A Brief Philosophy of Money at the Moment of its Disappearance

While everyone is talking about the "limits to growth", money is increasingly detaching itself from matter, disappearing from our sensory experience, seemingly expanding all the more powerfully behind our backs and expanding its sinister logic even more unconditionally. Shortly before the process of its dematerialisation comes to an end, Aldo Haesler, Frank Engster and Oliver Schlaudt seize what is perhaps the last opportunity to reveal the logic of money. Their key question is: what are we actually getting ourselves into when we take money into our hands? Money, they say, makes trade and exchange more fluid, allows us to pay off our debts, measure value and make rational decisions by quantifying costs and benefits. But at what price? What does it demand for its services? We think we know what we use money for – but what does money use us for? If we give in to the illusion that we can use money for our needs for free, it has long since foisted its economy, its world and its reason on us. We know that money is by no means economically neutral, but rather fundamentally changes the economy, for example through the emergence of a financial industry. A Brief Philosophy of Money at the Moment of its Disappearance shows that it is not metaphysically neutral either.

"If you want to escape money, you first have to follow its withdrawal in order to understand this withdrawal – it alone leads 'directly' to the essence of money."