What rules when cash is king? Martha U.-Z. sees pressing practical constraints everywhere. Andreas Urs Sommer’s advice is to treat the mammon with philosophical sobriety. Dear Mr Sommer, “Money makes the world go round“, as the folk saying goes. And sadly enough, that is true in the modern world. There are “economic constraints” dominating everywhere and displace everything human. Perhaps the philosophers know of a way out? What is your opinion about money? Martha U.-Z., Germany
Dear Mrs U.-Z., there is anything but a lack of great words when we talk money. It seems to control our life; we don’t seem to be able to exclude it even from our most intimate relationships for long: when being on the very first date, the woman or the man most likely takes the bill without making a fuss and foots it, while disallowing any protest. Any disallowing, however, comes to an end when two lovers decide to spend their life together. Then, the time has come to calculate, to recognize debit and credit. That is when the reality of economy collides with intimacy. The (not really philosophical) question whether or not it pays off arises with pretty much everything – even when we foot the bill at the first date and consider it a decent investment in the future or at least in an adventure. Do we think about human communication only in terms of change and exchange? By the way, money is a means (invented not that long ago – roughly 2,500 years) to put the most diverse things in relation to another. After all, what do a dinner, an amorous adventure, an old age pension, a railway ticket and a golden ring have in common, apart from the fact that are available for purchase? But how about the value of money that we deem the equivalent of all the things we in our life can make good use of? When we look at banknotes, coins and bankbooks, nothing of their material form guarantees their value. In our hands, we simply hold paper or base metal. Even in its valueless outer appearance, even if it is simply something virtual, something we debit from the account by use of a credit card, we hold it dearer than something real, precisely because we believe that it can be exchanged for anything. It is for this belief that money works in the first place, for the agreement upon accepting it as equivalent of something real. The impression that money makes the world go round is because everything seems to be expressible in money, transferrable into pecuniary ratios. Looked at more closely, however, it is a medium, a means people use in order to make things relatable and billable with each other. Money makes the incomparable comparable. In this regard, money is something deeply human, something that helps us find our way in the world by simplifying it. But it is a mistake to think that money is capable of relating absolutely anything to everything – common denominator of all things. Money is as incapable of doing that as the highest philosophical concepts. Death and life, for example, can’t neither be expressed in money nor balanced out – they can’t be transferred into pecuniary
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ratios. This conclusion teaches us composure towards the seemingly omnipotence of money – and sobriety in regard to the efficiency of human inventions. First published: Das Magazin Tagesanzeiger, no. 10, 8 March 2003, p. 43.
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