Simmel money pdf

The history of thought shows that it is vain to consider any one of these viewpoints as definitive. To recap: Simmel performs the Hegelian move of showing an opposition in philosophical thought between unity and multiplicity. For you Hegelians, Simmel is effectively saying that all final philosophy is akin to stoicism.

The structure of our reason in relation to the object demands equal validity for both principles, and attains it by formulating the monistic principle of seeking to bring unity out of multiplicity so far as possible—i. The same is the case if one explores pluralism in its qualitative significance: the individual differentiation of things and destinies, their separation according to quality and value.

Our innermost vital consciousness oscillates between this separateness and the solidarity among the elements of our existence. Sometimes life only seems bearable by enjoying happiness and bliss in complete separation from suffering and depression, and by keeping these rare moments free from any remembrance of less exalted and contradictory experiences.

Then again it seems more admirable, and indeed the very challenge of life, to experience joy and sorrow, strength and weakness, virtue and sin as a living unity, each one being a condition of the other, each sacred and consecrating the other.

We may seldom be aware of the general principle in these opposing tendencies, but they determine our attitude towards life in our endeavours, our aims and our fragmentary activities. People are not divided into categories by the contrast between differentiation and unification of their life experiences. This contrast exists in every individual, although his innerpersonal form evolves in interaction with his social form, which moves between individualization and socialization. The essential point is not that these two trends constitute life, but that they are interdependent in a heuristic form.

It seems as if our life employs or consists of a unified basic function which we are unable to grasp in its unity. We have to dissect it by analysis and synthesis, which constitutes the most general form of that contradistinction, and whose co- operation then restores the unity of life. Here Simmel pulls out a Kantian backstop to Hegelian reasoning. He argues that baked into our brains are limits of our ability to understand cognition and the world itself.

Our scrawny outlook on the world requires us to observe opposing trends in tension and assess reality in heuristic rather than definitive form. This was the move toward fallibilistic science that neo-Kantianism took, divorcing itself from any firmly a priori investigations.

Simmel in particular wants to avoid any further abstraction than is necessary though as seen above, quite a fair bit appears to be necessary , because abstractions only retain the ability to match up to reality when they remain connected to some general conception of everyday lived experience as it is lived by a large proportion of people, not just a few philosophers sitting in Jena. What are the abstractions with which we deal with everyday?

More than anything else, they are financial. We may experience via Kantian categories, but most people give no thought to them or anything like them. But abstractions of value , as defined and regulated by money, are something we all are forced to deal with, negotiate, share, and be subjected to.

As soon as one realizes the extent to which human action in every sphere of mental activity operates with abstractions, it is not as strange as it may seem at first glance that not only the study of the economy but the economy itself is constituted by a real abstraction from the comprehensive reality of valuations.

The forces, relations and qualities of things— including our own nature—objectively form a unified whole which has to be broken down by our interests into a multitude of independent series or motives to enable us to deal with it. Every science investigates phenomena that are homogeneous and clearly distinguished from the problems of other sciences, whereas reality ignores boundaries and every section of the world presents an aggregate of tasks for all the sciences.

Our practice excludes unilateral series from the outer and inner complexity of things and so constructs the great systems of cultural interests.

The same is true for our sentiments. When we experience religious or social sentiments, when we are melancholy or joyful, it is always abstractions from total reality that are the objects of our feeling—whether because we react only to those impressions that can be brought within the scope of some common cultural interest, or because we endow every object with a certain colouring which derives its validity from its interweaving with other colourings to form an objective unity.

Thus, the following formula is one way in which the relationship of man to the world may be expressed: our practice as well as our theory continually abstracts single elements from the absolute unity and intermingling of objects, in which each object supports the other and all have equal rights, and forms these elements into relative entities and wholes.

We have no relationship to the totality of existence, except in very general sentiments; we attain a definite relation to the world only by continually abstracting from phenomena, in accordance with our needs of thought and action and investing these abstractions with the relative independence of a purely inner connection which the unbroken stream of world processes denies to objective reality. The economic system is indeed based on an abstraction, on the mutuality of exchange, the balance between sacrifice and gain; and in the real process of its development it is inseparably merged with its basis and results, desire and need.

But this form of existence does not differentiate it from the other spheres into which we divide the totality of phenomena for the sake of our interests. Alongside this pragmatism comes a Quinean holism, which Simmel explicitly declares, painting himself in opposition to the nascent verificationist movement I have no idea to what extent Simmel was aware of it.

In the broadest sense, a system of thought, be it communal values or geometry, gains its truth in respect to the entire system corresponding en masse to reality. The whole system of geometry is not valid at all in the same sense as are its single propositions. The latter can be proved by each other, whereas the whole is valid only in relation to something external, such as the nature of space, our mode of perception and the strength of our ways of thinking.

