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>How did his ideas differ from those of his predecessors and  
>contemporaries specifically noting Plato, Xenophon or Hesiod? 
 
>From a methodological point of view, one should probably mention that 
Aristotle seems to have been the first author to make use of mathematics in 
an economic argument, namely in Book V of the Nicomachean Ethics where he 
talks about just reciprocation in the exchange of goods, after having 
divided particular justice into corrective, distributive, and reciprocal 
justice (Nic.Eth. V, 1133ff.). Although there are problems of translation, 
it seems that Aristotle is not only concerned with the definition of 
justice in exchange but appears to be "attempting to lay down some form of 
equilibrium conditions of exchange" (Theocharis 1983, 3; see also Jaffe 
1974, 384ff.). For the possible pythagorean origin of the mathematical 
conception of reciprocation used by Aristotle, see Baldwin (1959, 11)).  
I think that it has been this formal approach to economic reasoning that 
made Aristotle's writings so attractive to medieval scholars concerned with 
economic questions. 
 
Reference: 
- Theocharis, R.D. 1983 (1961). Early Developments in Mathematical Economics. 
- Jaffe, W. 1974. Edgeworth's Contract Curve, part 2: Two Figures in its 
Protohistory: Aristotle and Gossen, in: History of Political Economy. 
- Baldwin, J.W. 1959. The Medieval Theories of the Just Price, in: 
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, N.S. 49, part 4. 
 
Thomas Moser 
e-mail: [log in to unmask] 
homepage: http://www.kof.ethz.ch/tm.htm 
 
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