Speculating the Subject of Money: Georg Simmel on Human Value

This article initiates an inquiry into the sources and frameworks of value used to denote human subjects in modernity. In particular, I consider the conflation of monetary, legal, and theological registers employed to demarcate human worth. Drawing on Simmel's speculative genealogy of the money...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Religions
Main Author: Singh, Devin (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: MDPI [2016]
In: Religions
Further subjects:B Simmel
B Theology
B Money
B Secularization
B Value
B Dodd
B Financialization
B Foucault
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Description
Summary:This article initiates an inquiry into the sources and frameworks of value used to denote human subjects in modernity. In particular, I consider the conflation of monetary, legal, and theological registers employed to demarcate human worth. Drawing on Simmel's speculative genealogy of the money equivalent of human values, I consider the spectrum of ascriptions from specifically quantified to infinite human value. I suggest that predications of infinite human value require and imply quantified—and specifically monetary-economic—human value. Cost and worth, economically and legally defined, provide a foundation for subsequent eternal projections in a theological imaginary. This calls into question the interventionist potential of claims to infinite or unquantifiable human value as resistance to the contemporary financialization of human life and society.
ISSN:2077-1444
Contains:Enthalten in: Religions
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.3390/rel7070080