44 ALAIN BRESSON (TRANSLATED By EDwARD M. HARRIS)
that permits all members of the community to pursue happiness by developing
their full potential).^10
If autarky, understood in the physical sense, is an ideal, we would have to
conclude (even if he does not do so himself) that for Aristotle the city should
be completely cut off from foreign trade. Moreover, this idea is perfectly con-
sistent with the distrust Aristotle openly expresses toward foreigners in gen-
eral and merchants in particular in the tradition of the Laws, in which Plato
describes in detail the way one can make the city as isolated as possible.^11 If one
thinks of all the various ways of restricting social life or the citizen-body that
one encounters during the fifth and fourth centuries BCE in very different
forms in a sample of cities going from Sparta to Athens (to take as examples
two cities from the Classical period and absolutely different from one another),
it is clear that the desire for isolation, for the ability to rely on one’s own
resources, was present everywhere throughout Greece.
Just the same, Aristotle nowhere goes so far as to state explicitly that a city
without foreign commerce would be ideal. When discussing the material
aspects of autarky obtained by the chora of a city, he stresses a point that is, after
all, self-evident, namely that one should wish to have the maximum amount
of resources available in one’s territory: ‘Things are similar also in the case of
the territory. For, as regards what sort it is like, everyone would clearly praise
the territory that was most self-sufficient, and such a territory must be one
that produces everything (for self-sufficiency is having everything to hand and
being deficient in nothing).’^12 Aristotle continues by promising a discussion
of this topic: ‘But whether we speak correctly in giving this definition or not
must be left for closer study elsewhere.’^13 Unfortunately, this discussion has not
been preserved. In fact, not only does Aristotle never imagine the absence of
foreign commerce; he clearly sets forth his own individual philosophy about
the role of exchange in the city.
In practice, one cannot ever do without exchange. To live from one’s own
resources was still possible in the most primitive forms of social life, in which
men produced what they needed directly from the soil.^14 In contrast, as soon as
the city reaches a certain point of growth, it becomes impossible to do without
trade. It is at this point that Aristotle introduces specific points, which begin to
provide a clear outline of his attitude toward foreign trade:(At first) they exchange useful things for useful things and no further –
for instance, giving wine and receiving grain, and so on with other things
of the same sort. This art of exchange is neither against nature nor is it any
kind of business since it was only for achieving the self-sufficiency that
accords with nature. But the art of acquisition arose logically from this art.
For when, through importing what they lacked and exporting what they
had in abundance, people received help from foreign sources, the use of
money was introduced by necessity.^15