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Echoes

Greek Economics: The Ancient Edition

In his new column Peter Adamson wonders what the ancient Greeks had to say about economics.

It’s a rare philosophical argument that is actually decisive. Good thing too, since otherwise we philosophers could be out of a job pretty quickly. But I think that Aristotle did manage to give an incontrovertible argument against the proposal that the good life lies in the acquisition of wealth. Whatever else we say about the happy life, he observed, happiness is surely something we desire for its own sake. You don’t seek to become happy in order to achieve some further goal.

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