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Title: Xenophon's Socratic Discourse: An Interpretation of the Oeconomicus by Leo Strauss, Carnes Lord, Allan Bloom ISBN: 1-890318-96-5 Publisher: Saint Augustine's Pr Pub. Date: December, 1998 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Strangeness of Ancient Household Management
Comment: Allan Bloom, Strauss's most famous and perhaps most brilliant student, once stated that we do not understand Plato because we do not understand Xenophon, who to us seems a fool but to older thinkers seemed wise. Xenophon is far simpler than Plato, and in my experience his books are good introductions to the world of Socratic philosophy. However Xenophon's works are often on topics one might consider prosaic from the standpoint of high philosophy. Besides his more famous works on the Persian emperor Cyrus, Xenophon wrote treatises on hunting, horsemanship, and running a family household.
Interestingly, this last book, the Oeconomicus, is a Socratic work; in it Xenophon presents Socrates speaking with a country gentleman, Kritobulus, about running a family and a large farm. Financial arrangements, relations with the city, the benefits and difficulties of rural plantation life, finding good overseers, and the role of the wife and children in maintaining one's household are all discussed here. On a surface level, then, the book seems to be less about economics and more about economizing or family budgeting. Because Socrates is presented in Plato's works as not much of a family man or as a lover of the country living (Socrates hardly ever goes outside the city of Athens except under compulsion), his interest in Kritobulus' life is unexpected and peculiar to say the least.
I came to this book because the family seems a great rival to the city as a way of living for people, but Plato's Socrates hardly investigates it. The family is dissolved in Plato's Republic, and no dialogue of Plato's deals directly with the family or the country household. To him, it seems, city life is where the action is. By contrast, the Hebrew Bible seems almost entirely concerned with the fortunes of families, or rather the premier family, the children of Israel and their heavenly Father Jehovah. I had gotten a taste of the Bible's rejection/ignorance of philosophy and cities, so I wanted to know what the quintessential representative of philosopy--Socrates--thought about the family. Plato helped me little, so I turned to Xenophon's Oeconomicus. I won't tell you what I found out, but it was amazing how much insight I gained into the Bible from reading Xenophon's little book on household management.
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Title: Xenophon's Socrates by Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom ISBN: 1890318957 Publisher: Saint Augustine's Pr Pub. Date: November, 1997 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: The Argument and the Action of Plato's Laws by Leo Strauss ISBN: 0226776980 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: May, 1998 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: Socrates and Aristophanes by Leo Strauss ISBN: 0226777197 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: October, 1996 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Thoughts on Machiavelli by Leo Strauss ISBN: 0226777022 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: August, 1995 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle (Agora Editions (Cornell University Press).) by Farabi, Muhsin Mahdi, Alfarabi, Charles E. Butterworth, Thomas L. Pangle ISBN: 0801487161 Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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