Elements of a Continental Philosophy of Economics

The goal of these seminars is to elaborate certain elements of a philosophy of economics oriented by continental philosophy, four in particular: price, debt, memory and money. The seminars will be topical and synthetic, prospective rather than comprehensive.

In elaborating these four elements – and beyond the resources provided by twentieth-century continental philosophy – particular consideration will be given to the anthropology of money, and aspects of modern monetary theory. Abstract Market Theory (Palgrave 2015) will be in the background of the seminars, and while nothing in particular will be taken as given from it, an electronic copy will be provided at the start of the seminar. Weekly readings will consist in extracts from a wide range of authors, and will be provided online from week to week.

Course Schedule

Part 1: Introduction. Against the totalisation of value.

1. Introduction. Paralogisms of mainstream economics. Situating neoliberalism.
2. Definition of value. Situating Marx. Value, probability, utility.
3. Price and contingency. The temporal modalities of price and value.

Part 2. Memory and debt. Against exchangism.

4. Between Nietzsche and Freud: topological hypothesis of two memories
5. Between Lévi-Strauss and Clastres: the status of exchange in pre-State society
6. What is social memory? Stiegler on epiphylogenetic memory.

Part 3: Money. Against the hypothesis of ‘money as veil’

7. The pre-history of money. The barter illusion.
8. Taxation and the State. Money as unit of account.
9. Money and memory. Money, token, exchange.

Part 4. Capitalism. Against the hypothesis of the free market.

10. The capitalist market and its states. Against free-market socialism.
11. Money in capitalism. New monetary forms.
12. Commensuration: the bank. Money and price. Concluding remarks.