I will be adding to this page regularly, filling in holes and creating new threads of lineage in the history of economic thought. Any suggestions or pointers to useful on-line documents will be gratefully received.
Some materials, illustrative of Polanyi's point about pre-capitalist attitudes toward profit, follow.
Ancient Greece: Hesiod (circa 700 BCE), a short excerpt from his Works and Days [pdf version] and Aristotle (384BCE - 322BCE), some excerpts from his Politics (350 BCE) [pdf version].
Ancient Middle East: Bible, Old Testament (900-350BCE), some excerpts from various books, [pdf version]; New Testament (60-100CE), some excerpts from several of the Gospels [pdf version]; Koran, or Qur'an (610-656 CE), some excerpts, [pdf version].
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