Abstract
How does Aristotle conceptualize the relationship between ethics and economy? In this article I attempt to answer this question based on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and his Politics to show how his virtue ethics connect to the economy in the polis. My aim is to show how Aristotle claims a unity of ethics in form of eudaimonia and political framework. It is within that unity of ethics and politics that the economy has an important but limited function. In my reading of Aristotle I follow Koslowski’s interpretation of Aristotle. Aristotle’s practical philosophy is soaked in metaphysics. His idea of the good (eudaimonia) transcends empirical conditions of life. This article is based on the author’s ongoing ph.d. project.
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Notes
- 1.
This is true although over time many of Aristotle’s works have been lost.
- 2.
In many aspects of this short text I follow Koslowski’s interpretation of Aristotle, especially in the key idea of the social (ethical–political) embedment of the economy. Koslowski was an outstanding German philosopher who focused on normative ethics while seemingly effortlessly connecting philosophy to economic theories in the twentieth and early twenty-first century. Aristotle was an important influence to his theory.
- 3.
Plato, but also Hegel claim a unity of theory and practice. For Hegel the absolute idea is dialectic. There is a continuity from Aristotle’s god to Hegel’s idea of the absolute, the spirit that unfolds and becomes self-aware. The theory of objective spirit is between the absolute and the subjective spirit. Objective spirit is about the sphere of life that humans created themselves. Historic forms such as the state, law and morality are part of it. In the nineteenth and twentieth century Simmel (1900) will adapt his cultural philosophy as theory of objective spirit.
- 4.
In comparison to Aristotle, Plato’s works were not translated until the fifteenth century though.
- 5.
In the age of enlightenment, Kant will reject any eudaimonistic ethics as material ethics and will replace it with his formal ethics. Since the eighteenth century it has become common to juxtapose Kant and Aristotle. But it is reasonable to look for points in common between Aristotle and Kant (see [3, pp. 221–242]). Only in the twentieth century will there be attempts at combining formal ethics of Kant with material ethics i.e. Max Scheler.
- 6.
Is the connection between ethics and the economy also not at the heart of business ethics in modernity? By following Koslowski’s interpretation of Aristotle I believe it is theories of business ethics which need and embedment of economy to culture (politics and ethics). That is one of the reasons why Aristotle is so relevant for mankind, also nowadays.
- 7.
While within the given framework I will not get in detail into the (otherwise important) question to which degree Aristotle does Plato justice in portraying and rejecting his idea of the good and of the one, it should be noted that Aristotle does in a way oversimplify and distort Plato’s idea of the good by focusing on an interpretation of the middle Plato (the archetype-image distinction).
- 8.
Aristotle is against the idea of the Eleatics: This leads us to the beginnings of philosophy. The Eleatics were Presocratics. Parmenides was the Eleatics’ most well known proponent. The main idea of the Eleatics is that of an eternal and unchanging being. Aristotle rejects the Eleatics’ main idea because all thinkers who talked about the unity and immutability of the world do not talk about nature at all. Nothing follows for physics and in an analog way nothing follows for ethics. In a similar way in which Aristotle criticizes the Eleatics, he also criticizes Plato. (see Aristotle, Met. III, 4; Aristotle Phys. I).
- 9.
This difference between Plato and Aristotle is famously reflected in Raffael’s fresque The School of Athens (1511). It pays hommage to Ancient Greece as the birthplace of Western philosophy.
- 10.
Aristotle’s metaphysical theory should be taken into account by contemporary neo-aristotelian thinkers who want to get rid of the metaphysical aspects and the idea of the good within the ethical dimension of Aristotle’s philosophy (see [2, p. 88]).
- 11.
Although the word eudaimonia typically gets translated as happiness to English, happiness is a misleading translation, suggesting hedonism. This is true especially in regard to the Anglo-Saxon importance of happiness which is protected by the US constitution (pursuit of happiness). “The good life” is a better translation for eudaimonia.
- 12.
Famously, Hegel ends his Science of Logic (Wissenschaft der Logik) with the Absolute Spirit by quoting Aristotle’s self-thinking deity.
- 13.
Aristotle’s approach to potency and actuality can be described as dialectic.
- 14.
But friendship is something the homo oeconomicus would not be able to develop or to uphold (see Rümelin 2011).
- 15.
Only Hobbes and Mandeville will give up at the Aristotelian principle of subsistence (see [5, pp. 32–35]). For Hobbes, the striving for lust is eternal, there is no summum bonum (see Hobbes, Leviathan, Pt. I, Chap. IX, 59–67).
- 16.
At the dawn of modernity Hobbes is a key thinker who explicitly criticizes Aristotle. According to Hobbes Aristotle’s ethics, politics and metaphysics are nothing but absurdities (see Hobbes, Leviathan, Pt. IV, Chap. 46, 373–384). Hobbes rejects Aristoteles’ (positive) idea of man as zoon politikon and replaces it with a (negative) self-interested idea of man. He will replace Aristotle’s zoon politikon with the first contractualist theory. While Aristotle shows how the polis is constituted by social relationships, contractualist theories start with already developed individuals. Decisions now become something calculated and thinking is supposed to follow mathematics. In the twentieth century the homo oeconomicus will rise. Homann, an influential homo oeconomicus proponent will explicitly connect to Hobbes’ self-interested idea of man and idea of mathematization of decision making and ethics. Moral behavior now needs to pay off economically (Homann 2005). Homann reverses Aristotle’s relation of ethics and economy.
- 17.
Translation by the author (D.B).
- 18.
This development and its effect on the culture of modernity will become the big topic for Simmel’s great opus magnus, Philosophy of money (Philosophie des Geldes) in 1900.
- 19.
Academic research has not reached a conclusion yet in the question of whether the roots of money are to be found rather in trade and exchange or rather in a religious sphere. Etymologically the German word “Geld” is not derived from “gold” but from the Old High German word “gelt”. This stands for a religious offering. The verb “geltan” stands for both “sacrifice” and to “pay back” (see [9, p. 7f]).
- 20.
Adam Smith will reject the idea of people doing activities for the joy of the activity in itself as the main driving force in humans. Instead, Smith will claim that people need to make a calculation of benefits and costs and to maximize their benefits and minimize their costs. (see [7, p. 13f]) This isolated idea, that, considering his ethics, does not do Adam Smith full justice, will later become the main idea of the neoclassic school of thought and their idea of man, the homo oeconomicus. The idea of work will shift from the character and virtues within the community (antiquity) to work for profit on the market economy (modernity).
- 21.
While the focus of this short text lies on Aristotle’s connection between ethics and economy, the complex topos of modernity can only be touched upon shortly.
- 22.
Although there has been a vast accumulation of total wealth in the last two centuries, there is an ongoing disparity between the rich and the poor. This is true although Aristotle already stressed the importance of a strong middle class for long term social peace (see Pol. IV, Chaps. 11–16).
- 23.
As brilliantly illustrated in Goethe’s Faust, the project of modernity is the increasing domination of nature. Is it possible that in the transition from modernism to postmodernism the more modest project is to find a balance between nature and technology (see [10, pp. 18–38; 2002)?
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Braunstein, D. (2023). About the Relationship Between Ethics and the Economy in Aristotle. In: Giovagnoli, R., Lowe, R. (eds) The Logic of Social Practices II. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 68. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39113-2_10
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