Philosophy of Money Theses

Luke Vanderlinden
Philosophy and Education Independent Study
with Professor John Fantuzzo
Teachers College, Summer 2016

The following theses have been distilled from Georg Simmels Philosophy of Money, an extensive work that delves into
the concept of money from historical, sociological, psychological, and philosophical points of view.

1) The Power of Money Approaches Omnipotence

On its own, money is devoid of value. Its power manifests only in the process of exchange. As

Simmel writes, The meaning of money lies in the fact that it will be given away (510). Without a

willing partner with whom a monetary transaction can take place, moneys value reverts to that of its
original substanceslips of ink-stained paper, round discs of metal, or pieces of seashell or carved
wood, as is the case in some indigenous cultures.

However, within a highly developed human culture, where moneys exchange function is the

life-giving bloodstream within the social body (469), the potential power of money is limitless.

Money stands ready to purchase any object the heart desires. With money, one feels himself a
master of his environment. He can even extend his control over others. Sex, murder, theft

history shows that people will do nearly anything if offered sufficient monetary compensation.

It is from this that Simmel concludes that the psychological effect of money possesses a

significant relationship to the notion of God (236). Quoting the German theologian Nicolas de
Cusa, Simmel explains that God is that being in whom all disagreements and contradictions are
pacified and resolved, the coincidentia oppisitorum. Thus, those who understand and relate to the

natural world via such a notion of God enjoy an inimitable feeling of ease and tranquility. For them,
nothing inhabits a foreign realm. Everything is familiar, as it were, belonging to the creation of the
Lord. Like the coincidentia oppisitorum feature of God, money is capable of bringing together any
number of opposing values. For this reason, money appears to grant its bearer a sort of

omnipotence. Nothing seems to be outside the rich mans domain; he feels he can acquire

everything at will. The devout mans sense of religious well-being finds a parallel feeling of comfort
and satisfaction brought on by the possession of sufficient quantities of money. This is one reason
why religious and monetary interests often find themselves at odds with one another. As Jesus

Christ told his followers, No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love
the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and
money (Luke, 16:13).

In his analysis, Simmel goes one step further, showing that money is a tangible symbol for

the unchanging, metaphysical substance that many philosophers believe is the origin of phenomenal
reality. He writes, Money is the symbol in the empirical world of the inconceivable unity of being,
out of which the world, in all its breadth, diversity, energy and reality, flows (497). A modern

example can be seen in Einsteins revolutionary discovery, E=MC. All matter is now understood as
a transformation of energy. Similarly, within the money culture, all objects can be translated into

their particular monetary equivalent. Money is the absolute means (236) that can mediate between
all relative values. Furthermore, although it is constantly changing hands, money is never actually

spent, as other objects, like food, entertainment, clothing, etc. disappear or gradually wear away in
the course of being used. Likewise, the pure, metaphysical reality that is believed to give rise to

manifest existence is never exhausted, although it undergoes an endless series of transformations. In

this way, the power of money imitates that mystical power behind the movement of the universe.
Hence the saying: Money makes the world go round.

2) Money Disrupts Relations between People

The indifference of money is what allows it to stand in as a universal value, ready to replace any type
of commodity, but this same flexibility, as Simmel notes, is conducive to the removal of the

personal element from human relationships (297). Whereas a man was once dependent on the

people of his local community to provide goods for the livelihood of his family, with the rise of the
money economy, and the mass-production of consumer goods it yields, that same dependency is

dispersed across a vast network of persons. This has the effect of impressing upon modern man
that it is his own money that secures his well-being, and not the collective effort of an entire
community.

The advent of the factory and the wage-laborer, which Simmel shows to be necessary

correlates of the expansion of the money economy, even further removed the personal element

from human exchange. Simmel writes, The more objective and impersonal an object is the better it
is suited to more people consumable material, in order to be acceptable and enjoyable to a very

large number of individuals, cannot be designed for subjective differentiation of taste (455). This
proliferation of impersonal goods, each attributed an exact price, produces an entire world of

consumption, wherein all relations are reduced to their monetary value. In this world, people are

fungible. They take on an objective quality. It is not the bank teller, the car salesman, the doctor, or
the politician whom we value, but their objective achievements (296). In the following passage,
Simmel brilliantly summarizes the modern situation:

Money results in a universal objectification of transactions, in an elimination of all personal

nuances and tendencies, and, further, [because] the number of relationships based on money is
constantly increasing, that the significance of one person for another can increasingly be traced back,
even though often in a concealed form, to monetary interests. In this way, an inner barrier develops
between people, a barrier, however, that is indispensable for the modern form of life (477).
Simmel goes on to explain that this distance in human interaction serves the psychological function

of making overcrowded, urban life bearable. By thus muting the personal and emotional content in

human dealings, the money economy allows highly concentrated populations to co-exist in apparent

peace, being effectively estranged from one another, as if indifferent to each others very existence as
people.

