The Philosophy of Money [Paperback]

Georg Simmel (Author), David Frisby (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415341728 | ISBN-13: 978-0415341721 | Publication Date: May 20, 2004 | Edition: 3

'I have lost interest ... in all that I have written prior to The Philosophy of Money. This one is really my book, the others appear to me colourless and seem as if they could have been written by anyone else.' - Georg Simmel to Heinrich Rickert (1904)

In The Philosophy of Money, Simmel provides us with a remarkably wide-ranging discussion of the social, psychological and philosophical aspects of the money economy, full of brilliant insights into the forms that social relationships take. He analyzes the relationships of money to exchange, the human personality, the position of women, individual freedom and many other areas of human existence. Later he provides us with an account of the consequences of the modern money economy and the division of labour, which examines the processes of alienation and reification in work, urban life and elsewhere. Perhaps, more than any of his other sociological works, The Philosophy of Money gives us an example of his comprehensive analysis of the interrelationships between the most diverse and seemingly connected social phenomena.

This revised edition of the translation by Tom Bottomore and David Frisby, includes a new Preface by David Frisby.

Editorial Reviews

Review

`We should all be grateful for this translation. It must have been extremely hard work, but it shows no trace of it. Indeed, it positively sparkles.' - Alan Ryan, The Guardian

Language Notes

Text: English, German (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 616 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 3 edition (May 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415341728
• ISBN-13: 978-0415341721
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #797,904 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Money as the great symbol of social life!, August 21, 2003

By 

Spyros-Dionysis GNG (Athens, GREECE) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Philosophy of Money (Paperback)

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"!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars for those of us who love topic sentences, January 4, 2009

By 

G. Morris "revheelsesq" (Rochester, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Philosophy of Money (Hardcover)

I was privileged to read this just after it was translated and found it to be even more insight-filled than the other Simmel i had found and loved. His style of laying out like rails concept after concept and not needing to tell stories fits my way of thinking... Jesus taught the crowds and his antagonists with parables; he taught the Twelve by giving them the abstract principles underlying...if you learn in that manner, Simmel is a treat, and i may be biased, but Simmel to me is just so much more right, so much closer to explaining what we have seen in the last hundred years than Marx... I would lay this book down next to Adam Smith for a more enlightening experience...

If you ever have wondered how money is the distillate of all that can be acquired or produced which can truly be called "human", this is the best book i know that explains that relationship.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Philosophie des Geldes, November 17, 2010

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Jake Le Master (Lawrenceville, GA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Philosophy of Money (Hardcover)

Simmel's famous Philosophy of Money is, for a large and purely philosophical work, a respectable achievement.

The first part develops money as a symbol of depersonalization and relativity, whereby men and things are reduced to the same level of relative "things." It further shows the decrease of substantial meaning in money and the increase of pure function, and points out the limits of pure functionalism. The same idea under a different angle shows how the means-to-an-end character of money is gradually replaced by its becoming a (seeming) end in itself. The second part shows the social and cultural changes that take place with the evolution of the idea of money and are linked up with the progress of a scientific rationalism; the tension between personal and aristocratic and hierarchic forms of life and the democratic individualistic relativistic and standard-less forms of a society where money has replaced all other values. Mammonism as a religion and a style of life is described.

The book is one of the fundamental works concerning the philosophy of our civilization. No one who wants to understand what has happened to us can afford to miss acquaintance with its ideas. And besides the great and basic outlines the reader will find an inexhaustible wealth of fine and striking psychological observations.