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nydus/A History of Greek Economic ThoughtPublic

This volume provides a reinterpretation of Greek economic theory by examining the relationship between ancient thought and modern humanitarian economy. The text analyzes Greek economic ideas within the context of the contemporary economic environment and provides a bibliography of relevant scholarly works.

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER VII MINOR PHILOSOPHERS, CONTEMPORARIES OR SUCCESSORS OF PLATO AND ARISTOTLE

attitude of the philosophers toward manual labor.1006 His doctrine on money and exchange was also the negative teaching of the moralist, though his statements on these matters have special reference to an ideal future.1007 His attitude on the problem of distribution is not altogether clear, though he wrote a Republic,1008 in which he seems to have presented some communistic ideas. Like his followers, he looked to the time when the whole world should be one state, where artificial differences were no more, and all men were brothers.1009 His state is utopian and anarchistic, without temple, court, gymnasium, money, or exchange. All are to wear the same clothing, and there shall be no artificial modesty.1010 Community of wives, at least for the wise, was also probably among his utopian schemes,1011 though it is very unlikely that he held the doctrine in the crass form as reported.1012 His state is somewhat suggestive of the Christian ideal, as a unitary whole, a world-cosmos, united by love.1013

There is a peculiar mixture of individualistic and social conceptions in the philosophy of the Stoics. In their pictures of an ideal future world-state, they advanced beyond Plato and other thinkers, who limited their communities to the small city-state. In calling their state a “cosmos” also, they gave a positive social content to the narrow individualism of the Cynics.1014 Moreover, as seen above, their ideal undoubtedly contained some communistic elements. However, according to the fundamental tenet of Stoicism, as expressed by Zeno,1015 that only the wise can be free and citizens, we are still faced with the old duality and anti-socialistic ideal. The Stoics, like the Cynics, were after all essentially individualistic, and were probably believers in private ownership, though they dreamed of a future golden age of altruism, when private property would be no longer necessary.1016

Chrysippus, the greatest of the Stoics,1017 continued and expanded the principle that virtue is the only absolute good, and that all other things are indifferents, depending for their worth upon right use.1018 But since the wise alone are capable of right use of externals, they alone are truly

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