Household management

Use in the book

Household relations first provide Alcibiades' familiar model for civic friendship and concord (126e). Parents love children, brothers relate to brothers, and spouses to one another. Socrates then uses the differing skills conventionally assigned to spouses to test whether friendship really is knowledgeable agreement on the same subject. Wool-working and armed fighting expose a difficulty in Alcibiades' definition rather than a failure of family relations as such.

At 133e–134a2 the household manager and statesman are paired as roles unavailable to someone ignorant of himself and consequently of his own affairs and others'. The argument continues through errors, doing badly in private and public, and harm to those for whom the ignorant agent acts. Managing a household is therefore not exempt from the ethical conditions imposed on public rule.

The pairing also limits an overly political reading of the dialogue's conclusion. Alcibiades wants to rule a city, but his lack of self-understanding would impair an apparently smaller and more familiar responsibility too. Conversely, private competence is not established merely by owning property: the money-maker's concentration on possessions at 131c does not amount to caring for himself.

Places to read

1. 126e–127c2Household affection and specialized work test the account of civic concord
2. 131b–131c2Tending possessions is distinguished from tending oneself
3. 133e–134a2Self-ignorance excludes both statesmanship and household management

Translation in this edition

“Household manager” gives the adjective οἰκονομικός its contextual personal force. It must not be confused with διοικεῖν, “order” or “administer,” used of the city and body at 126a–b, despite their related household vocabulary.

διοικέω / οἰκέω

Attested: διοικεῖν (dioikein; 126a); οἰκεῖσθαι (oikeisthai; 127b). At 126a: To order or administer the city better and preserve it. At 127b: To be well ordered, said of cities in connection with friendship and doing one’s own business. Lexical identification: family label: διοικέω / οἰκέω. See Household management.

οἰκονομικός

Attested: οἰκονομικός (oikonomikos; 133e). At 133e: Competent in household management, a capacity requiring self-understanding as civic competence does. Lexical identification: lemma: οἰκονομικός. See Household management.

Use in the book

At 138c Socrates parallels the earlier civic question. What is one man called when he orders a household rightly? The answer is household manager and master. Asked whether he orders it well by justice or some other craft, the interlocutor chooses justice. The domestic capacity is thus brought into the same knowledge already associated with punishment, self-discrimination and temperance.

The move does not discuss a manager hired for wages, a legal appointment or the detailed division of household duties. Its force comes from the structural analogy: one agent correctly orders a community, whether civic or domestic. The role’s normative competence rather than its institutional arrangements supplies the point of comparison.

The final application makes household management personally unavoidable for the proposed philosopher. His own house must not be entrusted to another in a way that leaves him merely holding second prizes. He must himself judge rightly if it is to be well ordered. This demand exposes a limit of the cultivated audience ideal. Merely being able to discuss management impressively is insufficient where one is responsible for its outcome.

It would nevertheless overread the passage to turn it into a general prohibition on assistance or specialized services within a household. The earlier physician is brought into a house precisely because medical expertise is needed. The closing requirement concerns ownership of the judgment and ordering attributed to philosophy, not performing every task personally.

Places to read

1. 138cοὐκ οἰκονόμος τε καὶ δεσπότης — Manager and master are paired as names for the right orderer.
2. 138cΔικαιοσύνῃ — Justice is the accepted means of ordering the household well.
3. 138cοἰκονομική, δικαιοσύνη, σωφροσύνη — The household art appears in the one-craft list with the virtues.

Translation in this edition

“Household manager” keeps the agent’s practical function visible without the misleading modern associations of “economist.” The edition’s parallel with the Statesman helps locate the identity claim, but no detailed household manual is included in this dialogue.

Use in the book

The neighbor would let Lysis manage his house if he believed Lysis understood οἰκονομία better than he did. The cognate infinitive οἰκονομεῖν names the activity to be entrusted. Together they make the criterion of understanding independent of the parent-child relation.

The supplied edition follows Burnet’s readings for “manage” and “management”; its apparatus records variants meaning “build” and “building.” Keep the printed household-management sense, rather than silently substituting construction. Nor should the modern sense of national “economics” displace the immediate task of running a house.

Places to read

1. 209dβέλτιον περὶ οἰκονομίας ἑαυτοῦ φρονεῖν — understand household management better than [the neighbour] does.