This paper searches early Greek texts (Homer, Herakleitos, Parmenides, Plato) for the genesis of the idea of the individual mind or soul as a unitary site of consciousness, and explores the relation of this genesis to the first monetisation in history. Money simultaneously promotes the isolated autonomy of the individual and provides a model (the unification of diversity by semi-abstract substance) that shapes both the unity of individual consciousness and the presocratic conception of the cosmos as constituted by a single semi-abstract substance. The argument confirms and develops the importance accorded by Alfred Sohn-Rethel to the ‘real abstraction’ of commodity-exchange in the origins of Greek philosophy.
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Adorno Theodor W. Ashton E.B. Negative Dialectics 1973 [1966] New York Seabury Press
Aristophanes Henderson Jeffrey Frogs, Assemblywomen, Wealth 2002 Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press
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Aristotle Barnes Jonathan The Complete Works of Aristotle 1984b Volume 2 Princeton Princeton University Press
Bammer Anton & Muss Ulrike Das Artemision von Ephesos 1996 Mainz am Rhein von Zabern
Burkert Walter ‘Das Proömium des Parmenides und die Katabasis des Pythagoras’ Phronesis 1969 14 1 1 30
de Ste Croix Geoffrey Ernest Maurice The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World 1981 London Duckworth
Diels Hermann Alexander & Kranz Walther Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker 1951 Sixth Edition Frankfurt Weidmann
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Euripides Kovacs David Bacchae, Iphigenia at Aulis, Rhesus 2003 Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press
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Marx Karl Fernbach David Capital, Volume Three 1981 [1894] Harmondsworth Penguin
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Geertz 1984, p. 59.
Seaford 2004. The only comparable attempt is Thomson 1961. For references see the bibliography. In the footnotes only the works of Marx are cited by title.
Sohn-Rethel 1978.
Sohn-Rethel 1978, p. 28.
Sohn-Rethel 1978, p. 36.
Sohn-Rethel 1978, p. 69.
Sohn-Rethel 1978, p. 77.
Adorno 1973, pp. 177–81.
See, for example, Bammer and Muss 1996, p. 89; Seaford 2004, pp. 129–31.
Snell 1953, pp. 1–22.
B2 in Diels and Kranz 1951. There is scholarly disagreement about the precise words used by Anaximenes, but the general sense is almost certainly his.
Seaford 2004, p. 231.
Seaford 2004, pp. 165–9. In a passage quoted at length by Marx (Marx 1976, p. 253) to illustrate that ‘the movement of capital is limitless’, Aristotle distinguishes economics from chrematistics. The former is limited to procuring true wealth, i.e. use-values, ‘for the amount of property that is needed for procuring a good life is not unlimited’. But the making of money (chrematistics) is unlimited (Politics 1.8–9, in Aristotle 1984b). This corresponds to Marx’s distinction between C-M-C and M-C-M1.
Laks and Most (eds.) 1997, pp. 16–17.
Seaford 2004, pp. 297–8.
Obeyesekere 2002.
Seaford 2004, pp. 305–15.
Marx 1973, pp. 233–4.
Seaford 2004, pp. 231–65.
Sohn-Rethel 1978, pp. 65–70.
Seaford 2004, pp. 246–9.
Burkert 1969.
Seaford 2004, p. 227, n. 49.
Charles Taylor (Taylor 1989, p. 124) argues that for Plato this excluded the development of the modern sense of the inwardness (internalisation) of the self, in which the order involved in the paramountcy of reason is made, not found, and of which the representative figure is Descartes.
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This paper searches early Greek texts (Homer, Herakleitos, Parmenides, Plato) for the genesis of the idea of the individual mind or soul as a unitary site of consciousness, and explores the relation of this genesis to the first monetisation in history. Money simultaneously promotes the isolated autonomy of the individual and provides a model (the unification of diversity by semi-abstract substance) that shapes both the unity of individual consciousness and the presocratic conception of the cosmos as constituted by a single semi-abstract substance. The argument confirms and develops the importance accorded by Alfred Sohn-Rethel to the ‘real abstraction’ of commodity-exchange in the origins of Greek philosophy.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 871 | 225 | 12 |
Full Text Views | 375 | 22 | 2 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 172 | 52 | 5 |