I am not here preparing to offer some sort of be all to end all. Rather, I am commenting on a particular work.

I recently took advantage of a Barnes & Noble gift card to download Georg Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money to my Nook. The author’s preface gives a very persuasive (at least to this reader) argument for the intellectual function of philosophy in understanding the world. It is all the more interesting in that this does not come in the context of a book about spiritualism or the meaning of life or finding one’s “purpose.” Rather, it opens up a lengthy discussion of money.

Simmel writes that any topic of study has “two boundaries making the point at which the process of reflection ceases to be exact and takes on a philosophical character.” He points to the first boundary as being the “lower boundary of the exact domain.” Now, I admit to not being too clear what he is saying here. Perhaps a reference to the philosophy that pre-dated modern science (the ancient Greeks, for example).  But the real meat is what he considers to be the philosophical domain that comes after the upper limit of the “exact domain.”

Philosophy, he says, is what can turn the disparate fragments of scientific and empirical knowledge in a world view. Essentially, philosophy as the science of hermeneutics. These things cannot be fully determined, he writes, by science. To get past this upper limit of scientific knowledge requires philosophy.

As to whether philosophical interpretations can ever be replaced by ever growing empirical knowledge… he compares that to the idea to the idea that photography could replace painting and sculpture. Purely mechanistic depictions are beside the point.

Simmel tries to explain the “essence [of money] and the meaning of its existence.” This is, to him, a purely philosophical exploration. Thus, no matter who often it might have recourse to the science of economics, it remains a philosophical study.

On another note, it appears that Routledge Classics is publishing a new edition of The Philosophy of Money for just $29.95 retail – a far more affordable from the $67.95 (plus tax) that I paid. The high price of the book was one reason that I took so long to purchase it (having desired the tome since 1997).

I have been having conversations with some friends about the existence of non-existence of free will.

The conversation was begun, in a cliched fashion, on Facebook. A poet of my acquaintance was arguing against free will and in favor of determinism.

While initially participating in the Facebook thread, I switched to a longer form discussion and wrote a letter to a friend of mine with a philosophical bent, but also with far more of a scientific bent than I.

My initial thesis was that, scientifically (at least based on my limited understanding of science), was that determinism is a powerful argument. In truth, I felt trapped by it. The argument for free will that I could see successfully contradicting that was a theistic god.

In Jamesian, pragmatic terms, I agreed that we must act as if free will exists. But once one moves beyond pragmatism into more metaphysical questions, I had trouble seeing free will exist except as something granted by a beneficent god.

When I met with my friend, I was surprised to find him not being an advocate for scientific determinism. For the most part, he felt a deep need to believe in free will. The philosophical basis was primarily pragmatism, though he also provided me a possible, scientific way out in the idea of “emergent phenomena.” I would explain it better, but frankly, I am just now reading up on it myself.