Patristic literature owes the introduction of the term “economy” to Paul’s Epistles, in which we find oikonomia [οἰϰονομία] used to designate the economy of the Pleroma, or the divinity taken in the plenitude of its perfection ( Eph 1:10 ), the economy of grace ( 3:2 ), and the economy of mystery ( 3:9 ). In the Epistle to the Colossians ( 1:25 ), Paul speaks of the economy of God ( oikonomia theou [οἰϰονομία θεοῦ] ). In modern French translations, the word is never rendered literally; instead we sometimes find accomplissement, sometimes plan, dessein, or réalisation ( RT: Traduction oecuménique de la Bible ). The person entrusted with this accomplishment is the diakonos [διάϰονος] or oikonomos [οἰϰονόμος], translated by intendant or ministre, the Vulgate having opted for actor. For Paul, it is a matter of borrowing from the Greek language a term that up to that point designated the management and administration of goods and services in domestic life and of importing the model of the private economy into the public economy, into the life of the city. That is in fact the sense in which both Xenophon and Aristotle use the word oikonomia.
Before them, Hesiod dealt in his Works and Days with the familial economy in a rather poetic way. In the Republic ( 4 and 5 ) and in the Laws ( 4 and 8 ), Plato used oikonomia to construct philosophically a figure of administration in the ideal city. The Platonic economy is the science of the management of goods and persons in a state led by a sage endowed with temperance ( sôphrosunê [σωφϱοσύνη] ) and justice ( dikaiosunê [διϰαιοσύνη] ). Access to these cardinal virtues passes through education and requires the exercise of dialectic conceived as the art of dialogue that leads to knowledge. The legislating faculty is nothing other than the logos [λόγος], that is, discursive rationality.
The objective of Xenophon and Aristotle is entirely different. Both of them deal with practical problems connected with the everyday reality of the family and the city and do not venture into literary or utopian terrain. As a result, in both thinkers oikonomia becomes a crucial notion in the sense that it determines the site of a confrontation between political realism and justice. In The Economist, Xenophon analyzes all the elements of the management of wealth and goods in the context of the family farm.
SOCRATES: Tell me, Kritoboulos, is economy [οἰϰονομία] the name of a certain kind of knowledge [ἐπιστήμης], like medicine, the art of forging or carpentry . . . ? Could we say, then, that it is a task [ἔϱγον] of economy?
KRITOBOULOS: It seems to me that it is the task of a good economist [οἰϰονόμου] to administer his household well.
SOCRATES: And someone else’s household, if it is entrusted to him—couldn’t he administer it as he does his own? A competent carpenter [τέκτων] could work for another person as he does for himself. Thus someone who is familiar with economics [οἰϰονομιϰός] will have the same ability. . . . Hence a person who knows this art [τὴν ταύτην τέχνην ἐπισταμένῳ], even if he has no property of his own, can earn a salary by administering another person’s household [οἰϰονομοῦντα] as he would by building it.
( Xenophon, The Economist, 1.1–4 )
As Leo Strauss puts it, “the administrator of an estate may be good or bad at management. But the economist ( oikonomikos ), that is, a person who has mastered the art of administering his estate, is ipso facto a good manager” ( Xenophon’s Socratic Discourse ). In the debate between Socrates and Kritoboulos in Xenophon’s work, the concept of oikonomia is in fact inhabited by the inevitable tension between the calculus of optimization and ethical requirements, an art of acquisition without war coupled with a providential conception of nature. In the rest of the debate, Socrates discusses further the management of wealth and the correct measures to take in order to ensure the prosperity of households and of the city.
In Aristotle’s Economica ( Oikonomikos ), things become clearer: neither providence nor utopia is at issue, but rather a detailed consideration of actual practices and their results. In the private domain, Aristotle remains quite close to Xenophon, but when he moves to the public domain, economic concern is inseparable from political concern. Oikonomikos no longer designates a person but rather a mode of rationalized relations of the real that is closer to a judgment of ( dialectical ) probability than to a metaphysical concern. The function of judgment is entrusted to the proper usage of the doxa [δόξα]. The analysis of tricks thus finds its place here. Economics is a practice, both strategic and tactical, in the service of power and the accumulation of wealth. Its means are judged by their results. [CassinDU]