And the Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the philosophy podcast.

Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the

Philosophy Department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich, online at

History of Philosophy.met. Today's episode, Greed is good, economics in the Italian Renaissance.

Economics is one of those words that has wandered pretty far from its etymological origins,

while retaining a connection to those origins.

As any Renaissance humanist would be quick to tell you,

it comes from the Greek Oikos, meaning house.

So the ancient works devoted to economics dealt with household

management and included discussion of such topics as the relation

between man and wife, the raising of children, the ideal location to build one's home and the handling of slaves.

But economics in something like our modern sense did belong to this discipline too,

since the householders' art also involved knowing how to handle money. Economic treatises advised

on the sorts of property to invest in, the importance of balancing expenditure and income, and

the division of tasks among family members and household staff.

Equally important was to encourage an appropriate attitude towards wealth.

An early example of the genre, written by Xen Xenophon is a dialogue featuring Socrates.

At one point Socrates is made to say that real wealth is having enough to satisfy one's

needs so that a richer man may be needier than a poorer one if his desires are

excessive. Xenophon's treatise was one of several ancient works on household

management that came into circulation during the Renaissance, in this case because a manuscript was brought to Italy from Byzantine in 1427.

A few years before that, Leonardo Bruni translated and commented upon another treatise on economics, which was falsely ascribed to Aristotle.

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