During the early days of industry in England, Adam Smith promised that if the free market could function the country would be rich. As a result, economics has been treated as tactics in the governance of the state and participates in politics and society. Ricardo turned to stabilizing the monetary market in support of the new capitalist class. John Stuart Mill saw Ricardo’s approach as being tantamount to making economics not only a science about production, distribution, exchange and consumption, but also a professional skill.

However, the main problem is that when economists view the economic situation, they pay attention to the rationality and com-pleteness of a theory rather than to the concrete economic situation. The former is a theoretical construction, while the latter is a concrete situation. Theoretically, the tendency is manifest in the history of Western economics, whose classical economics reflected rationalism.

In the 20th century economics turned into an application of mathematics which had little use for an understanding of the struc-ture and function of the economic object. In fact, contemporary economics has fallen into a mathematical formalism which ge-nerates the scientistic "economistic fallacy". The universal prin-ciple is established by an abstraction which takes account of economic activity only in terms of a "formal model", without con-cern with how best to distribute resources and to analyze economic action. Contemporary economists recognize this problem. In his Methodology of Economics, Mark Blaug says that the error of economics is that the postulation of economic action is completely arbitrary and indeed fabricated, because economists lack an his-torical consciousness. Thus, the economic subject is isolated from the concrete economic situation. As a result of abandoning the eco-nomic subject, which is a conditioned, social being possessing vital value, formalism lacks the essence of the economic. Hence, economics should free itself from formalism and recombine economics with life value.

When phenomenology as a method is applied to an analysis of the crisis of Western civilization, one feature of which is scien-tism, it criticizes this attempt of scientism in economics to escape from the human situation and abandon the essence of being. In so far as phenomenology criticizes economics, its task is to discover the essence of the concepts of profit efficiency, GNP, market etc., and to grasp the condition of the economic subject and the meaning of economic world. In the phenomenological analysis the crisis of Western civilization is the substantiation of scientific reason and a corresponding abandonment of the essence of the human spirit and of the character of meaning. In economics, this is to naturalize and objectify the concept and theory of economics. This can be illus-trated by a phenomenological search for the essence of "market" and "economic value".

Market. The concept of market had a particular meaning in Greek Philosophy. Aristotle regarded "in the market" as the realm of position which comprised a particular place and a concrete condition. The contemporary economist considers the "market" as a realm of free trade, with no boundary, position or condition in which the economic subject trades and profits. In order to profit, all activities must be rational acts which naturalize and objectify. Hence, naturalism and objectivism in economics are deduced from the notion of "market", because if the latter has no limits then all economic activities are natural.

The economic spirit relates to the meaning of the market as a presupposition of economic action. In Greek philosophy, Socrates thought of the market as a fair in which people discoursed and exchanged views, and in which there was a logos. In that particular space, the person both is confined by the concrete conditions and pursues the logos which is the goal of life. In contrast, in the process of buying and selling, the person is not able to do what he wants, to naturalize and objectify, but has a duty to pursue a logos appearing as material success or substantialized into an object. So one never has a goal for one’s action, instead in order to reach one’s goal and realize one’s own value one pursues the logos. Hence, economic action itself possesses no meaning and goal; only if reinserted into the process of life value can it regain its meaning. This ignorance of value and abandonment of logos constitute an "objectivism" and "naturalism" which is an abandonment of the essence of spirit.

Economic value. If the open market corresponds to the eco-nomic subject, value judgements have no proper inner basis, but depend only on the outer abstract economic criteria of a scientism. This substitutes pragmatic value for the inner value, reversing the relation between life and pragmatic values. Marx wrote that in the market the person became a commodity. "How to sell yourself" becomes the common question. This phenomenon is based not on the essence of life, but on the economic criteria of profitability. Scheler also criticized this degeneration and reversal. One must earn ever more money in order to gain one’s living. If a company is successful, it must continually increase its profits. The degree of life or the development of a company is expressed by a rapid increase in quantity. In this the person does not have one’s own mode of existence, but in social terms one is treated as an object or a thing.

The economic criteria do not recognize a person, because a person is not an object or a thing, but a way of relating with the world or a concrete mode of existence. Hence, the person is not determined solely by its economic mode, but bears the entire relationship between oneself and the world. Hence, economics needs to abandon mathematical formalism and return to the life world in which it is cultivated, for it is the life world (Lebenswelt) that is the foundation of market and value judgments.

Such criticisms from phenomenology do not allow us to return to the Greek world, but remind us of our own mode of existence. If this view be correct, we need to attend to the economic reality which is based on existence, rather than a mere theory of economics become an economism.

what determines the production is no longer physical human strength, but the application of a high level of technology, which increases the proportion of mental work. Now in some developed countries, the proportion of mental work versus physical labor approximates 1:1, while the value created by the former far exceeds that created by the latter. Therefore, the application of high level technology will reduce or eliminate the physical inferiority of women in production, and enable women to give play to their superiority in patience, carefulness and nimbleness. This is obviously indicated in developed countries: in the U.K. women have more job opportunities than men.

Second, the operational mode of a modernized economy enables women to choose the job suited to them. The open, dynamic pattern of the economy enables women to find positions of their own in a wider range of social activity. In developed countries, women are exploring molding ideal personalities. They are not the traditional good mothers and wives who sacrifice themselves in a closed family context, nor are they the so-called strong women of industrial times. They develop their own standard and hope to get a valuable job with flexible hours and a good location; they hope to take account of both family and career. Some women give up work and become housewives while bring up their children, but their return to the family is for the purpose of educating their children and giving their children the natural love of a mother so that the children can grow soundly. In the meantime, they engage in further studies to give play to their potentialities or to develop their interests, so that they will be more competitive when they take up a career after their children have grown up. Such exploration is praiseworthy under the conditions of a modernized economy; it advances the civilization of the whole society.

Third, the high educational level of society, the high degree of democracy and the modernization and socialization of house work due to the modernization of the economy will enable women to elevate their quality as human beings, to demonstrate their personality, to strengthen their competitive power in social life, and to realize a sound personality. There will be a day when we need no longer emphasize that the male and the female differ and recognize that there is something common to both sexes. Then the peculiar and varied beauty of the character and personality of the female will demonstrate itself naturally in the world.

Of course, molding the female personality depends not merely on the progress of economy and is not merely a matter for women alone. It depends on the consistent efforts of the whole society; this requires theoretical work by scholars to find the incompatibilities and in time eliminate them.