The Love of Money

It is sometimes said that 'money is the root of all evil', but the accurate Biblical quote is that 'the love of money is the root of all evil'. Now, given the violence sometimes wreaked by jealously, even the accurate version is plainly false. But there are those who seem to reject it, not merely because there are some evils that have causes other than the love of money, but because they regard the love of money as the root of all good. The foundation of such a thesis is often the doctrine that all human behavior is self-interested, entailing that the love of money is good either as a self-interested end, or as a means to other self-interested ends. The common assumption that Adam Smith is an advocate of such a doctrine is mistaken, because complementing his pro-selfishness views expressed in Wealth of Nations, is his assertion in an earlier work that Sympathy is the highest Moral Principle. Hence, as Utilitarianism brings out, and as the title of Smith's most famous work plainly expresses, he regards the personal pursuit of wealth to be a means to a collective good. For Kant, any merely instinctual behavior has in itself no Moral worth, so, likewise, the merely conative drive to secure wealth has, in itself, no Moral worth. As Rationally determined, the Kantian Moral status of that pursuit depends on the articulated motives involved--securing wealth as a means to helping others is Morally worthy, but treating an other as a mere means to securing it is forbidden. The Evolvemental evaluation of the Love of Money depends on the situation. Individual Evolvement is deliberate growth, but the instinctual pursuit of money is not deliberate, and the pursuit of money as an end in itself would terminate growth, so neither of these cases have Phronetic Value. Now, the process of deliberately making money in order to make more money for oneself is Evolvement, but is Evolvement of a limited nature, compared e. g. to someone who makes money in order to promote personal growth in other areas, or to someone who makes money in order promote the interests of others. So, the best that Evolvementalism can say for the Love of Money is that it is often not the most worthy course of Action.