Between Justice and Accumulation: Aristotle on Currency and Reciprocity

Abstract

For Aristotle, a just political community has to find similarity in difference and foster habits of reciprocity. Conventionally, speech and law have been seen to fulfill this role. This article reconstructs Aristotle’s conception of currency ( nomisma) as a political institution of reciprocal justice. By placing Aristotle’s treatment of reciprocity in the context of the ancient politics of money, currency emerges not merely as a medium of economic exchange but also potentially as a bond of civic reciprocity, a measure of justice, and an institution of ethical deliberation. Reconstructing this account of currency ( nomisma) in analogy to law ( nomos) recovers the hopes Aristotle placed in currency as a necessary institution particular to the polis as a self-governing political community striving for justice. If currency was a foundational institution, it was also always insufficient, likely imperfect, and possibly tragic. Turned into a tool for the accumulation of wealth for its own sake, currency becomes unjust and a serious threat to any political community. Aristotelian currency can fail precisely because it contains an important moment of ethical deliberation. This political significance of currency challenges accounts of the ancient world as bifurcated between oikos and polis and encourages contemporary political theorists to think of money as a constitutional project that can play an important role in improving reciprocity across society.

Beyond Governance and Prevention: On the Use(s) of Aristotle for Theorizing Money’s Politics

“…Nomisma , currency, is related to nemô (to distribute, deal out), nemesis (distribution of what is due) and nomos (convention, law, order, custom) (Reden 1995, 177). As Eich shows, the connection of nomisma to law underscores money’s connection to and importance for the polis : both are human-constructed features of political order that work to facilitate a well-functioning collective life (Eich 2019, 368–9; Foucault 2015, 133–66; Reden 1995, 174–5). Fourth-century Greek coins were minted by city-states, and even Solon in the early sixth century, as Foucault noted in the 1970s, weighed how to use money to bring about sociopolitical change (2015, 133–66).…”

“…This task is complicated by the ambiguity that characterizes Aristotle’s account. This ambiguity is captured, in my view, by recent scholarship that views Aristotle as a resource for thinking about ways to better and/or realign it with democratic politics (Eich 2019). This re(view) sits alongside the contemporary theory that treats Aristotle only as a critic of money.…”

“…The first turns to Aristotle to theorize money as a valuable but fraught political institution. Stefan Eich (2019Eich ( , 2022 has recently offered a contribution to this approach, which is at least partially indebted to the vision of the governance of monetary orders sketched out by John Maynard Keynes (2012aKeynes ( , 2012bKeynes ( , 2012c). 1 Eich finds in Aristotle a careful but positive case for money: when governed well, it can produce and promote social relations of justice and reciprocity across a community (2020, 371-3).…”

Small Money Donating as Democratic Politics

“…How, and under what conditions, do putatively economic (i.e., market or money-based) activities function politically -and even democratically? Scholars have examined this question in the context of consumer boycotts (Bröckerhoff and Qassoum 2019), strikes (Gourevitch 2018), and market exchange (Eich 2019), among others. I examine it in the context of small money political donating.…”