What is desire? What is wealth? What is value?

People in a desire society develop a desire for certain material or spiritual things based on certain needs. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato proceeded from the theory of ideas, believing that desire, along with reason and will, became the three parts of the human soul. Plato pointed out that the greatest needs of man are related to the grain of life, place to live, clothes, etc.

Epicurus further argued that the supreme purpose of man is to seek the pleasure and happiness of the senses of reality, and sees this as the satisfaction of human nature, but opposes debauchery and indulgence. The German philosopher Kant divided man into the phenomenal aspects of the perceptual and the ontological aspects of existence as rational. Man as a phenomenon has the right to satisfy his sensual desires, but this is only the natural nature of man, bound and dominated by natural necessity and "external things".

Kant opposed the French materialists' use of the satisfaction and happiness of perceptual material interests as a moral yardstick, arguing that freedom belongs to the rational nature of man, and that the essence of freedom is not to do whatever one has to do, but to be able to use reason to dominate desires and abide by moral norms.

When Hegel discusses the reasons for the existence and development of society, he regards human demands and desires as the initial driving force and is the "first important link" of society. It is this boundless desire of people that drives society forward. Hegel also pointed out that human needs and desires are initially only presented in the subjective realm and are a subjective need. In order for this subjectivity to become objective and to satisfy man's desires, it is necessary to pass through "external things" and labor (activities), which is the intermediary of "subjectivity and objectivity" (the philosophical principle of law), and labor processes "external things" so that they can satisfy people's various needs Hegel and guess that in the labor of satisfying desires, man must have a relationship with others and form a certain connection, and these ideas contain the germ of historical materialism.

Feuerbach emphasized the unity of man and nature, believed that the pursuit of happiness was man's natural and reasonable desire, and put forward the slogan "I want to be therefore I am". But Feuerbach did not understand the sociality of man. Marxist philosophy holds that human desires arise in social practice and change with the development of social practice in the final analysis, which are a reflection of people's actual living conditions.

Wealth is the abbreviation of "national wealth" and "social wealth". Generally refers to "material wealth". The material entity composed of use value is the material basis for the existence and development of society. Generally formed by the action of specific labor force on the means of production, including all labor products (such as production tools, raw materials, consumer goods, etc.) and natural resources used in the production process or may be used for production (such as land, mineral deposits, forests, water sources, etc.), is the sum of the material materials of society. Labor is not the only source of material wealth. Nature provides materials for labor, labor turns materials into wealth, and natural resources and labor are the source of all material wealth.

Under normal circumstances, social wealth is directly proportional to the amount of labor and labor productivity Under the conditions of commodity economy, wealth is the unity of value and use value, and all wealth can be expressed through value. In the history of mankind, due to the different ownership of the means of production, the way of possession of wealth is also different, in addition to material wealth, people also call cultural knowledge, science and technology, etc., the spiritual wealth of society. The development of material wealth and spiritual wealth is a sign of social progress.

Value was originally an economic concept that referred to the general, undifferentiated human labor condensed in commodities. is one of the basic attributes of the product. Essentially identical values are the social attributes of commodities, embodying the social connections between commodity producers. The value of a commodity is determined by the socially necessary labour-time for the production of the commodity. Later, this concept was generalized to philosophy, ethics, sociology, aesthetics and other disciplines.

Western sociologists see value as a socially conditioned desire for an unobtainable object, unevenly distributed, with different hierarchies, and as value as a given data for each individual, and forcing social behavior to point to value. In aesthetics, ethics, and epistemology, value is often associated with utilitarianism, referring to a certain practical effect or benefit that can be brought to people.

Marxist philosophy holds that truth, goodness, and beauty are unified, and the most basic is "truth." Truth has a value effect on human activities, i.e. what is commonly referred to as usefulness. But the usefulness of truth derives from its objectivity, that is, the correct reflection of objective things and their essence and laws. In the field of social history, the materialist view of history holds that it is impossible to talk about human values in isolation from the specific conditions of social development, from the labor in human society, from the relationship of individuals to others, between the collective and society. In the relationship between the individual and the society in socialist society, the value of the human person includes two aspects, namely, the respect and satisfaction of the society for the individual; and the responsibility and contribution of the individual to society.

The above content is from the "English Thinking" (shi Hailang) class study notes