Aristotle and Moneymaking: The Roads Not Taken

Discussants:

• Jonny Thakkar (Swarthmore College)

The primary goal of this paper is to consider the relationship between the critique of moneymaking that Aristotle develops in Book I of the Politics and the rest of his social and political theory. I argue that there are several places where Aristotle ought to have drawn out the consequences of the former for the latter, and that his failure to do so reveals something about the deep structure of his way of thinking about political life.

In short, Aristotle’s account of economic life is constrained by his political ontology, according to which a polity consists in a particular arrangement and distribution of offices. But the stakes are not limited to the interpretation of Aristotle.

First, moneymaking is now so integral to social and political life that it is salutary to recover the perspective of a great thinker for whom it appeared strange and foreign in important ways. Second, the paper demonstrates the abiding importance of political ontology—an understanding of what counts as a political structure, activity or phenomenon—for political science, whether empirical or normative.

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Where
On Zoom

When

• Tue, November 8: 8pm–9.30pm (New York)
• Wed, November 9: 10am–11:30am (Sydney)

The Zoom link
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The Critical Antiquities Workshop is an initiative of the Critical Antiquities Network (CAN) at the University of Sydney. CAN, co-directed by Ben Brown and Tristan Bradshaw, connects scholars working at the intersection of ancient traditions and contemporary critical theory. 

Classics and Ancient History is part of the School of Humanities at the University of Sydney.

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