On Aristotle's Natural Limit

C. Tyler DesRoches

History of Political Economy, 2014, vol. 46, issue 3, 387-407

Abstract: Among scholars of ancient economic thought, it is widely recognized that Aristotle established an upper limit to money-making. This “natural limit†has been variously construed, with some claiming that it might be settled independently of Aristotle’s ethical theory. This essay defends the contrary thesis: Aristotle’s natural limit is inextricably tied to his account of human flourishing. I also argue that, for Aristotle, a human life committed to money-making is incompatible with achieving eudaimonia. Why? For Aristotle, money-making as an end in itself is endemic to the life of pleasure, not the good life. Moreover, the unchecked pursuit of evermore money is likely to crowd out other intrinsically valuable goods, such as friendship, agency, and autonomy. Finally, from the standpoint of Aristotle’s virtue ethics, wealth acquisition beyond the natural limit is considered to be a vice, not a virtue.

Keywords: Aristotle; money-making (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hope.dukejournals.org/content/46/3/387.full.pdf+html link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hop:hopeec:v:46:y:2014:i:3:p:387-407

Access Statistics for this article

History of Political Economy is currently edited by Kevin D. Hoover

More articles in History of Political Economy from Duke University Press Duke University Press 905 W. Main Street, Suite 18B Durham, NC 27701.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Center for the History of Political Economy Webmaster ().