From the Stoics into Christian teaching and on into the Renaissance, luxury belonged in a moralised vocabulary of virtue, characterised by living the simple natural life and rational control of bodily desires. This framework was overturned; luxury was demoralised. Though the product of many causes over at least a couple of centuries, two background conditions or developments stand out. The first is the post-Galilean “revolution” in physics and the associated but fundamental rethinking of epistemology and ethics. Reason’s controlling and motivating force was rejected in favour of that role being played by passions or desires. The second development was a defence of commerce. This was defensive because it too had to combat the assumptions and prejudices of the Greek and Roman moralists who saw implicit in commerce conduct and values antipathetic to virtue. The defence had begun in the seventeenth century in pamphlets on “trade”, but what was decisive was a philosophical demoralisation of luxury as a source of individual and social corruption. Though begun earlier, this reevaluation achieved its definitive expression in the eighteenth century. At the heart of this shift was a defence of the modern world of commerce in which luxury was a positive force because it served to enhance social well-being, including the rightful enjoyment of material benefits by all.
...MoreBook Pierre-Yves Donzé; Roberts, Joanne; Pouillard, Véronique (2020) The Oxford handbook of luxury business.
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