histofthought1

The first philosopher-economists: the Greeks 7Syracuse, while no less than nine of Plato's students succeeded in establishingthemselves as tyrants over Greek city-states.While Aristotle was politically more moderate than Plato, his aristocraticdevotion to the polis was fully as evident. Aristotle was born of an aristocraticfamily in the Macedonian coastal town of Stagira, and entered Plato'sAcademy as a student at the age of 17, in 367 BC. There he remained untilPlato's death 20 years later, after which he left Athens and eventually returnedto Macedonia, where he joined the court of King Philip and tutoredthe young future world conqueror, Alexander the Great. After Alexanderascended the throne, Aristotle returned to Athens in 335 BC and establishedhis own school of philosophy at the Lyceum, from which his great workshave come down to us as lecture notes written by himself or transcribed byhis students. When Alexander died in 323 BC, the Athenians felt free to venttheir anger at Macedonians and their sympathizers, and Aristotle was oustedfrom the city, dying shortly thereafter.Their aristocratic bent and their lives within the matrix of an oligarchicpolis had a greater impact on the thought of the Socratics than Plato's variousexcursions into theoretical right-wing collectivist Utopias or in his students'practical attempts at establishing tyranny. For the social status and politicalbent of the Socratics coloured their ethical and political philosophies andtheir economic views. Thus, for both Plato and Aristotle, 'the good' for manwas not something to be pursued by the individual, and neither was theindividual a person with rights that were not to be abridged or invaded by hisfellows. For Plato and Aristotle, 'the good' was naturally not to be pursuedby the individual but by the polis. Virtue and the good life were polis- ratherthan individual-oriented. All this means that Plato's and Aristotle's thoughtwas statist and elitist to the core, a statism which unfortunately permeated'classical' (Greek and Roman) philosophy as well as heavily influencingChristian and medieval thought. Classical 'natural law' philosophy thereforenever arrived at the later elaboration, first in the Middle Ages and then in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries, of the 'natural rights' of the individualwhich may not be invaded by man or by government.In the more strictly economic realm, the statism of the Greeks means theusual aristocratic exaltation of the alleged virtues of the military arts and ofagriculture, as well as a pervasive contempt for labour and for trade, andconsequently of money-making and the seeking and earning of profit. ThusSocrates, openly despising labour as unhealthy and vulgar, quotes the king ofPersia to the effect that by far the noblest arts are agriculture and war. AndAristotle wrote that no good citizens 'should be permitted to exercise any lowmechanical employment or traffic, as being ignoble and destructive to virtue.'Furthermore, the Greek elevation of the polis over the individual led totheir taking a dim view of economic innovation and entrepreneurship. The