Jean Bodin on Oeconomics and Politics

Becker, Anna

doi:10.1080/01916599.2013.796163

Cited by 23 publications

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“…(Bodin, 1576, 8) For Bodin, states were not isomorphic to households since each state was composed of multiple families. Still, both were ruled by a pater familias (Becker, 2014).…”

Section: The Medieval and Early Modern Conceptualizationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paternalism and the Public Household

Desmarais-Tremblay¹

2021

History of Political Economy

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The ancient Greek conception of oikonomia is often dismissed as irrelevant for making sense of the contemporary economic world. In this paper, I emphasize a thread that runs through the history of economic thought connecting the oikos to modern public economics. By conceptualizing the public economy as a public household, Richard A. Musgrave (1910–2007) set foot in a long tradition of analogy between the practically oriented household and the state. Despite continuous references to the domestic model by major economists throughout the centuries, the analogy has clashed with liberal values associated with the public sphere since the eighteenth century. Musgrave’s conceptualization of public expenditures represents one episode of this continuing tension. His defense of merit goods, in particular, was rejected by many American economists in the 1960s because it was perceived as a paternalistic intervention by the state. I suggest that the accusation of paternalism should not come as a surprise once the “domestic” elements in Musgrave’s conceptualization of the public sector are highlighted. I develop three points of the analogy in Musgrave’s public household which echo recurring patterns of thought about the state.

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“…(Bodin, 1576, 8) For Bodin, states were not isomorphic to households since each state was composed of multiple families. Still, both were ruled by a pater familias (Becker, 2014).…”

Section: The Medieval and Early Modern Conceptualizationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paternalism and the Public Household

Desmarais-Tremblay¹

2021

History of Political Economy

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“…The translation of the Latin word civitas to mean 'state' in early modern times has been interpreted as a clear distancing from the traditional Aristotelian division of oikos and polis, on which see Becker 2004, 146-7 and Saunders 2003, 476ff. Mührmann-Lund 2019 For the concept of 'good policy' , see the registration project of good policy regulation in the early modern period: Härter and Stolleis 1996 (both the Danish and Swedish legislation are registered); Härter 2010, 41-65.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Private/Public in 18th-Century Scandinavia

2021

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“…Innovative as it was (Lassabatère, 2010, 407), the idea reached its most elaborate form 14 in the République; yet even if the idea of sovereignty hasn't been worked out yet, so that puissance de la souveraineté was still bridled by elements of the legislature (Engster, 1996, 407), the Methodus is, in some parts, preliminary to the République (but some elements -at least literary and stylistic ones -are evidently present, among them the likening of the commonwealth to the family; cf. Becker, 2013). Nevertheless, in Methodus Bodin still sounds constitutionalist, even when dealing with Roman history:…”

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Sallust and Jean Bodin

Pobežin

2022

ars

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One of the most recognizable thinkers of the 16th century France, Jean Bodin, wrote what is perhaps the first methodological treatise of instructions and guidelines on how to not only read and write but also understand history. With his universal interest in all things human, Bodin predated Marc Bloch’s postulate that historians should ideally be interested in all forms of life if they were to perform their task as dutifully as possible. In 1566 Bodin published one of the most frequently reprinted works, the Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem – “The Method for the Easy Understanding of History”. Although he expressed keen interest and good knowledge of a score of ancient historians, listing them in the fourth chapter of his work (De historicorum delectu – “On the Choice of Historians”), one of them was particularly close to his heart. The Roman historian Gaius Sallustius Crispus who is, according to Bodin, “a most honest author [who] possessed experience of important affairs”, provided Bodin and many of his colleagues with a model (stasis) narrative for discussing a changing world in turmoil – something Bodin was no stranger to in the time of the French religious wars. However, the explanation that it was the rhetorically efficient model narrative that inspired Bodin to copy Sallust’s argument seems unsatisfactory and biographically superficial. Instead, this paper closely analyses the Sallustian chapters that purportedly motivated Bodin’s thinking and proposes that there are little grounds in Sallust for Bodin’s legal and historical framing of absolutist sovereignty.

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Jean Bodin on Oeconomics and Politics

Cited by 23 publications

References 0 publications

Paternalism and the Public Household

Paternalism and the Public Household

Private/Public in 18th-Century Scandinavia

Sallust and Jean Bodin

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