The discussion of China's philosophical justice and benefit has never stopped from the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period to modern times. Looking at the viewpoint of justice and benefit put forward by ancient philosophers in China, it can be generally summarized as follows: First, "justice generates benefits" and justice and benefit are unified. In this case, it is to harvest wealth. During the Spring and Autumn Period, Dr. Rick of the State of Jin said: "Ke Wen Zhi: Those who are righteous will benefit enough;" Greedy people are the source of resentment. Abandoning righteousness and not benefiting, and being greedy is complaining. " (1) benefit is supported by righteousness. Without righteousness, benefit cannot be established, and righteousness is the foot of benefit. Greed is the root of resentment. If a person is too greedy and has more points and more shares in the distribution, the masses will not only have grievances, but also reduce their enthusiasm for production and affect production, and as a result, the benefits will be less. Pi Zheng, another doctor in the state of Jin, said, "Righteousness benefits the people and benefits the people.". (2) righteousness produces profit, righteousness is a means, profit is an end, and righteousness is unified. Second, "a gentleman is a metaphor for righteousness, and a villain is a metaphor for profit." Confucius said: "Rites are based on righteousness, righteousness is based on benefits, and benefits are based on civilians, which is also a great political festival." (3) since righteousness is a reasonable distribution, it is necessary to have a distribution standard, which in Confucius' view is ceremony, and distribution according to ceremony is righteousness. Etiquette, also known as ritual system, is a system of interpersonal system. What Confucius said here is beyond the scope of distribution and involves all aspects of interpersonal relationship. In order to promote righteousness, Confucius said, "A gentleman is a metaphor for righteousness, while a villain is a metaphor for profit". (4) "Yu" is a clear meaning. A gentleman knows what is reasonable and beneficial to everyone, while a villain only knows how much he has gained, and he doesn't know whether the gains are reasonable or not. However, if "a gentleman is brave and doesn't think chaos", that is, he who has the spirit of daring but is not righteous is a troublemaker. Third, do what is right and say what is right, and "work hard and cultivate." Regarding righteousness, Mozi believes that people should not only act on righteousness, but more importantly, publicize it. Since farming, weaving and fighting are not as good as others, it is better to publicize righteousness. Those who govern the country will listen to my propaganda and understand righteousness, and the country will certainly govern well; Ordinary people can improve their moral cultivation by accepting what I preach. In this way, although I didn't take part in farming and weaving, I was "virtuous in farming and weaving" (5), and its social role (merit) was even greater than that of taking part in farming and weaving in person. Mozi believes that when many people don't know the social function of righteousness, then I will publicize righteousness, and its role is much greater than the role of individual righteousness itself. Therefore, when Mozi and Wu Si discussed the benefits of propagating righteousness, Mozi took the initiative to demonstrate the idea of combining righteousness with profit. It is believed that "righteousness is also beneficial", "profit is also happy with income" and "work is also beneficial to the people". 6 righteousness is profit, which is not only material benefit, but also benefits, such as reputation. As long as the people are benefited and happy, they have made achievements. That is to say, it is beneficial to the people and profitable for the people, which is merit and righteousness. In a word, Mozi thinks that the social function of acting and expressing righteousness is greater than farming and weaving. Of course, we say that not everyone can publicize righteousness, but only the outstanding elements of human beings. Fourth, "why bother to be profitable". When Mencius and Liang Huiwang discussed the plan of governing the country, they said, "Why should the king be profitable? There is only benevolence and righteousness.". ⑦ Mencius believed that it is not necessary to talk about profit, but only to practice benevolence and righteousness. If you don't talk about profit, you don't want profit, but if you practice righteousness, you will get profit. As long as you do righteousness, you can enjoy the corresponding benefits with peace of mind, "prosperity and honor". If there is no merit, you should not enjoy these finances. In Mencius' view, it is unjust to get what you shouldn't have without merit, and its property is "ill-gotten wealth" Things that come from robbing, stealing, cheating, corruption and bribery are all ill-gotten gains. Mencius insisted on not accepting any ill-gotten gains. He said that it does not conform to the principle of righteousness. "Lu is the world, and Fu Gu is also; It' s a thousand horses, and it' s also a vision. " ⑨ Mencius' thoughts are the development of Confucius' thoughts of "seeing what is right" and "taking what is right". Fifth, there are two people who are interested in justice and profit. Xunzi, a representative of Confucianism in the late Warring States period, believes that everyone has two natures: kindness and greed. The people's original two kinds of psychology, justice and benefit, will lead the society to different situations because of different rulers. "Righteous victory" leads to "governing the world"; "Likeyi" leads to "troubled times". Whether the people are