Global Journal of Human Social Science, E: Economics, Volume 22 Issue 2

Economy between Necessity and Luxury. Business Ethics from Antiquity to Early Modern Times Strosetzki, Christoph Abstract- From ancient and modern writings instructing the great landowner on how to deal with agriculture and forestry, with his servants, vassals and slaves, the question is raised as to the relationship between the organization of the great house as an agricultural production facility and the modern economy. The hypothesis to be confirmed is that it is precisely its normative approaches that can be corrective of the current economy and thus support the claims of current ecology. This hypothesis has an implication: the environment as a world of objects is constituted by the subject, that is, by the values of the individual, by the knowledge with which he interprets the world and by his relationship with his fellows, who belong to his world and with whom he interprets it. If one wants to understand the environment as an object, then one must begin with the subject. The subject, but also his house, is the microcosm that corresponds to the macrocosm of the environment. Keywords: business ethics, economy, luxury, necessary, modesty, achievement, agriculture, decadence. I ntroduction pecies extinction, agricultural monocultures, factory farming, plastic waste in the oceans, melting of the polar ice caps, glacier melting, rising sea levels, the ozone hole, global warming, acidification of the oceans, acid rain, forest dieback, deforestation for the extraction of fields, nuclear waste and overfishing show ecological sins that must be avoided. Unlimited economic growth no longer seems possible, because the necessary materials on earth are only available in limited quantities. While the Club of Rome had pointed out the limits of earthly resources in 1972, today we know about the finiteness of the supplies of oil, sand, metals and rare earths. This brief introductory reflection contains two important key concepts: sin and limit. Both are normative: the former because it forbids actions, the latter because it calls for thrift. In this context, ecology, as introduced by Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) in 1866, initially denoted a descriptive term: "By oecology we understand the whole science of the relations of the organism to the surrounding external world, whither, in a broader sense, we may reckon all 'conditions of existence.'" 1 1 Ernst Haeckel, Generelle Morphologie der Organismen, Berlin 1866, p. 286. The translations from German are ours. This discipline underwent a transformation in the 1970s and 1980s when it became the leading science of the ecology movement. It acquired a goal and became normative, as "ecological" became synonymous with sustainable, environmentally sound, considerate, and good. And "eco" as in "organic," e.g., organic farmers or green electricity, became a mark of quality. Ecology is now understood as a task and as environmental protection, which serves the preservation of the living environment of humans and their health. Sustainability aims at the considerate and long-term use of resources, whose ecosystems are to be kept in natural balance. Ecocriticism, which is the subject of our conference, has its origins in the Anglo-Saxon world, where, according to Cheryll Glotfelty and Richard Kerridge, it emerged in the eighties and nineties, and according to Ken Hiltner even in the sixties and seventies of the last century. It is defined by Cheryll Glotfelty as the "study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment " 2 . "Ecocriticism explores the ways in which we imagine and portray the relationship between humans and the environment in all areas of cultural production." 3 Incidentally, if we take the Greek word as our starting point, ecology and economy mean roughly the same thing. Both have formed from the Greek word for "house", "oikos", supplemented by "nomos", "law" and "logos", "reason" and "word" respectively. In the following, we will ask whether and to what extent the ancient literature of the house fathers, also called It leads from the romantic author Wordsworth or from Thoreau, who lived a simple life in the woods for two years, to Google Earth or Werner Herzog's film Grizzly Man about an animal rights activist who lived with grizzly bears in Alaska for 13 summers. From this broad field, a specific theme will be selected in the following. Based on ancient and modern writings that instruct the great landowner how to deal with agriculture and forestry, with his servants, his vassals or slaves, the question arises of relationships between the organization of the great house as an agricultural production site and modern economics. 2 Cheryll Glotfelty, Literary Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis, in: Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, The Ecocriticism Reader, The University of Georgia Press, Athens and London, 1996, XV-XXXVI, here XVIII; Richard Kerridge, Introduction, in: Richard Kerridge and Neil Sammells, Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature, Zed Books, London, New York 1998, p. 8; Ken Hiltner, First-Wave Ecocriticism, in: Ken Hiltner (ed.), Ecocriticism. The Essential Reader, Routledge, London and New York 2915, p. 1 3 Greg Garrard, Ecocriticism, Routledge, London, New York, 2012, cover S © 2022 Global Journals Volume XXII Issue II Version I 43 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 E Author: Universität Münster. e-mail: stroset@uni-muenster.de