Business ethicists draw extensively on Aristotle’s work in defining the purpose of the business corporation. Insights from ancient authors can be valuable in illuminating contemporary issues, but we should be wary of enlisting their authority for our views without paying careful attention to what they might have intended by what they said in their own social and economic context. Business ethicists have argued that the business corporation should be a community within which its members can live a good life; that (...) its purpose should not be to maximise profits; and that it should integrate itself into a range of wider communities beyond its own boundaries and serve their interests. Aristotle would have agreed that the business corporation should not seek to make as much profit as possible, although he might have accepted that – in the light of modern developments in economic management - it should make enough profit to fund projects that would be beneficial to society. Aristotle’s view that the polis provided the setting in which people could best live a good life does not justify the claim that the business corporation can or should serve a similar purpose. Aristotle believed that people should strive for enough and not too much in several contexts, not only in acquiring wealth, but also in defining the size and scope of the community of which they should be members. Some expansive, contemporary views on the communities into which the business corporation should integrate itself are alien to Aristotle’s thinking. (shrink)

In thePolitics, Aristotle maintains, contrary to his predecessors, that there is a distinctive mode of authority that husbands should exercise over their wives. He even coins a word for it: γαμιϰή, ‘the marital art’ or ‘marital rule’ (Pol. 1.3, 1253b8–10; 1.12, 1259a37–9). Marital rule is supposed to differ from the authority that fathers have over their children and from the kind of rule that citizens exercise over one another. Yet it is not clear whether there is any conceptual space between (...) political and paternal rule for marital rule to occupy. Where fathers rule and children are ruled, citizens take turns ruling and being ruled. Husbands, however, either share their rule with their wives, or they do not. If they do not, then marital rule seems indistinct from paternal rule; if they do, then it seems indistinct from political rule. To add to the confusion, Aristotle says that husbands properly rule their wives politically, but without alternating in positions of ruling and being ruled. On its face, this idea seems flatly contradictory. Political rule just is shared, reciprocal rule, and so if the husband rules permanently and his wife is merely ruled, then his rule cannot be political. So Aristotle's own description of marital rule appears inconsistent, and in any case it is difficult to see how marital rule could have the distinctive character that he insists it does. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics V.6 Aristotle contrasts political justice with household justice, paternal justice, and despotic justice. My paper expands upon Aristotle’s sometimes enigmatic remarks about political justice through an examination of his account of justice within the oikia or ‘household’. Understanding political justice requires explicating the concepts of freedom and equality, but for Aristotle, the children and wife within the household are free people even if not citizens, and there exists proportionate equality between a husband and wife. Additionally, Aristotle’s articulation (...) and defence of political justice arises out of his examination of despotic justice in the first book of the Politics. Not only are the polis and the oikia similar insofar as they are associations, but Nicomachean Ethics VIII.9–11 suggests they are even isomorphic with respect to justice and friendship. Thus, in this paper I explore the relationships between father and son, husband and wife, master and slave, and between siblings in order to see what they tell us about Aristotle’s understanding of freedom, equality, and justice. (shrink)