psychologically righteous or greedy is the result of the guidance of the upper rulers. "Emphasizing righteousness means justice, while emphasizing profit means justice". Xunzi advocated "valuing righteousness over profit", emphasizing that all rulers, from the Emperor to officials at all levels, should be "ashamed of profit" and be ashamed of greed for profit. He believed that all officials should not compete with the people for profit, but be willing to give alms and be ashamed of accumulation. "Emphasizing righteousness over profit" is Xunzi's brief summary of the relationship between righteousness and profit of pre-Qin Confucianism. Confucius and Mencius do not deny that people have a desire for profit, but only emphasize the restrictive role of righteousness and benefit. Sixth, "it's not good for one's friendship, and it's not good for one's work to know one's way." After Xunzi, Dong Zhongshu of the Western Han Dynasty also believed that people were born with two kinds of psychology: kindness and greed. It is believed that righteousness can nourish the heart and benefit can cultivate the body. Compared with the body and mind, the heart is more important than the body, so the righteousness of raising the heart is more important than the benefit of raising the body. In history, students like Confucius, such as Yuan Xian and Zeng Shen, were all righteous but poor, but others envied their behavior and they were optimistic, so their spirit was substantial. On the contrary, some people are rich in wealth, wealth and material wealth, but they are spiritually empty because they are not righteous. Dong Zhongshu's conclusion is: "Righteousness is greater than profit and thicker than wealth." Dong Zhongshu put forward a solution to the situation at that time, such as the noble people in society were greedy, greedy for profits, unwilling to be righteous, the poor and lowly people were getting poorer and poorer, and there was no place to stand, clothes for cattle and horses, but food for dogs, class contradictions were expanding, social instability factors were increasing, and the ruler's rule was in danger. "Balancing" means learning from each other's strengths and helping the poor from the rich. It means that the rich can show their nobility without being proud, and the poor can barely live without being sad, so that the whole society can live in peace and the society can be easily governed. Here, Dong Zhongshu's tone is neither egalitarianism nor absolute equality, but he admits that there are differences between the rich and the poor and between the rich and the poor, but he opposes excessive or enlarged differences, resulting in polarization. As for how to adjust the average, Dong Zhongshu believes that, first of all, the emperor should make provisions to prevent officials from competing with the people for profits; Secondly, we should let all rulers establish the concept that justice is more important than benefit. To sum up, Dong Zhongshu's thought is, "It's just that friendship doesn't benefit him, and knowing his way doesn't count his merits". These two sentences have a great influence on future generations. Seventh, the distinction between righteousness and benefit. From the pre-Qin Dynasty to the early Western Han Dynasty, it seems that only righteousness is valued over profit, and righteousness and profit are not absolutely opposed. After Dong Zhongshu, the distinction between righteousness and benefit can be divided into two categories, one is the antithesis of righteousness and benefit, and the other is the unification of righteousness and benefit. Liu Xiang in the late Western Han Dynasty believed that the reason why people can't do good things is that they are harmed by "profit", and profit and righteousness are opposite. After the Song Dynasty, Neo-Confucianism advocated the opposition between righteousness and benefit. Cheng (Cheng Hao, Cheng Yi) thought that "righteousness means profit, and profit means righteousness", and justice and profit are at odds. They also believe that the issue of justice and benefit, that is, the issue of public-private relations, public is justice and private is benefit. Although they also talk about the coordination of benefits here, they have little influence on future generations. In the Southern Song Dynasty, Zhu Xi and Lu Jiuyuan shared the same view on justice and benefit. They teach the distinction between profit and benefit, "judging a gentleman and a villain with righteousness and benefit." Chen Chun, a student of Zhu Xi, made a systematic and comprehensive exposition on the concept of justice and benefit of Neo-Confucianism. He used "justice" and "human desire" to explain the relationship between benefit and benefit, and thought that "justice is appropriate for justice; Those who benefit, what people want. " Chen Chun highly praised Mencius and Dong Zhongshu as positive representatives of the theory of justice and benefit. Doing things according to natural principles is righteousness, and taking reasonable benefits is righteousness. In addition, regarding the issue of justice and benefit, Li Zhi in Ming Dynasty believed that the human heart is selfish. The so-called justice is beneficial to people and beneficial to the people. "Selflessness" is "talk of painting cakes", which is just empty talk. In Qing Dynasty, Yan Yuan put forward the idea of "keeping friendship in order to gain its benefits, knowing its way and calculating its merits", which means that both righteousness and benefits are indispensable. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, this thought of valuing righteousness over profit in the past and daring to put forward the view of valuing profit had something to do with the development of commodity economy and the rise of capitalist ideological trend at that time.

