Money and Thoughtlessness: A Genealogy and Defense of the Traditional Suspicions of Money and Merchants

Author:   Justin Pack
Publisher:   Springer International Publishing AG
Edition:   1st ed. 2023
ISBN:  

9783031222603


Pages:   238
Publication Date:   02 January 2023
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
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Money and Thoughtlessness: A Genealogy and Defense of the Traditional Suspicions of Money and Merchants


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Overview

In this book, Justin Pack proposes a genealogy of the traditional suspicion of money and merchants. This genealogy is framed both by how money itself has changed and how different traditions responded to money. Money and merchants became heavily debated concerns in the Axial Age, which coincided with the spread of coinage. A deep suspicion of money and merchants was particularly notable in the Greek, Confucian and Christian traditions, and continued into the Middle Ages. These traditions wrestled with a new dialectic of purity that also appears with the widespread use of money.  How were these concerns dealt with politically, socially and philosophically? How did they change over time? How did medieval Europe deal with money and how did this inform modern governmentality? To answer these questions, Pack turns to Hanna Arendt’s work. Arendt argues that one of the outstanding characteristics of our time is thoughtlessness. This thoughtlessness is related to how modern life, especially under neoliberalism, is increasingly structured by abstract systems, abstract calculative rationality, abstract relations, and the profit motive. Money both drives and embodies this machinery. The hyper-complex abstract systems of modernity discourage, to use Arendtian terms, “thinking” (wonder, questioning everything) in favor of “cognition” (problem solving). Too often the result is thoughtless cognition—the ability to make things more productive and efficient paired with the incapacity to question and challenge the implications and morality of these systems.

Full Product Details

Author:   Justin Pack
Publisher:   Springer International Publishing AG
Imprint:   Palgrave Macmillan
Edition:   1st ed. 2023
Weight:   0.452kg
ISBN:  

9783031222603


ISBN 10:   3031222601
Pages:   238
Publication Date:   02 January 2023
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand   Availability explained
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction 2 Money, Myths, and Thoughtlessness 3 The Neolithic Revolution: From Social Currencies to Debt 4 The Axial Age 5 Animist Ontologies, Abstraction, and Slavery 6 Mastering Money: Usury, Governance and Science in Medieval Europe 7 The Modern Attacks on the Traditional Suspicions of Money and Merchants 8 Against Homo Economicus: Mauss and Gift Cultures 9 The Hermeneutics of Suspicion and Contemporary Cynicism 10 Money and Thoughtlessness: Abstraction, Quantification, Adiaphorization 11 Conclusions

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Author Information

Justin Pack is a Lecturer in Philosophy at California State University, Stanislaus, USA.

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