크세노폰의 『경영론』에 나타난 교육과 정치 그리고 권위와 자유의 상호연관성에 대한 고찰

Abstract

It has been argued that Xenophon’s political conviction depends on the social elitism. His view is similar to those of ancient Greek thinkers in 4th century B.C. His focus is too much on the social cultures formed through educating or cultivating political responsibility of the political leader. The order and family management in Xenophon’s Oeconomicus is management-society in its structure. This was verified when he master handed over his responsibility to women, the concierge, or housemaid. But this calls into question management society or management psychology that have something to do with the management of the household economy. Xenophon’s model is rooted in the capitalist management, not in cooperative management, since it was the economy of the owner, employer, and wage laborer, focused on the relationship between domination and obedience rather than the one between equality of peoples and liberty for all. What does matter here is to shed light on merit, care and responsibility, but not on arbitrary power and birth. ‘Merit’ here means ‘justice’, that is, equal right to domination. Human beings are free in the sense that they have more liberty through the realization of their merits. It is important to note, however, that equality of rights means its relative sense, because the order of life in the political aspect of household economy is unchangeably class-oriented and paternalistic. We are finally led to conclude that many critical points are to be made in his approach that emerged from an interconnection between freedom and authority. A critique is directed against Xenophon’s Utopia. In spite of the fact that his notion of non-violent domination is rooted in voluntary obedience, moral superiority of the leader, and care for the ruled, I would dare to say that his idea is still utopian in its character. The critical points are four-folded: (1) fundamental hunger for freedom, (2) the difficulty to find the leader with moral superiority in the world, (3) the possibility of corruption in politics and (4) the fact of unreasonable world order and irrationality of individual psychology. It may be inferred from these criticisms that Xenophon’s views about human nature and politics are too optimistic to implement them in the real world.