Between Justice and Accumulation: Aristotle on Currency and Reciprocity

• Date: 01 June 2019
• Published date: 01 June 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/0090591718802634
• Author: Stefan Eich
• Subject Matter: Article

https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591718802634

Political Theory

2019, Vol. 47(3) 363 –390

© The Author(s) 2018

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DOI: 10.1177/0090591718802634

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Article

Between Justice and

Accumulation: Aristotle

on Currency and

Reciprocity

Stefan Eich1

Abstract

For Aristotle, a just political community has to find similarity in difference

and foster habits of reciprocity. Conventionally, speech and law have been

seen to fulfill this role. This article reconstructs Aristotle’s conception of

currency (nomisma) as a political institution of reciprocal justice. By placing

Aristotle’s treatment of reciprocity in the context of the ancient politics of

money, currency emerges not merely as a medium of economic exchange

but also potentially as a bond of civic reciprocity, a measure of justice, and an

institution of ethical deliberation. Reconstructing this account of currency

(nomisma) in analogy to law (nomos) recovers the hopes Aristotle placed in

currency as a necessary institution particular to the polis as a self-governing

political community striving for justice. If currency was a foundational

institution, it was also always insufficient, likely imperfect, and possibly tragic.

Turned into a tool for the accumulation of wealth for its own sake, currency

becomes unjust and a serious threat to any political community. Aristotelian

currency can fail precisely because it contains an important moment of

ethical deliberation. This political significance of currency challenges accounts

of the ancient world as bifurcated between oikos and polis and encourages

contemporary political theorists to think of money as a constitutional project

that can play an important role in improving reciprocity across society.

1Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

Corresponding Author:

Stefan Eich, Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts, Princeton University, 10 Joseph Henry

House, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.

Email: seich@princeton.edu

802634PTXXXX10.1177/0090591718802634Political TheoryEich

research-article2018

364 Political Theory 47(3)

Keywords

Aristotle, money, reciprocity, justice, exchange

No society can exist without exchange, no exchange without a common

measure, and no common measure without equality. Thus all society has as its

first law some conventional equality, whether of men or of things. . . .

Conventional equality among things prompted the invention of money, for

money is only a term of comparison for the value of things of different kinds;

and in this sense money is the true bond of society.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau1

What seems most familiar, Hanna Pitkin once observed, can be just as dif-

ficult to perceive accurately as what is wholly missing from our experience.2

Money structures our lives in this sense, yet it often remains elusive. Subsumed

in markets, it easily appears as a purely economic means of exchange and accu-

mulation against whose encroachments politics ought to be defended.3 But

money was once seen as offering a very different promise. This article recovers

one such early hope by turning to Aristotle’s account of currency (nomisma) as

a crucial aspect of reciprocal justice.4 According to this promise, when used

correctly, currency can be the bond of society, bringing citizens together rather

than dividing them, serving justice rather than corrupting it. Reconstructing the

role of currency (nomisma) in analogy to law (nomos) recovers the high hopes

Aristotle placed in money as a necessary but, as we will see, always insuffi-

cient, likely imperfect, and possibly tragic institution particular to the polis as a

self-governing political community striving for justice.5

The political centrality of currency is most fully reflected in Aristotle’s

account of reciprocal justice in Book 5 of the Nicomachean Ethics. “A

polis,” he asserts there, “is maintained by doing things in return according to

proportion” (NE 1132b33). Similarly, in the Politics, he writes that “recipro-

cal equality preserves city-states, as we said earlier in the Ethics” (Pol

1261a30–32). At the hands of Jill Frank, Danielle Allen, and others, reci-

procity has recently started to receive the attention it deserves as a crucial

part of Aristotle’s answer to the problem of political justice and civic equal-

ity.6 In turning to reciprocity, commentators have however tended to focus

on how law and speech can foster relations of reciprocal justice. When the

role of coinage is acknowledged, it is often moved into the background, be

it out of suspicion or incredulity.7 Perhaps thanks to its association with gift

exchange in modern anthropology, “reciprocity” is often assumed to be

opposed to monetary exchange. As a result, it is tempting to see reciprocal