For this reason, as Simmel observes, in modern times the contrast that existed between the

native and the stranger has been eliminated (227). This is because the stranger is the ideal

candidate for financial dealings. As money exerts greater and greater influence within human

society, invading nearly all forms of human transactions, it becomes difficult to maintain friendships,

family relations, and even marriages, without having such relations disrupted by the impersonal force
of money.

3) Money Usurps the Goals of Life

The inner polarity of the essence of money, Simmel writes, lies in its being the absolute means
and thereby becoming psychologically the absolute purpose for most people (232). In the first
thesis, we showed that the power of money approaches omnipotence. Because money can be

exchanged for virtually anything, it becomes an intensely sought-after object, despite the fact that, in
and of itself, it bears no real value. The result of this paradox is the inevitable emergence of two

cultural dispositions, which Simmel terms cynicism and the blas attitude (255). As lifes tangible
valuesfood, shelter, social position, even lovebecome purchasable, so long as one possesses a
sufficient quantity of money, people are no longer able to distinguish between higher and lower

modes of life. The heroes of modern society are, therefore, for the most part, those who possess

extraordinary wealth: professional athletes, movie stars, and innovative CEOs. Education is reduced
to a means of making money to secure a livelihood. The ennoblement of character, along with the

other finer goals of life, are forgotten. The technical advancement that the money economy brings
with it, by facilitating the exchange of goods and ideas, and also increasing the pace of life, appears
to take on an absolute significance of its own. As Simmel wisely remarks:

It is true that we now have acetylene and electrical light instead of oil lamps; but the enthusiasm for
the progress achieved in lighting makes us sometimes forget that the essential thing is not the
lighting itself but what becomes more fully visible. Peoples ecstasy concerning the triumphs of the
telegraph and telephone often makes them overlook the fact that what really matters is the value of
what one has to say, and that, compared with this, the speed or slowness of the means of
communication is often a concern that could attain its present status only by usurpation. The same
is true in numerous other areas (481).

In this way, the money economy and its various features obscure lifes actual values, reducing all

qualitative aspects of human existence to their quantitative equivalents. The acquisition of money
becomes the essential, pressing question on the minds of everyone. And if time does arise for

deeper, philosophical or religious contemplation, the cynical attitude produced by the money culture
quickly snuffs out such investigations.

4) Money Leads the Soul into Bondage

In the First Letter of St. Paul to Timothy, it is written, The love of money is the root of all kinds of
evils (1 Timothy, 6:10). If this is true, why and how might it be so? Simmel shows that the spread
of the money economy inevitably leads to specialized activity and competition. As more and more
economic transactions are facilitated by money, the network of exchange expands and diversifies,

inviting large-scale production and the division of labor, so that merchants (now business owners)

can capitalize on the increased opportunity for trade. Money thus facilitates both the producer and
the consumer in their production and consumption of goods, for this is moneys very purpose.

However, along with an expanded network of trade and production, there is an ever-increasing

dependence on industrial infrastructure. It is a common fallacy that possessing more money makes

life proportionately easier. The reality is that owning more money usually demands an equal increase
in spent time and energy to manage and protect ones wealth. Similarly, as the money culture

expands, Simmel writes, a larger proportion of civilized man remains forever enslaved, in every

sense of the word, in the interest in technics (231). In other words, the many steps in the process

of production, trade, and consumption, become so numerous that they absorb the entirety of ones

attention, to the extent that every real purpose completely disappears from consciousness. While
it appears at the outset that money, and the technological advancement it brings, offers a greater

degree of mastery over the various ends of life, the actual result is that modern man finds himself
entangled in a myriad of distractions and endless superficial needs (483).

The fluidity of money that allows it to be converted into virtually any other object carries

with it a type of freedom that cannot be found in solid assets. With ordinary possessions, such as

land, a home, clothing, and so on, the owner is bound to a particular physical locale, or must carry

with him a whole load of objects, if he wishes to pack up and move to a new place. Money, on the

other hand contains a wealth that is both mobile and filled with unlimited potential. However, the
freedom money affords is deceptive. By converting solid assets into liquid cash, we lose the

concrete value of hard-earned possessions. To illustrate this, Simmel offers the example of a
peasant who sells his share of land for money:

It is true that the frequent conversion of obligations into money payments in the eighteenth
century gave to the peasants a monetary freedom. Yet such conversions took away from him what
cannot be bought by money and what primarily gives freedom its valuethe trustworthy object of
personal activity. To the peasant, the land meant something altogether different from a mere
property value; for him it meant the possibility of useful activity, a centre of interest, a value that
determined his life, which he lost as soon as he owned only the money value of his land instead of
the land itself (399).
According to Simmel, this type of monetary liberation constitutes an extreme danger (402).

