Economics of Friendship

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.

"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)

• 1 Introduction: The Economics of Friendship1 Friendship: Money Can’t Buy It?2 Φιλια3 An Economic Mentality4 Apparatus and Argument2 Grace under Pressure: The Anatomy of χάριςThe Argument1 Three Cases of Isomorphism2 χάρις and Successful Interaction3 Perception and méconnaissance4 Conflicts and Cynicism5 Concluding Remarks3 The Most Ancient of Obligations: The Nature of Filial Duty1 The Parent-Child Bond: A Paradigm-Case2 The Debtor Paradigm of Obligation3 The Gratitude Theory4 The Gratitude Theory Analysed5 Tensions in the Script: The Possibility of χάρις6 Concluding Remarks4 A Debtor Paradigm of Obligation: Principles of Moral Accounting1 Moral Bookkeeping2 Morality as Paying Debts3 Debts, Gifts and Morality4 Concluding Remarks: The Ledger under Taboo5 Pricing the Invaluable: Socrates and the Proper Use of FriendsThe Argument1 Framing Socratic Conversation2 False Friends, Part One: Utility, Ancient and Modern3 False Friends Part Two: Economics, Ancient and Modern4 Education and the Logic of Wage-Earning5 Concluding Remarks: The Givenness of the Good6 Active Partnership: Socrates and the Art of SeductionThe Argument1 Amazing Grace: Looking as a Reciprocal Endeavour2 The Hunter Hunted: Role Reversals and the Paradox of the Hetaera3 Desire Management4 The Secrets of Love Magic5 The Socratic Principle: Pay It Forward6 Concluding Remarks: Language Games at the Market Frontier7 Relational Economics: Aristotle on Value and Equivalence1 Aristotle Discovers the Economy?2 Equivalence3 Value and Values4 The Politics of Need5 Concluding RemarksEpilogue: Hostile WorldsBibliographyIndex