"Langholm has shown that the original Scholastic analysis of the market process drew on Aristotelian and Roman law concepts of volition and free choice as the basis for justice in exchange. Realistic appraisals of need and institutions resulted i practical policies that qualified these premises, paralleling modern institutionalism. This provocative study implicitly demands further investigation of the ideological milieu that produced a naturalistic economics based on the specious Benthamite assumption of ubiquitous rationality." S. todd Lowry, Washington and Lee University

• Preface; Introduction; Part I. Compulsion and the Will: Three Ancient Traditions: 1.The Aristotelian tradition; 2. The Roman law tradition; 3. The Augustinian tradition; Part II. Need as Compulsion: The Scholastic Paradigm: 4. Loans and usury; 5. Price and market manipulation; 6. Need and the will in buying and selling; 7. Labor and wages; Part III. Rejection and Revival in Postscholastic Thought: 8. Hobbes: the antithesis; 9. The economics of natural law; 10. The neoclassical system and its critics; Bibliography; Index.