This article explores a neglected area in political philosophy and moral economic theory: the origins of normative economic theorizing in classical Greek philosophy. That theory is a critique of the market and the acquisitive life in light of an alternative location of the economy in the oikos or household oriented towards the securing of the good life. Its core elements of the well-ordered community, the good life, and of the foreignness of economic activity to these ends are analyzed here. The article concludes with a critical appraisal of this theory, and an examination of its value for political philosophers concerned to find a non-rights based approach to the economy.

The central question guiding this essay is: what does Marx's socialism owe to classical antiquity? Underlying this question is the thesis that Marx's studies of classical Greece supply the angle of vision necessary to bring to light the hallmark of his conception of the socialist polity. The argument challenges a widespread interpretation of the connection between antiquity and socialism in Marx's work—that his socialist vision takes its bearings from the Aristotelian understanding of the relationship between necessity and leisure. In Marx's view, the fundamental legacy of antiquity was the notion of freedom as masterlessness. The roots of this legacy are in the political experience of the democratic polis, not in Aristotle's reflections on the ideal household. The core of Marx's project, then, is not to open a realm of freedom beyond necessity, but rather to create spaces for democratic action within the realm of necessity itself, to ensure that work is free and compatible with leisured activities.

The article consists chiefly in an examination of the Republic, but that examination attempts to determine the place of the Republic in relation to Plato's other works (especially the Laws and the Statesman) as well as their place in relation to it. This comparative effort permits a more precise specification than would otherwise be possible of the most important questions which are raised in those works and of the intention of the author in treating those questions as he does.

Several recent scholars have raised afresh the question of what Aristotle meant in Politics 1 by the statement that men are “by nature” political, that is, are political animals. This article addresses this quandary by reference to Aristotle's psychology and his notion of political education. It is argued that by concentrating on Aristotle's theory of human locomotion and its implications for moral choice, we may identify the relation he conceived between the polis and human nature. Specifically, the ability of humans to live according to their natures requires the systematic education afforded by the laws and institutions of the polis.

The article examines two different types of “tolerant” dialogues, represented by Desiderius Erasmus and Jean Bodin. Erasmus offers a traditional conception of dialogue, in which the speakers are engaged in a common search for truth. This search for truth justifies toleration. To discover truth, the speakers must be free to question the other speakers' views, as well as their own. And they must respect each other because civility promotes the discovery of truth. Bodin, by contrast, presents an alternative version of the tolerant dialogue in his Colloquium heptaplomeres, a dialogue between representatives of seven different religions. While the Erasmian dialogue presupposes that (1) there is a single truth and that (2) the greater the consensus, the more successful the dialogue, in Bodin's Colloquium, the speakers do not pursue a common truth. Rather, they offer up their own particular versions of truth, unwilling to change their positions. The speakers do not agree on the truth because truth—especially religious truth—is complex, and each speaker represents a different facet of that multifaceted truth. And though the speakers remain firm in their initial convictions, they gain from the dialogue a clearer perception of their own opinions. By comparing their views with one another, the speakers come to better understand their separate truths, the sum of which constitutes the whole truth.