Exchanging possessions for liquid cash is a purely negative freedom. One is no longer bound by the
responsibilities associated with his previous ownership, but unless he replaces those responsibilities

with new ones, he risks depriving his life of its definite and meaningful form. As Simmel writes, the
freedom of money favours that emptiness and instability that allows one to give full rein to every

accidental, whimsical, and tempting impulse (402). The present age of consumer goods has freed

the average man from having to acquire his own land, build his own home, grow his own crop, sew

his own clothes, etc., but in exchange he is utterly dependent upon the system of industry. Whereas
these assets once served as important extensions of his personality, being expressions of his own

work, they now stand merely as mass-produced objects of consumption. Furthermore, the process
of local exchange strengthened personal relationships within a community of interdependent

individuals. Far from exchanging this interdependence for a more meaningful form of freedom, we
have become slaves of the production process we have become the slaves of the products (483).

5) Money Collapses Spiritual & Contemplative Culture

There is a positive reciprocal relationship between the money economy and the specialization of

labor. Increasing complexity within a network of trade, as well as diversity of production, both rely

on the pervasive acceptance of money to facilitate transactions. While technological culture has seen
extraordinary advancement in recent times, individual culture, as Simmel points out, has not seen

equal progress (448). Indeed, the capacity of mechanized labor and computation has far surpassed
the comprehension of the ordinary worker, who is more like a supplemental instrument to the

productive machine than a skilled laborer in his own right. Now the individuals very personality is
under attack by the rising influence of the monetary culture. Simmel writes:

Since under very rapid money transactions possessions are no longer classified according to the
category of a specific life-content, that inner bond, amalgamation and devotion in no way develops
which, though it restricts the personality, none the less gives support and content to it. This
explains why our age, which, on the whole, certainly possesses more freedom than any previous one,
is unable to enjoy it properly (403).
Due to their being easily sold and purchased, modern mans possessions are, for the most part,

deprived of meaning, excepting their monetary value. The modern workers very life has become a

commodity of wage-labor, for which his only reward is a weekly check that will be exchanged for an
assortment of consumable goods. Just as we saw, in the second thesis, how money disrupts

meaningful relations between people, so it also interferes between persons and commodities (478).

The result is a collective distancing from nature, and the particularly abstract existence that urban
life, based on the money economy, has forced upon us (479).

While technology and the money culture appear to permit an increasing dominance over

nature (for, as Simmel points out, the view of nature as wholly subject to material calculation is the
theoretical counterpart to the institution of money (446), which constantly reduces the entire
spectrum of qualitative values to their quantitativei.e. calculableequivalent), these powers

actually serve to subjugate modern man more completely to impersonal, material forces. The

control of nature by technology, Simmel explains, is possible only at the price of being enslaved in
it and by dispensing with spirituality as the central point in life (484). We see here the same

principles that were at play in theses number three and four. However, where the fourth thesis
considered the impact of money on the individual personality, this fifth and final thesis takes

account of its cost on society as a whole. In the following excerpt, Simmel offers his diagnosis:
In the case of the present age, in which the preponderance of technology obviously signifies a
predominance of clear intelligent consciousness, as a cause as well as an effect, I have emphasized
that spirituality and contemplation, stunned by the clamorous splendor of the scientifictechnological age, have to suffer for it by a faint sense of tension and vague longing. They feel as if
the whole meaning of our existence were so remote that we are unable to locate it and are constantly
in danger of moving away from rather than closer to it. I believe that this secret restlessness, this
helpless urgency that lies below the threshold of consciousness, that drives modern man from
socialism to Nietzsche, from Bocklin to impressionism, from Hegel to Schopenhauer and back

again, not only originates in the bustle and excitement of modern life, but that, conversely, this
phenomenon is frequently the expression, symptom and eruption of this innermost condition. The
lack of something definite at the centre of the soul impels us to search for momentary satisfaction in
ever-new stimulations, sensations and external activities. Thus it is that we become entangled in the
instability and helplessness that manifests itself as the tumult of the metropolis, as the mania for
traveling, as the wild pursuit of competition and as the typically modern disloyalty with regard to
taste, style, opinions, and personal relationships. The significance of money for this kind of life
follows quite logically from the premises that all the discussions in this book have identified (484).
From Simmels vivid depiction of modern life, we can see that its core themes are fully embodied in
the symbol of money: mobility, indifference to all relative values, lack of personal loyalties, and the

absence of a tangible meaningfulness as such. The intellectual, rational, and calculating faculties of
modern man, which are being constantly fed by the institution of money, have eaten away at the

emotional content of life, stifling spiritual and contemplative culture. Where these heart-and-soulbased practices do spring up today, they are very quickly commodified, in the form of popular

literature, workshops, weekend retreats, cultural festivals, spiritual tourism, megachurches, and

iconic gurus. However popular yoga and spirituality may have become in recent years, instances of
deeply devoted and disciplined spiritual and contemplative practice are increasingly rare. This fact

testifies to the ever-expanding influence of the money culture, and its seemingly omnipotent capacity
to uproot and replace all of lifes absolute values.