SIMMEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF MONEY

Every area of research has two boundaries marking the point at which the process of reflection ceases
to be exact and takes on a philosophical character. The pre-conditions for cognition in general, like the
axioms of every specific domain, cannot be presented and tested within the latter domain, but rather
they call for a science of a more fundamental nature. The goal of this science, which is located in
infinity, is to think without pre-conditions-a goal which the individual sciences deny themselves since
they do not take any step without proof, that is, without pre-conditions of a substantive and
methodological nature. Philosophy, too, cannot completely transcend such pre-conditions with regard
to its own activity when it presents and tests them. But in this case, it is always the last point of
cognition at which an authoritative decision and the appeal to the unprovable arises within us, and yet
in view of the advances made in terms of what can be proved this point is never definitively fixed. If
the start of the philosophical domain marks, as it were, the lower boundary of the exact domain, then
its upper boundary lies at the point where the ever-fragmentary contents of positive knowledge seek
to be augmented by definitive concepts into a world picture and to be related to the totality of life. If
the history of the sciences really does reveal that the philosophical mode of cognition is the primitive
mode, is a mere estimate of the phenomena in general concepts, then this provisional procedure is
nevertheless indispensable when confronted with certain questions, namely those questions-especially
those related to valuations and the most general relations of intellectual life-that we have so far been
unable either to answer or to dismiss. Moreover, even the empirical in its perfected state might no
more replace philosophy as an interpretation, a colouring and an individually selective emphasis of
what is real than would the perfection of the mechanical reproduction of phenomena make the visual
arts superfluous.
Out of this general appraisal of philosophy's position there emerge the rights that it possesses with
regard to individual objects. If there is to be a philosophy of money, then it can only lie on either side
of the economic science of money. On the one hand, it can present the pre-conditions that, situated in
mental states, in social relations and in the logical structure of reality and values, give money its
meaning and its practical position. This is not the question of the origin of money, for such a question
belongs to history and not to philosophy. Moreover, no matter how much we appreciate the gain in the
understanding of a phenomenon that is derived from a study of its historical development, its
substantive meaning and importance often rest upon connections of a conceptual, psychological or
ethical nature that are not temporal but rather are purely material. Such connections have, of course,
been realized by historical forces, but are not exhausted by the fortuitousness of the latter. The
significance, the dignity and the substance of justice, religion or knowledge lie completely beyond the
question concerning the manner in which they were historically realized. The first part of this book,
therefore, relates money to the conditions that determine its essence and the meaning of its existence.
The historical phenomenon of money, the idea and structure of which I shall attempt to develop out of
feelings of value, out of praxis in relation to things and the reciprocal relationships between people as
its presupposition, is studied in the second part of the book in its effects upon the inner world-upon the
vitality of individuals, upon the linking of their fates, upon culture in general. Here, then, it is a
question, on the one hand, of connections that are basically open to exact and detailed investigation
but that, given the present state of knowledge, are not studied. They can only be dealt with in a
philosophical manner, namely by a general estimation, by representing individual occurrences through
connections between abstract concepts. On the other hand, it is a question of mental causes that will
always be a matter of hypothetical interpretation and artistic reconstruction which can never be
completely free from individual colouring. This combination of the money principle with the
developments and valuations of inner life stands just as far behind the economic science of money as
the problem area of the first part of the book stood before it. The one part seeks to make the essence
of money intelligible from the conditions and connections of life in general; conversely, the other part
seeks to make the essence and organization of the latter intelligible from the effectiveness of money.
Not a single line of these investigations is meant to be a statement about economics. That is to say,
the phenomena of valuation and purchase, of exchange and the means of exchange, of the forms of
production