Key Arguments

• Household life driven by wants and needs: 'The driving force was life itself'
• Men’s and women’s tasks both fall under life’s urgency
• Conclusion: 'Natural community in the household therefore was born of necessity, and necessity ruled over all activities performed in it'
• By contrast: 'The realm of the polis, on the contrary, was the sphere of freedom'

Source Quotes

Even Plato, whose political plans foresaw the abolition of private property and an extension of the public sphere to the point of annihilating private life altogether, still speaks with great reverence of Zeus Herkeios, the protector of border lines, and calls the , the boundaries between one estate and another, divine, without seeing any contradiction. The distinctive trait of the household sphere was that in it men lived together because they were driven by their wants and needs. The driving force was life itself—the penates, the household gods, were, according to Plutarch, “the gods who make us live and nourish our body” —which, for its individual maintenance and its survival as the life of the species needs the company of others.

The distinctive trait of the household sphere was that in it men lived together because they were driven by their wants and needs. The driving force was life itself—the penates, the household gods, were, according to Plutarch, “the gods who make us live and nourish our body” —which, for its individual maintenance and its survival as the life of the species needs the company of others. That individual maintenance should be the task of the man and species survival the task of the woman was obvious, and both of these natural functions, the labor of man to provide nourishment and the labor of the woman in giving birth, were subject to the same urgency of life.

That individual maintenance should be the task of the man and species survival the task of the woman was obvious, and both of these natural functions, the labor of man to provide nourishment and the labor of the woman in giving birth, were subject to the same urgency of life. Natural community in the household therefore was born of necessity, and necessity ruled over all activities performed in it. The realm of the , on the contrary, was the sphere of freedom, and if there was a relationship between these two spheres, it was a matter of course that the mastering of the necessities of life in the household was the condition for freedom of the Under no circumstances could politics be only a means to protect society—a society of the faithful, as in the Middle Ages, or a society of property-owners, as in Locke, or a society relentlessly engaged in a process of acquisition, as in Hobbes, or a society of producers, as in Marx, or a society of jobholders, as in our own society, or a society of laborers, as in socialist and communist countries.

Natural community in the household therefore was born of necessity, and necessity ruled over all activities performed in it. The realm of the , on the contrary, was the sphere of freedom, and if there was a relationship between these two spheres, it was a matter of course that the mastering of the necessities of life in the household was the condition for freedom of the Under no circumstances could politics be only a means to protect society—a society of the faithful, as in the Middle Ages, or a society of property-owners, as in Locke, or a society relentlessly engaged in a process of acquisition, as in Hobbes, or a society of producers, as in Marx, or a society of jobholders, as in our own society, or a society of laborers, as in socialist and communist countries. In all these cases, it is the freedom (and in some instances so-called freedom) of society which requires and justifies the restraint of political authority.

Key Concepts

• The distinctive trait of the household sphere was that in it men lived together because they were driven by their wants and needs.
• The driving force was life itself—the penates, the household gods, were, according to Plutarch, “the gods who make us live and nourish our body”
• Natural community in the household therefore was born of necessity, and necessity ruled over all activities performed in it.
• The realm of the , on the contrary, was the sphere of freedom

Context

5 THE Polis AND THE HOUSEHOLD — phenomenology of oikos versus polis.