De l'oeconomia à l'échange volontaire: la délimitation de l'activité économique chez Thomas d'Aquin
Résumé
Thomas Aquinas’s economic thought is known for its contribution on the just price or usury, but the epistemological boundaries that he drew up have received little attention from commentators. Aquinas inherited from Aristotle the notion of œconomia, management of the household, which stands apart from both politics, which concerns the city, and the activity of the merchant, for “gain” or “money”. The delimitation of the economic activity is thus made by the agent and by the finality. Moreover, until the Summa theologiae, the treatment of economic activities is scattered throughout his works. The Summa theologiae breaks new ground by adopting an objectivist typology, by the nature of the operation, namely exchange. It groups these exchange activities, namely trade and lending, into two contiguous questions and gives them a common prologue. Moreover, it brings them together as voluntary exchanges and names the sins that are related to them. Aquinas thus delineates the activity, which must be an exchange and a voluntary act. This framework is both extensive and restrictive : it allows for limit cases such as the exchange of non-tradable goods, but it excludes that which relates to a gift without counterpart, or to an exchange carried out with secrecy (theft) or violence (rapine). These criteria, far from being self-evident, question the economic readings of Thomasian work and the understanding of asymmetrical relationships between co-contractors.
Domaines
Sciences de l'Homme et Société
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