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Back to Subjects - Economics

Aristotle

Aristotle Aristotle was born in 384 BC, at Stagira, in Macedonia, the son of a physician to the royal court. At the age of 17, he went to Athens to study at Plato's Academy. He remained there for about 20 years, as a student and then as a teacher. When Plato died in 347BC, Aristotle moved to Assos, a city in Asia Minor, to counsel Hermias, the ruler. After Hermias was captured and executed by the Persians in 345BC, Aristotle went to Pella, the Macedonian capital, where he became the tutor of the king's young son Alexander, later known as Alexander the Great. In 335, when Alexander became king, Aristotle returned to Athens and established his own school, the Lyceum. Upon the death of Alexander in 323BC, strong anti-Macedonian feeling developed in Athens, and Aristotle retired to a family estate in Euboea . He died there the following year. Apart from a few fragments in the works of later writers, the transcripts of his lectures have been completely lost. Only a few brief excerpts of some of his technical notes have survived. However, the texts on which Aristotle's reputation rests are largely based on his lecture notes for carefully outlined courses, which were collected and arranged by later editors. Among the texts are dissertations on: logic, called Organon; natural sciences, called Physics; nature, scope and properties of being, called Metaphysics; and ethics, called Nicomachean Ethics (dedicated to his son Nicomachus). Some other works include his Rhetoric, his Poetics, his Politics, and his Economics. Aristotle's philosophy laid its principal stress on biology. Aristotle regarded the world as made up of individuals (substances) occurring in fixed natural kinds (species). Each individual has its built-in specific pattern of development and grows toward proper self-realization as a specimen of its type. Growth, purpose, and direction are thus built into nature. The most distinguishing of Aristotle’s philosophic contributions was a new notion of causality. Each thing or event, he thought, has more than one "reason" that helps to explain what, why, and where it is. Therefore something can be better understood when its causes can be stated in specific terms rather than in general terms. Economics is a word made up from two Greek words “oikos”, meaning household, and “nomos”, meaning to manage. From the start, then, the word “economic” was associated with the close supervision and management necessary to ensure provisions to a community. The management concerned, however, was that of the “household”, so that “economic” was used as equivalent to “domestic”, and economics in ancient and mediaeval times was a term used to distinguish the economy of the household (oikos) from that of the city (polis). For Aristotle, therefore, Economics and Politics meant two different studies and arts. (Boland, par. 2) According to Aristotle, we should avoid using the expression “managing” the economy when we mean the political economy. The public community is not a household “run” by the government. The relationship between the government and the community is different from that between the head of the household and the household itself. However, we should not look at the political economy as something which exists independently of human intervention. Human social affairs, including the provisioning of economic goods, are dependent on good government. Simply, the government of a state is not like the management of a household. It is a ruling of those who are free and able to provide for themselves (given good laws and institutions – which is the governments business); who therefore have their own property and have responsibility for the management of their own affairs. The role of the government should be supplementary, not managerial. Aristotle wrote about problems of wealth, property, and trade. He was prejudiced against commerce, feeling that to live by trade was adverse. The Romans borrowed their economic ideas from Aristotle and showed the same contempt for trade. During the Middle Ages, the economic ideas of the Roman Catholic Church were expressed in the canon law, which condemned usury (the taking of interest for money loaned) and regarded commerce as inferior to agriculture. “In the 20th century a new appreciation has developed of Aristotle's method and its relevance to education, literary criticism, the analysis of human action, and political analysis” (Brumbaugh, sec. 11). Bibliography: Bibliography Boland, D. G. “Economics and Aristotle’s Division of the Sciences.” Universitas. Vol. 1 No. 2 (1997): 5 pars. 02 February 2000 http://www.cts.org.au/1997/aristotl.htm. Brumbaugh, Robert S. “Aristotle.” Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 99. CD-ROM. Vers. 8.29.00.0912. Redmond, Washington: Microsoft Corporation, 1998: 11 secs. Lekachman, Robert. “Economics.” Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 99. CD-ROM. Vers. 8.29.00.0912. Redmond, Washington: Microsoft Corporation, 1998: 19 secs.

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