Money Wisdom #133

"The genius can pay in nugget and in lump gold; it is not necessary that he bring up his knowledge into the mint of consciousness, stamp it either into the coin of conscientiously analyzed form-detail knowledge or into the paper money of words before he transmit it."

Ezra Pound "Art Notes" The New Age (1919) p. 60–61 signed as B. H. Dias,

reprinted in Harriet Zinnes Ezra Pound and the Visual Arts (1980) p. 124

Money Wisdom #132

"...the moment a man realizes that the guinea stamp, not the metal, is the essential component of the coin, he has broken with all materialist philosophies."

Ezra Pound quoted in Hugh Kenner The Pound Era (1971) p.412

from Marc Shell  The Economy of Literature (1978) notes to p.41

Money Wisdom #131

"In the thought of Plato, the Idea (especially that of the Good) plays a role at once visible and invisible, unreal and real. Aware of the chimera of the money form and of the power of the Gygean ring to affect even his own thought, Plato responds to the terrifying talisman not with a simple wish that it would return whence it came but rather with an attempt to explain and overcome its power to misinform the mind."

Marc Shell The Economy of Literature (1978) p.41

Money Wisdom #130

"Christ had warned against offering Him the coins of secular political rulers. To many pseudosecularized men, however, money appeared as abstract and limitless as the holy grail and as infinitely desirable as the grace of God. (Aristotle comments that sometimes money and grace may be infinitely desired in similar ways). Perhaps the supposedly merciful merchants of Venice did not so much wish to give ducats to God as they wished Him to give (ducats of) grace to them."

Marc Shell The Economy of Literature (1978) p 70

Money Wisdom #129

"... Freud's narrative has come full circle. The primal father, who was once killed, returns in full power - only to be killed again. Yet while after the first killing the sons had established totemism, this time they formed 'an alternative method of allaying their guilt'. According to Freud, this new way of paying for the murder of the primal father was 'first adopted by Christ', who 'sacrificed his own life and so redeemed the company of brothers from original sin'. The basis for this claim is an astonishing reading Freud provides of the notion of original sin, which he interprets as the murder of the father. This leads him to conclude that 'in the Christian doctrine... men were acknowledging in the most disguised manner the guilty primeval deed, since they found the fullest atonement for it in the sacrifice of this one son'." (emphasis my own - Jon)

Tan Waelchli Psychoanalytical Reflections on the Nature of Money 

in David Bennet (Ed) Loaded Subjects (2012) p.172

A Personal Note

I have some personal news that I need to share.

My wife, Sally and I have separated. She moved out at the beginning of May. During the past month or two we've been through the difficult and painful process of telling our (grown-up) children and our families.

She got the dog, I got the cat. So in that small sense at least, I win. Otherwise, it just feels like a massive loss at the moment.

It's a bit odd writing a post like this, about something so intensely personal on a blog that is mostly devoted to esoteric musings on Money. But as well as being something 'out there', Money is also something 'in here', making us who we are. Who I am has just changed.

I try to be honest and true in my writing about Money. I've said before that I think our personal experience of Money is important to our understanding of it and vice versa. For me now, it's no longer our money it's just my money.

And so, I needed to write this post.

Money Wisdom #128

"As Russell Jacoby put it in The Repression of Psychoanalysis (1983): 'IN the course of its decades in America, psychoanalysis became in myth, and almost in fact, little more than an affluent medical specialty with an affluent clientele. By the 1950s, few remembered how many of the early analysts were rebels or radicals...' Jacoby concludes that, 'as a lively in intellectual discourse, psychoanalysis flourishes the more distant it is from practicising analysts' ; and 'as the doctors drummed out of their trade a cultural and political psychoanalysis, it took refuge in university divisions of literature and history' (where, it must added, its discourse became increasingly academicised and arcane in its intercourse with poststructuralism, when its political utility wasn't being illustrated by Marxist and feminist cultural critics).

David Bennet Homo Oeconomicus Vs Homo Psychologicus (p21) in Loaded Subjects - Psychoanalysis, Money and the global financial crisis [ed. David Bennet] (2012)

Money Wisdom #127

"... 'And then', I said, 'they get more and more involved in making money; and the higher they rate money, the lower they rate goodness. I mean, isn't the difference between wealth and goodness analogous to them each lying in one of the pans of a pair of scales and constantly tending in opposite directions?'

'It certainly is,' he said.

'So if wealth and wealthy people are admired in a community, then goodness and good people are despised there.'

'Obviously.' ..."

Plato Republic (circa 380 BC) trans. Robin Waterfield (1993) p.287

Money Wisdom #126

"Being the external, common medium and faculty for turning an image into reality and reality into a mere image (a faculty not springing from man as man or from human society as society), money transforms the real essential powers of man and nature into what are merely abstract conceits and therefore imperfections - into tormenting chimeras - just as it transforms real imperfections and chimeras - essential powers which are really impotent, which exist only in the mind of the individual - into real powers and faculties."

Karl Marx The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 trans. Martin Milligan (1964) p.169

Quoted in  Marc Shell The Economy of Literature (1978) p 41

Money Wisdom #125

"Cephalus, Polemarchus's rich father, tells the assembly that he believes money to be good because with it one can act justly by paying one's debts to men and gods. He gives credence to 'tales told about what is in Hades, that the one who has done unjust deeds here must pay the penalty there' [Plato Republic 330d]. Like many other Greeks, Cephalus trusts that his wealth will save him from punishment. He hopes that it will make the vengeful Hades unable to see him, and he believes that his money in this sense is an agent of invisibility."

Marc Shell The Economy of Literature (1978) p.21