Key Arguments

• Moderns 'see the body of peoples and political communities in the image of a family'
• This image implies administration of 'housekeeping' on a nation-wide scale
• Scientific thought aligns with this shift: 'no longer political science but “national economy” or “social economy”'
• The result is society: 'the collective of families economically organized into the facsimile of one super-human family is what we call “society,”' with 'nation' as its political form

Source Quotes

What concerns us in this context is the extraordinary difficulty with which we, because of this development, understand the decisive division between the public and private realms, between the sphere of the and the sphere of household and family, and, finally, between activities related to a common world and those related to the maintenance of life, a division upon which all ancient political thought rested as self-evident and axiomatic. In our understanding, the dividing line is entirely blurred, because we see the body of peoples and political communities in the image of a family whose everyday affairs have to be taken care of by a gigantic, nation-wide administration of housekeeping. The scientific thought that corresponds to this development is no longer political science but “national economy” or “social economy” or , all of which indicate a kind of “collective house- keeping”; the collective of families economically organized into the facsimile of one super-human family is what we call “society,” and its political form of organization is called “nation.”

In our understanding, the dividing line is entirely blurred, because we see the body of peoples and political communities in the image of a family whose everyday affairs have to be taken care of by a gigantic, nation-wide administration of housekeeping. The scientific thought that corresponds to this development is no longer political science but “national economy” or “social economy” or , all of which indicate a kind of “collective house- keeping”; the collective of families economically organized into the facsimile of one super-human family is what we call “society,” and its political form of organization is called “nation.” We therefore find it difficult to realize that according to ancient thought on these matters, the very term “political economy” would have been a contradiction in terms: whatever was “economic,” related to the life of the individual and the survival of the species, was a non-political, household affair by definition.

Key Concepts

• we see the body of peoples and political communities in the image of a family whose everyday affairs have to be taken care of by a gigantic, nation-wide administration of housekeeping.
• The scientific thought that corresponds to this development is no longer political science but “national economy” or “social economy” or
• the collective of families economically organized into the facsimile of one super-human family is what we call “society,” and its political form of organization is called “nation.”

Context

5 THE Polis AND THE HOUSEHOLD — characterization of modern social imagination and its academic counterpart.