Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, Kant, and Marx all contributed to the widespread cultural atmosphere that demeans commerce. Since a major goal of commerce is to satisfy those very physical needs such as food, shelter, and comfort, by this definition, business cannot possibly be viewed as morally noteworthy or deserving of respect. The spiritual is exalted, the material is decried, and never the twain shall meet. This unwarranted dualism has been extremely destructive. We are not disembodied ghosts, literally better off when dead and in some mythical heaven.
Intellectual pursuits are integral to human thriving.
Philosophers as mentioned above, producers of popular entertainment such as Charles Dickens, Arthur Miller, John Grisham, and Oliver Stone, and economists such as John Keynes, John Galbraith, and even Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker and Milton Friedman have contributed to the low moral status of business. Some of these directly attack the free market. Others such as Becker and Friedman divorce morality from business in the mistaken belief that to introduce ethics into our economic understanding must necessarily and willy-nilly lead to the imposition of one brand of morality over all others. This latter attitude arises from a deterministic view of human action. The scientism of too many modern economists reduces people to robots or automatons unable to do other than what they must do.