Suchergebnisse

Intro -- Contents -- Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: Money, Myths, and Thoughtlessness -- A Note About Anti-Semitism -- The First Debate: The Nature of Money and the Myth of Barter -- The Second Debate: The Cult of Neoliberalism and Economism -- Thoughtless Cognition -- Hyper-complex Abstract Systems and Thoughtless Cognition -- Money and Thoughtlessness -- Chapter 3: The Neolithic Revolution: From Social Currencies to Debt -- Money in the Pre-Axial Age -- Hunter-Gatherers -- The Neolithic Revolution: Agriculture and "Civilization" -- Sacrifice, Hierarchy, and Cosmic Imbalance -- "Primitive" Money -- Chapter 4: The Axial Age -- The Axial Age -- The Axial Age and Money -- The Suspicion of Money and Merchants -- Protean Money, Protean People -- The Axial Age, the Denunciation of Wealth, and the Praise of Poverty -- Robbing the Common World -- Ambiguities and Aporias of Money and Abstract Thought -- Conclusions -- Chapter 5: Animist Ontologies, Abstraction, and Slavery -- The Moral Limits of Markets in Contemporary Thought -- Anthropocentrism, Quantification, Abstraction -- Power in the Living Cosmos: Native American Ontology -- Animist Ontologies: Kinship with the Living Cosmos -- The Force of Things -- The Modern Ontology of Death -- Slavery, Abstraction, Disenchantment -- Initial Conclusions -- Chapter 6: Mastering Money: Usury, Governance and Science in Medieval Europe -- The Theological Power of Money and Christian Empire -- Mastering Money -- Money, Quantification, Proto-Science -- The Colonizing Empire of Homo Economicus -- Chapter 7: The Modern Attacks on the Traditional Suspicions of Money and Merchants -- Political Arguments Against the Traditional Suspicions of Money and Merchants -- Religious Arguments Against the Traditional Suspicions of Money and Merchants.

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

"Environmental Philosophy in Desperate Times examines environmental philosophy in the context of climate denial, inaction, and thoughtlessness. It introduces readers to the varied theories and movements of environmental philosophy. But more than that, it seeks to unsettle our received understanding of the world and our role in it, especially through consideration of Indigenous, feminist, and radical voices."--

Amor mundi, love of the world, is vital to democracy and public happiness, and also to the Earth and the environment. But it has been largely lost in modern society. What is it? How was it lost? Can it be recovered? This volume argues that it can--and should be--recovered, and such as ramifications for Christian political ethics.