Polis and Oikos: The Art of Politics in the Greek City-State

ABSTRACT

The Greek city-state has traditionally been viewed as an entity that was divided into two distinct spheres (oikos and polis) and governed by two distinct arts (oikonomia and politikê technê). The aim of this article is to show that this image of the Greek city-state is not very accurate. The relationship between the oikos and the polis was not exclusive in classical poleis. Particularly in Athens during the democratic period, the polis was depicted as a family writ large, and to the extent that oikos was seen as an entity of its own, it was a part of the polis, not excluded from or opposed to it. My aim is to show that the art of the household and the art of politics were not distinct arts as has been claimed in modern political theory. Furthermore, although the collapse of the classical city-state during the Hellenistic era entailed a privatization of the household, it was not until modern times, from the late eighteenth century onwards—when the concept of the natural right to life and property became firmly established in juridical and political discourses—that the private sphere attained genuine autonomy.

KEYWORDS:

• Polis
• oikos
• oikonomia
• Hannah Arendt
• Giorgio Agamben

Notes

1. Arendt, The Human Condition, 24; hereafter page references are cited in the text.

2. Habermas, Structural Transformation, 3, 4.

3. Agamben, Homo Sacer, 9, 11–12, 10. For an alternative interpretation of the history of biopolitics, see Ojakangas, On the Greek Origins of Biopolitics.

4. Even such a prominent Hellenist as Christian Meier subscribes to the Arendtian thesis: “There was a strict separation between the polis, the area in which they [the Greek citizens] acted jointly as citizens, and the house, between politics and the ‘realm of necessity’ (anakaia).” Meier, The Greek Discovery, 165–66.

5. As Strauss puts it: “Polis and oikos were less antithetical institutions than mutual and interdependent ones.” Strauss, Fathers and Sons in Athens, 11. On the different senses of the word oikos, see MacDowell, “Oikos in Athenian Law,” 10–21.

6. Mulgan, “Aristotle,” 198.

7. Nagle, The Household, 245.

8. Ferrucci, “L’oikos nelle leggi della polis,” 135–54.

9. Pownall, “Public Administration,” 290–91.

10. Roy, “‘Polis’ and ‘Oikos’,” 4.

11. Patterson, Family in Greek History, 185.

12. Brock, Greek Political Imagery, 25–42.

13. Strauss, Fathers and Sons in Athens, 214.

14. Ibid., 231–36.

15. Cohen, Law, Sexuality, and Society, 220.

16. Ibid., 84

17. Furthermore, in Athenian drama, particularly in Aristophanes’s comedies criticizing extreme democracy, it is precisely in democracies in which the distinction between the polis and the household is blurred and the management of the household is associated with the management of the polis. See for example Aristophanes, Plutus, Ekklesiazusae, and The Knights.

18. Patterson, Family in Greek History, 179.

19. Brock, Greek Political Imagery, 25. To be sure, contemporary scholars are far from unanimous on this issue. In his well-documented study of the Athenian democracy, Hansen maintains that in classical Athens the polis and the society as a whole were clearly distinguished, unlike in modern society in which the state prevails over everything. Hansen, Athenian Democracy, 64.

20. Plutarch, Solon, 20–24. See Delfim and Rhodes, Laws of Solon for additional sources.

21. MacDowell, Law in Classical Athens, 87.

22. Kyriazis, “Financing the Athenian State,” 109–27; Lyttkens, “Institutions, Taxation, and Market Relationships,” 505–27; Bresson, Making of Ancient Greek Economy, 286–305.

23. Möller, “Classical Greece: Distribution,” 362–84.

24. Pseudo-Aristotle, Athenian Constitution, 24, 49. Hereafter all references to Aristotle’s works are from Aristotle in 23 Volumes.

25. Möller, “Classical Greece: Distribution,” 375.

26. This does not mean that political authorities actually intervened in all spheres of human existence during the democratic period of Athens. Yet the point here is not to estimate the degree of negative freedom in democratic Athens but rather to emphasize that there was nothing that would have naturally remained outside political decision-making.

27. Arendt, The Human Condition, 29.

28. To my knowledge, the following analysis of oikeô and dioikeô is the first attempt to disclose exhaustively the political use of the terms in Greek literature.

29. See Plato, the Republic 2.371c; 4.420b; 4.421a; 4.423a; 5.464b; 5.472e; 5.473a; 5.473b; 7.520c; 7.520d; 7.521a; 7.521b; 8.543a; 10.599d. Hereafter all references to Plato’s works are from Plato in Twelve Volumes.

30. See Plato, the Laws 1.626c, 3.680b; 3.702a, 4.712e; 4.713b; 5.739a; 6.779c; 9.853b.

31. See also Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.1.7, 1.2.64, 4.1.2. Hereafter all references to Xenophon’s works are from Xenophon in Seven Volumes.

32. See Isocrates, Areopagiticus 21, 22, 40, 41, 53, and 78, and Panathenaicus 132, 133, 136, and 162. Hereafter all references to Isocrates’s works are from Isocrates with an English Translation in Three Volumes.

