Wealth

Key terms

What wealth is

Making and exchanging

Property and the poor

The right use of wealth

Wealth and the good life

Where does wealth belong among the things worth having? Wealth here means whatever can be measured in money, together with the riches and poverty that come with having much or little. These readings ask whether it is a good in itself, a means to something else, or a danger.

3 readings

Chapter 30 of the Book of Proverbs in the Douay-Rheims text contains the sayings of Agur, and these verses are a prayer addressed to God for “two things”. The speaker asks for “neither beggary, nor riches” and gives a reason on each side. The passage is placed under this term for that petition.

In Book I, chapter 5 of the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle surveys the lives commonly taken for happiness: pleasure, honour, and here “money-making”. He says of “wealth” that it is “merely useful and for the sake of something else”. The passage is placed here as the first word of the Ethics on riches.

In Book II of the Consolation of Philosophy, written about AD 524 while Boethius awaited execution, Lady Philosophy answers his complaints against Fortune. Chapter 5 turns to riches, “abundance” and “nature’s requirements”. The work was widely read in the Middle Ages, and the passage is placed here for its account of want and of “vain display”.