Monetisation and the Genesis of the Western Subject.

Seaford, Richard

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.

ANCIENT philosophy; MONEY; INDIVIDUALISM; HOMER, fl. ca. 900 B.C.-ca. 801 B.C.; HERACLITUS, of Ephesus; PLATO, 428-347 B.C.; METAPHYSICAL cosmology; ABSTRACT thought

Historical Materialism, 2012, Vol 20, Issue 1, p78

1465-4466

Academic Journal

10.1163/156920612X632782