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In The Economics of Friendship, Tazuko Angela van Berkel offers an account of the notion of reciprocity in 5th- and 4th-century Greek incepting social theory. The preoccupation with the norms of philia and charis, conspicuous in sources from the Classical Period, is a symptom of changes in the shape of ancient economic activities: the ubiquitous norm that one should reciprocate benefit with benefit becomes a source of conceptual confusion in the Classical Period, where other forms of exchange become conceptually available. This confusion and tension between different models of mutuality, is productive: it is the impetus for folk theory in comedy, tragedy and oratory, as well as philosophical reflection (Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle) on what it is that binds people together.
Price: $182.00
Pages: 540
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Mnemosyne, Supplements
Publication Date:
19 December 2019
ISBN: 9789004416130
Format: Hardcover
"The main focus of this book (…) is how Greeks thought about philia in light of the development of a market economy. (…) Dr. Tazuko Angela van Berkel has investigated the widest variety of sources, from the fragments of Sophocles to the speeches of Lysias, from lyric poetry to historiography and philosophy [and she] makes good use of the theories of Menger, Carsten, Bloch and Parry, Simmel, Hochschild, Weber, Polanyi, and others, among modern theorists. (…) [Van Berkel] propounds an innovative, compelling, and pivotal thesis about the mindframe of ancient Greece that will be valuable for anyone working on almost anything Greek." - Gabriel Danzing, in: Scripta Classica Israelica vol. 41 (2022)
"Insgesamt gelingt es Tazuko Angela van Berkel eine überaus innovative und thesenreiche Untersuchung vorzulegen, die in anspruchsvoller und sorgfältiger Weise Ansätze der Anthropologie, Philosophie sowie Philologie verbindet und gewiss eine rege Diskussion anstoßen wird." - Christopher Degelmann, in: Sehepunkte vol.22.1 (2022)
"Insgesamt gelingt es Tazuko Angela van Berkel eine überaus innovative und thesenreiche Untersuchung vorzulegen, die in anspruchsvoller und sorgfältiger Weise Ansätze der Anthropologie, Philosophie sowie Philologie verbindet und gewiss eine rege Diskussion anstoßen wird." - Christopher Degelmann, in: Sehepunkte vol.22.1 (2022)
Tazuko Angela van Berkel is Assistant Professor of Ancient Greek Language and Literature at Leiden University. Her 2012 Leiden dissertation was awarded the Legatum Stolpianum. She has published on Protagoras, Xenophon, ancient economic reflection, and the rhetoric of numbers.