Avarice is covetousness or greed. It is a desire to possess more than one has need or use for or excessive love of money. Avarice may extend to power and to various material possessions. People desire wealth because it is a means of acquiring other material comforts. Avarice is a morbid excess of the propensity to seek wealth.
Desire for modest means of gratifying one’s minimum needs and comforts is not a vice. Without minimum material means, no one can meet the physiological,social and cultural needs of his family. A householder is under an obligation to provide for the needs of his family. In Hindu philosophy, Artha in this sense is a dharma or a duty which a householder has to pursue. Without adequate savings, one cannot take care of himself and his wife in old age. Further, possession of wealth is a means of helping others. In the absence of money, many acts of beneficence and charity become impossible. This is the rationale of the Sanskrit saying: “Dhanmulam idam jagat” – money lies at the base of this world.
To start with, money is desired as a means of satisfying other desires. But as time goes on, money making becomes a habit by itself and gets detached from the original aim of seeking gratifications. Instead of being a means, it becomes an end in itself. This is the typical psychology of the miser depicted so often in literature. In a miser, money making becomes a compulsive obsession and gets separated from its instrumental use. It dominates one’s whole character, becomes the sole aim of one’s activity.
To beginwith, an individual seekswealththroughlegitimatemeans. No moral stigma attachesto even great wealth which is earned through business acumen or simple good fortune. However, more often than not, single minded pursuit of wealth deflects people from the virtuous path. People may
want to get rich quickly by fair or foul means. They resort to fraud, extortion, deceit and injustice. The recent spate of scams can be traced to unscrupulous pursuit of wealth. Avaricious men become selfish, live only for themselves, and are always on the lookout for means of making money.
Moral teachers have consistently denounced greed. Wealth beyond what one needs for comfortable living is a superfluity. As Gandhi observes, wealth is trust which the rich hold on behalf of the poor. The rich are under a moral obligation to share with the poor. Such a view may seem too idealistic for any society. But it is one way of reducing social tensions. For great inequality of wealth has propelled many revolutions like the French and Russian revolutions. Much of socialist thought has its origins in excessive concentration of wealth and gross income inequalities in a society. RH Tawny, a noted socialist writer, described capitalism as “an acquisitive society”.
In a discussion ofgreed as an individual vice, we cannotdiscussthemeans asocietyshouldadopt for ensuring economic justice. For it is a matter of public policy. But at an individual level, charity, liberality and philanthropy are virtues which help in overcoming avarice. One of the main virtues of Aristotle’s magnanimous man is liberality or generosity. Donating money to needy or to worthy causes is extolled as a virtue in many literary works. As an example, we may recall the characters Karna and King Bali from Indian mythology. To their credit, many industrialists and businessmen have contributed generously to charities.