Second, the contemporary value of the traditional concept of justice and benefit

Developing the socialist market economy is a great pioneering work that has never been done before, and it is the * * * knowledge gained by the people of China through arduous exploration at a high price. This economic system is not only integrated with the basic socialist economic and political system, but also with socialist spiritual civilization. The deep core of socialist spiritual civilization is socialist moral values. It requires the construction of a modern concept of justice and benefit that meets the requirements of modernization under the conditions of socialist market economy. Generally speaking, this concept of justice and benefit is "a socialist concept of justice and benefit that puts the interests of the country and the people first and fully respects the legitimate interests of individual citizens". This view of justice and benefit not only overcomes the abstraction of interests in the traditional view of justice and benefit, but also helps to enhance people's awareness of self-reliance, competition, efficiency, democracy and legal system and pioneering and innovative spirit. It is a noble and civilized view of justice and benefit. However, the theoretical paradigm of the concept of justice and benefit is often not synchronized with the construction of reality. The realistic construction of the socialist concept of justice and benefit means that the dominant position of the concept of justice and benefit is generally established, but this establishment cannot be carried out spontaneously. Therefore, how to build a modern concept of justice and benefit that meets the needs of the development of socialist market economy is a problem that many scholars are thinking about at present. It should be acknowledged that opening to the outside world and developing the socialist market economy are conducive to giving play to the principle of efficiency and speeding up the construction of material civilization in China. However, the weaknesses and negative aspects of the market itself, such as money worship, hedonism, individualism, forgetting profit, mercenary, etc., will be shown whenever there is an opportunity. Opening to the outside world has greatly shortened our distance from the modern world. But the decadent things of capitalism will also take the opportunity to enter. All these have hindered the establishment of the dominant position of the modern socialist concept of justice and benefit. In order to overcome the influence of these negative factors, the CPC Central Committee promptly put forward major strategic countermeasures to strengthen the construction of socialist spiritual civilization, pointing out that under the premise of taking economic construction as the center, we must promote and coordinate the development of material civilization and spiritual civilization, and prevent and overcome one hand being hard and one hand being soft. The coordinated development of spiritual civilization and material civilization inherently requires the unity of justice and benefit oriented by interests. Without the unity of justice and benefit, people's pursuit of interests and even all their behaviors will not be effectively regulated and guided, which will eventually lead to modernization bankruptcy characterized by rationalization. In contemporary times, to achieve the unity of justice and interests, we must not only rely on certain external means such as political and legal means and conduct necessary public opinion guidance, but also carry forward the excellent traditional culture of the motherland and learn from the reasonable factors in traditional justice and interests for our use. Through the analysis of the traditional concept of justice and benefit, we find that although there are many extreme utilitarianism and extreme deontology in history, the moral concept of unity of justice and benefit and controlling benefit with justice has always been the main line of the development of the concept of justice and benefit. Although this view of justice and benefit does not completely exclude benefit in theory, the benefit it confirms is mainly the general benefit of the whole, which provides a good help for us to build a modern view of justice and benefit. In the traditional concept of justice and benefit, such viewpoints as "justice generates benefits", "righteousness should be appropriate", "just friendship does not seek benefits, and knowing what to do does nothing" and "benefits the people can be described as benefits" are of great value in emphasizing fair and reasonable competition, focusing on the overall situation and taking the interests of the party, the country and the nation as the starting point. Although the traditional concept of justice and benefit has passed thousands of years in time and space, it still has vitality and is worth inheriting and carrying forward. From the perspective of value orientation, the "righteousness" in the traditional view of justice and benefit belongs to moral norms and spiritual values, which is the natural principle of man-made people; "Profit" refers to material benefits, which belong to value. It focuses on the nature and extent to which people's behavior meets their own material needs, and it is to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages. "The debate between righteousness and benefit" is a debate about the relationship between moral ideal and material benefit. The positive and reasonable thought of valuing righteousness over interests and unifying righteousness and interests in his debate has undeniable contemporary value for us to strengthen the construction of two civilizations and handle the relationship between spiritual civilization and material civilization. In short, any social consciousness has historical inheritance, and the excellent traditional culture of the Chinese nation is a valuable spiritual wealth for our modernization. In today's China, where reform and opening up are going to the world, we must study and absorb the national cultural heritage dialectically, and we must never have a historical nihilistic attitude and completely abandon it. Although the traditional concept of justice and benefit has passed thousands of years, it still has important theoretical value for us to build a modern concept of justice and benefit and carry out the construction of two civilizations. Because only by adhering to the principle of the unity of justice and benefit oriented by interests can we mobilize the enthusiasm of different stakeholders for modernization, coordinate the specific differences and conflicts among many stakeholders, guide them to transcend personal interests and immediate interests, achieve the long-term interests of the country and the nation, and sublimate material values into spiritual values. Simply emphasizing righteousness or profit is not conducive to socialist modernization, and society will eventually deteriorate.