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Because it has reopened debates about the limits of the market, the current financial crisis has kindled a renewed interest in the notion of economic activity. Any activity deemed to be of an economic nature in a free-market economy is subject to competition law, the purpose of the law being to determine the limits of the market but also to ensure its smooth operation. However, despite the crucial role it plays in identifying activities and determining which ones should or should not be governed by competition rules, the notion of economic activity has yet to be clearly defined. It is the functional character of the notion of economic activity that prevents its definite and unambiguous definition. Both at national and European Community level, economic activity is essentially determined on a case-by-case basis. Moreover, as it is intrinsically linked to the delimitation of the scope of application of competition law, the very substance of the notion is contingent upon the various circumstances and specificities related to each case, hence, a seemingly impractical conceptualization of the notion. While public authorities and judicial bodies tend to induce the definition of economic activity from the objectives they deem should be met, in light of current political considerations, they claim that the applicability of competition law is conditional exclusively upon the prior determination of an economic activity. Such terminological misappropriation is attributable both to the seeming incompatibility of inductive reasoning with the safeguard of legal certainty and to the difficulty of affixing legal boundaries to an essentially economic domain. While it is opportune that competition law applies to various types of social exchanges, it is crucial that some activities remain exempt from its application due to their non-mercantile nature. Implicitly, the judges' interpretation of the notion of economic activity is therefore largely dependent upon the necessity to either subject or exempt certain activities from competition law. This paper attempts to bring to light the obstacles, at national and EU level, to resorting to the functional notion of economic activity in an attempt to define the scope of application of competition law. It then suggests opting for an alternate method of reasoning based on the logic of orders developed by various philosophers in order to reveal the underlying criteria that truly and effectively actuate the application of competition law.