33. See also Demosthenes, Against Midias 21.150, Against Aristogiton I 25.26, Against Aristogiton II 26.26, and Against Theocrines 58.62. Hereafter all references to Demosthenes’s works are from Demosthenes, with an English Translation.

34. See also Aristotle, the Politics 6.1321b5–10; 7.1325a; 7.1327b30–35.

35. See also Lysias, Against Nicomachus, 22.

36. It appears in Plato, Crito 51e, and Gorgias 520e, two times in Protagoras 318e, 319a, once in Laches 179c, and six times in Meno 73a, 73b, 91a.

37. In the Lovers 138b, Plato uses the verb as follows: “Again, when one man governs a city rightly [ti de hotan eis anêr orthôs polin dioikê], is he not called a despot and king? I agree. And he governs by a kingly and despotic art [basilikê te kai turannikê technê dioikei]?”

38. In Plato’s Republic, it occurs seven times in this political sense. See Rep. 5.449a, 5.455b, 5.455d, 5.462c, 8.564e, 10.599c, and 10.600d.

39. See Plato, the Laws 2.667a, 3.698a, 4.709e, 4.713c [to rule people], 4.714a, 6.768d, 7.790b, 7.809c, and 12.957a. In section 6.768d, in which the verb is transformed into a noun, the passage may be translated as follows: “But it is impossible to give a full and precise account of the city-state and the political system as a whole [pantôn tôn kata polin kai politikên pasan dioikêseôn] until our review has embraced every section of its subject, from the first to the very last, in proper order.”

40. See Xenophon, Hellenica 6.1.2–3, and Ways and Means 4; as well as Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon 3.2; 3.6; 3.25, and Against Timarchus 1.4 and 1.153. Hereafter all references to Aeschines’s works are from Aeschines with an English Translation.

41. See Isocrates, Panathenaicus 44, 48, 119–120, 124, 128–130, 140, 161, 164, 169, 177, 189, 198, 226, and 239. See also Isocrates, Helen 31, 37, Plataicus 39, To Nicocles 2, 13, and Nicocles or the Cyprians 20.

42. See Demosthenes, Against Timocrates 27, 152, Against Aristocrates 209, Against Aristogiton I 15, Against Theocrines 15, 30, On the Crown 320, On the False Embassy 2, and Erotic Essay 46. In his speech Against Aristogiton I (15), Demosthenes interestingly adds nature to the list of governing authorities: “The whole life of men, Athenians, whether they dwell in a large state or a small one, is governed by nature and by the laws [phusei kai nomois dioikeitai]” (15).

43. See Aristotle, Politics 2.1269b, 3.1283b, 4.1292a, 4.1298b, 4.1292a, 5.1313a, 5.1314b, 6.1321b, and 7.1331b.

44. It should be emphasized that this lack of difference only concerns those contexts in which these words are used to denote the government or the administration of the city-state and its affairs. On the use of politeuô in this sense in Aristotle’s Politics, see 2.1266a33–35, 1267a18–19, 1269a34–35, 3.1279a36–38, 4.1292b10–30, and 4.1295b25–40. In addition to Aristotle, Isocrates and Demosthenes use the verb quite frequently but it is relatively rarely used by other classical authors. In Plato’s Republic, for example, it occurs only eight times. Unlike oikein, politeuein does not denote the management of household and unlike politeuein, neither oikein nor dioikein has a connotation of political participation. Like archein, on the other hand, these “oikic” terms are sometimes used in the sense “to rule.”

45. It should be noted that the Greek meaning of the “political” was quite different from its modern meaning. For the Greeks, as Meier correctly points out, “‘political’ meant the same as ‘common’ (koinos, xynos) and referred to what concerned everybody.” Meier, Greek Discovery of Politics, 13.

46. Agamben, Kingdom and the Glory, 24.

47. Ober, “Aristotle’s Political Sociology,” 133.

48. Patterson, Family in Greek History, 132.

49. See also Strauss, Fathers and Sons in Athens, 12.

50. Lane, “The Platonic Politics,” 133. The book Lane quotes is Platon: Der Kampf des Geistes um die Macht published in 1933. The term “total state” was coined by Carl Schmitt, a German scholar of constitutional law and a member of Nazi party (since 1933). For Schmitt, a total state is the opposite of the liberal “depoliticized” state. In contrast to the liberal, non-interventionist state, there is no sphere in the total state “which should be considered as absolutely neutral in the sense of non-intervention by the state.” Schmitt, Der Hüter der Verfassung, 79. In Schmitt’s view, a total state may be a democracy or a dictatorship but it cannot be liberal. On Plato’s “totalitarianism,” see also Popper, Open Society and Its Enemies.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mika Ojakangas

Mika Ojakangas is Professor of Political Thought at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He is the author of seven monographs, including The Voice of Conscience: A Political Genealogy of the Western Ethical Experience (Bloomsbury, 2013), and On the Greek Origins of Biopolitics: A Reinterpretation of the History of Biopower (Routledge, 2016).