Individual judgments may support each other, since the norms and facts already established substantiate others, but the totality of these norms and facts has validity only in relation to specific physio-psychological organizations, their conditions of life and the furthering of their activity. Conceptual abstractions can never be said to have a guaranteed relation to reality; at best they are heuristic approximations. As William C. But this objective space is a shared social construct, not a metaphysical absolute.

X The public institution character of money is mentioned, as well as its close relation to state and empire structures — however, this is not explained in detail.

This assertion by Simmel is something that does not belong to mainstream economics. However, one could listen to the people in the Eurozone, complaining about how much necessities they could buy with their old currencies before the circulation of the euro currency and how this new currency has low value, in the sense that its function is not that useful for everyday small transactions, i. Convenience of less valuable money is greater than that of highly valuable money.

Coinage and possession of money creates a power position for the one who issues or possess money. XV In page , Simmel discusses the case of base money very low value money and the circulation velocity of it. G It is also very interesting to examine the social features of money as Simmel describes them. I The unearned increment of wealth, i. That makes marginalised groups and people to prefer monetary transactions in most cases.

People who do not know each other or who do not live in proximity prefer to exchange with money in reward. IV Money has grown from a means to an end in modern society, according to Simmel. The reverse is also true, depending on the context money is used, f. V Quantity of money is important, which means that there are two different standards of money, one for rich people and one for poor people.

VI The personal unity of the money owner is affected by and affects money, i. VII Money is connected with personal freedom and individualisation within a society, whose members are mutually dependent through the monetary economy. VIII Possession of money frees persons from the contradictions of the possession of goods, because its importance lies in the possibilities the money onwer has without having any obligation to perform them.

X Money permits new forms of association where the implication of a person might be reduced in money contributions instead of investing personal time and energy1. On the other hand, collectivism is correlated with primitive economies! On the other hand money contributions permit people to support contradictory associations or aims! XI Money can be used to measure human values and humans themselves it always did. Therefore, human values and humans are valued in many ways, among which money is one only.

He also asserts that if labour is the source of all values, then it cannot be a value itself. Simmel believes that there is no physical activity only, separated from mental activity and he also discusses but I do not understand whether he reaches any conclusion the issue of the mental activity, what it represents and how it can be rewarded, if it has to.

I also liked the discussion about the relationship between intellect and money and how the apparent communistic nature of knowledge does not hold in a monetary economy, where knowledge is accumulated just like and rather by the same people who accumulate money.

Second, even if we can forgive him the lack of information that contradicts his theory, we cannot forgive that he does not try to explain the phenomenon he knows and mentions the other way round. In other words, a historian creates a historical narration by searching the causal connections between actions and situations and by reversing the causal construction to see whether a connection between two facts is a two-way relationship.

Fourth, the co-existence of different types of phenomena, even if they are in conflict or competition among them, does not mean necessarily that this is a transitional period, but it might also be what it is: a historical moment and place where it is necessary for reasons we should search, for several phenomena to exist.

Fifth, rivalry of phenomena is not only what the observer can perceive, but also what the observed people perceive as such, i. Sixth, rivalry of phenomena might exist not because one of them should prevail, but because both should prevail and rivalry is the means for it. What does that mean? Simmel in other points says that the modern economy focuses on production, in the sense that money serves now production instead of consumption.

How is this happening? Is Simmel considering the social structure that presupposes the unemployment of the poor, his contemporary one? If this holds, how then money serves production in an economy interested in consumption? How unemployment is connected with the preferences for consumption and production? Economic activity in Greece without the euro By Irene Sotiropoulou. By Irene Sotiropoulou. Download PDF. Wright Mills in his more poetic moods, but where Mills is fiery and desperate, Simmel is far more reflective.

In looking at money as a ground and metaphor for modern human social existence, Simmel often seems awestruck and overwhelmed by the sheer power and meaning of money in our society. Just as often he expresses reserved horror at the injustice and inhumanity that is lubricated by monetary commensurability.

It is only loosely an economic work, because Simmel never gets to the point where he can generalize over the behavior of economic populations. Rather, he focuses on the psychological and sociological effects of money as a cultural determinant. He is fascinated by the implications of the introduction of a universally commensurable measure of value that has no intrinsic value of its own.

Rather than focusing on how people argue over the allocations of values, he looks at how the prior requirement, the nature of valuation itself, influences those discussions. The final theme ultimately becomes most important, but Simmel spends time laying the groundwork for it by examining the nature of value and how it is assigned and fixed, before he then moves on to how value is standardized and made portable and universal by money.

Value, being something not assigned by nature but by creatures, becomes a crucial cognitive category in life, despite being something that each of us has comparatively little control over. Simmel makes clear just how philosophical it is by declaring in the introduction that money has attracted his attention because it is the purest and most ubiquitous manifestation of the perennial problem that has vexed philosophers, the relation between the universal and the particular:.

The significance and purpose of the whole undertaking is simply to derive from the surface level of economic affairs a guideline that leads to the ultimate values and things of importance in all that is human. In the tradition of early modern philosophers, Simmel writes with no notes, footnotes, or references, and mentions of other authors are sparing.