Economics and the Public Good

Very few people who write about the Ethics or Politics focus on the economic aspect of Aristotle’s work. Scholars want to talk about happiness and virtue, the contemplative life and friendship, Aristotle’s treatment of regimes and so on. John Antonio Pascarella talks about all those things, but also frames them in terms of a theme that’s clearly there in Aristotle’s work but that has remained largely invisible until now. It’s about time someone did it.

-- Eric Salem, St. John's College

There is much to admire in Pascarella’s engaging treatment of Aristotle’s Politics and Ethics: the loving attention to Greek terms, the wide-ranging inquiry into the money-making art, the welcome emphasis on individual choice, the musical interweaving of recurring themes, and the culminating reflections on how philosophic logos serves the ends of happiness and the public good.

-- Peter Kalkavage, St. John's College

This original and thought-provoking study integrates Aristotle’s economic thought into his broader political theory, showing how economics serves the purposes of politics, while giving us a fuller picture of his political thought. Pascarella’s discussion of the connection between economics and friendship for Aristotle, for example, is especially eye-opening. While the desire for wealth may be without end, he shows, human desire ends in the good, politically and philosophically.

-- Mary Nichols, Baylor Univer