La «chrematistik» nella Politica di Aristotele: articolazioni concettuali e ricadute etico-antropologiche

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the two fundamental treatments of the complex and very broad notion of chrematistiké (money-making) in Aristotle’s Politics, in its links with the notion of oikonomia, focussing, particularly, on Politics I, 8-11.

The two different arts of money-making are based on two very different psychological attitudes:

1)      in a first case, a desire is channeled, managed and organized by practical wisdom with a view to a further end;

2)      in the second case, a desire is an end unto itself, insatiable, boundless and contrary to the commands of practical wisdom.

The conclusion is that, for the Stagirite, wealth is not an evil, nor, in itself, is the pursuit of wealth, that is, the art of money-making, because if it is rightly organized and oriented in function of the end, it constitutes the conditio sine qua non of a life that is good, ordered and happy for the individual and for the city.