Abstract
Abstract The interpretation of Nicomachean Ethics, 5. 5 has been bedevilled by unsuccessful attempts to get a theory of fair exchange out of it, by finding some meaning for the formula Aristotle gives for fair exchange: ‘as builder to shoemaker, so many shoes to a house’ (1133a23-S). There is nothing wrong with looking for a theory of fair exchange in the chapter. That, after all, is ostensibly what the chapter is about, and that is why it is included in the Ethics at all, rather than in the Politics. But these attempts have focused attention obsessively on the formula, to the exclusion of the inquiry into economic value, which is what is actually in the chapter. The fact that the formula has been the subject of such a large number of unsatisfactory interpretations, which few but their authors have ever found convincing, has not done much to encourage the idea that the chapter is particularly worthy of attention.
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