Xenophon’s Economic Thoughts And The City State Crisis

This dissertation starts the consideration from the relationship between Xenophon’s economic thoughts and the Athens city-state crisis.By taking two ancient economic works of Xenophon,Oeconomicus and Ways and Means,as two main historical materials,combining the existed researches such as commentaries and monographs published by modern and contemporary scholars,and combining with the historical background of the times of Xenophon,to understand the deep relationship between the realization of the"Pan-Hellenic"peace at the national level and the reality of solving the crisis of Athens.At the same time,the dissertation also tries to examine the tendency of the reconstruction of citizens’moral consciousness and the social order of the city-states based on household management and financial governance.The main body of the dissertation divides into four chapters.The first chapter explores the historical background of the emergence of Xenophon’s economic thoughts.After the Peloponnesian War,the Athenian Empire fell into a comprehensive crisis of politics,economy and morality.These factors prompted Athens to revive imperialism,while the wave of reviving imperialism implied a deeper crisis,which triggered many intellectuals to reform the current policies of the Athenian Empire in 4^thB.C.The second and third chapters explore how Xenophon tried to put forward theoretical principles related to ancient social,political and economic from the perspectives of family property management and national financial governance.In the Oeconomicus,on the one hand,Xenophon pointed out that oikos is the basic unit of a city-state,and the sustainable management of the oikos can ensure the operation of the whole city-state.At the same time,the participation of citizens in national economic governance is not opposed to their management of family economic affairs.These two economic behaviors completed each other.There is a consistency between the private property management and public financial governance.In the Ways and Means,on the other hand,Xenophon recognized that the Athenian Empire should imply necessary"economic justice"measures while pursuing wealth accumulation,and it could provide another effective choice for the reconstruction and development of the“hegemony politics”of the Athenian Empire.The fourth chapter discusses Xenophon’s attempt in the Oeconomicus to use"allegory"and other writing techniques to make agricultural activities as a metaphorical extension of political and ethical life.At the same time,it also analyzes the relationship between the economic theory construction from the Ways and Means and the ancient"political economy",and discusses whether it has practical significance beyond the text,as well as its practical utility under the social and historical conditions at that time.It can be seen from the analysis that Xenophon flexibly used the methods of dialogue,deduction and arithmetic statistics to support the viewpoint of maintaining the steady growth of the national economy in his two texts,summarized the different effects of war and peace on the prospects of national economy,and linked the results with the Athenians’pursuit of personal interests and Athens’national leadership among the ancient Aegean world.The creation of an“Ideal moral city-state”provides a new way for solving the political crisis in the ancient world.A series of national economic and property management measures put forward by Xenophon transcended the boundaries of the city-states and entered a"Pan-Hellenic"vision.Xenophon hoped that the Athenian Empire could become the trade center of the ancient Mediterranean world,Athens can continuously accumulate wealth in stable,and last peaceful trade activities and eventually lead all the Greeks to achieve the ideal common peace.