Thank you, Hannah Hughes, for such a thoughtful question.
As I explore the question, I will assume that by ‘wealthy’, you mean something like having much more money than would be necessary to live without a constant worry about one’s financial situation. I think that there are two moral perspectives to take into account here: the first relates to what is virtuous or vicious for a person to desire in life; the second relates to the consequences of our actions for other people.
According to the first perspective, we may wonder to what extent being rich adds value to our lives, compared to having enough money. In this vein, various ancient philosophers, such as Epicurus, claimed that we actually do not need more than what is necessary to fulfil our basic material needs (e.g. hunger, health, shelter) to live ‘the good life’, that is, the sort of reflective and virtuous way of life that leads to true happiness. This could mean that the aspiration to be wealthy is a vain distraction from what really matters: for instance, cultivating our wisdom or taking care of others. Of course, this is quite an ascetic view of virtue and happiness. You may ask, even if the desire to be rich does not lead us to virtue, does that make it a vicious desire?
Wanting unlimited access to expensive things, like luxury travel or products, is perhaps not the deepest motivation in life, but that alone does not make it wrong. There are, however, other motivations that prove to be morally problematic. For instance, if you take pride in having more things than others, and if you wish to be rich in order to win a competition of status, then it seems that you are looking to improve your condition at the expense of others. This looks like a bad aspiration, although I think that it is up to other people not to play along; reflection on the actual value of money may well prevent it.
So far, we have examined the character traits of a person, whom we judge to be more or less virtuous depending on which side we take. But we should also consider your question from another angle, that of the way our actions can affect others. Here, I would say that the decisive element lies in the question of how one intends to become rich. We all have examples in mind of wealth built on exploitation, fraud, and/or damage to the environment. The notion of badness is certainly relevant if my choices have a negative impact on others’ quality of life. This is because we all have an equal moral claim to live in decent conditions, and to pursue our own life aspirations, provided we do not harm others. In this sense, the question is really about whether it is possible to become rich in today’s world without any such effect on others. I do not have the answer to this question myself, but I think it points to an important reason why many people tend to be sceptical towards the aspiration for wealth: if this aspiration is not accompanied by a moral concern for how it is to be accumulated, there is indeed a real risk for it to turn into a bad one.
What do you think? Is it bad to aspire to be wealthy? Let us know in the comments.
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I studied philosophy at the universities of Lausanne, Vienna and Bern, and I am currently finishing my PhD thesis on the concept of political consent (what does it mean to consent in politics?). My areas of specialization lie in early modern philosophy and contemporary political philosophy. I also have a keen interest in ethics, Ancient philosophy, and public philosophy. Thomas Hobbes would be my favourite philosopher, not because I agree with all of his conclusions, but because I love the clarity, precision and comprehensiveness of his writings.