) but not “acting” (prattonta). The famous German philosopher, psychologist and educator Eduard Spranger tried to create a gallery of social characters. As a basic framework which allowed him to make a distinction between social types, Spranger took a spiritual setting that underlined a way of life. In the activities of a particular person prevails, as a rule, one of these settings. Highlighting the core values, which focus on the human behaviour and ultimately determine it, Spranger did not realize that in each of these areas there are people with the opposite mental qualities and characteristics. His principle in the article is characterized as rather abstract.

According to E. Spranger, the economic man is guided by the principle of “useful and enjoyable”. This distinguishes him from the theoretical person for whom it is important to distinguish “true or false”. Can spirituality be measured economically? The German researcher points to the spiritual meaning of labour. He notes that the economic man is found in two forms – as a producer and as consumer. More boldly the economic process is presented in person, which is engaged in the production in any direction to be able to consume in this or that direction. It clearly manifests a balance between the benefits and the losses of utility. The German scholar makes a distinction between production and consumption. But in economic life, another demarcation is possible. It belongs to Aristotle. He distinguished the economy and the chrematistics. The economy aimed at the satisfaction of needs and the chrematistics – at the profit.