Ancient Greek Philosophers Took the Home Far More Seriously Than We Know
Via Aeon
Summary
Ancient Greek philosophy treated the household and domestic life as serious subjects of inquiry, and texts from Aristotle's Economics to the Stoic philosophers Musonius Rufus and Hierocles reveal a far richer discourse on marriage, home and gender than the dominant readings of Plato and Aristotle suggest.
The Aristotelian Economics argued that households form the foundation of the city rather than the reverse, while Hierocles described marriage as the first human community and encouraged husbands and wives to exchange domestic roles as circumstances required.
These texts were marginalized or lost through historical accidents of transmission and reception, shaped in part by the almost total exclusion of women philosophers from the philosophical canon.
Recovering this body of thought challenges the assumption that domesticity was philosophically invisible in antiquity and reframes women's household labor as a serious contribution to political and civic life.
