The Philosophy of Money

Rating:
Summary: Money as the great symbol of social life!
Review: This remarkable work, published in 1900, is Georg Simmel's magnum opus given the fact that it contains most key ideas of this charismatic and versatile thinker. It is bulky, and at points very difficult to penetrate through,since the author's literary style -although very enjoyable- tends to abstract from the clarity of the point at hand. This work may be seen as a supplement to Marx's "Capital". Simmel deals with money at various levels of abstraction. He discusses money from an economic, philosophical, sociological and psychological perspective in an admirable attempt to develop via the concept of money a modern world-view. Chapter One is the most difficult since it explores Simmel's theory of value, using BOTH classical political economy and the Marxian theory of value. Then, he proceeds in order to develop it as a symbol of a relational epistemology (drawing heavily on Kant, Hegel and Spinoza). The following parts of the book associate money with exchange as a sociological category of interaction and display Simmel at his very best in the lengthy discussion of money in relation to personal values (dowry, prostitution, bribery etc.). Additionally, Simmel explores the axiological dislocations that take place in human consciousness and fail to address correctly the means-ends aspect of money's relationship to commodities. In this wonderful section, Simmel discloses the alienating attitudes of extravagance, greed, avarice, cynicism and indifference. Last, but not least, Simmel connects money to modernity pulling -albeit elliptically- all the threads of the previous arguments together. A book of great sociological and philosophical interest, full of dazzling dialectics, free of dogmatism and definitely one of humanity's most complete statements on "money"!