TTEASK034U Philosophy of Money

Volume 2024/2025
Education

The course is planned with physical attendance.

Bachelor students enrol: TTEASK034U

Master's students enrol: TTEKASK34U

Content

Money plays an essential role in our lives. Many of our everyday activities are driven by money whether we are occupied with earning, spending, saving, or repaying them. Often the way we perceive and engage with the world is molded by money as we tend to measure and balance not only things, but also our relation to other people, time, nature, even ourselves, in terms of money. While money seems to make the world go around, we rarely ever ask ourselves the question: What is money? Where does money come from?

This course aims to explore these obvious, but nevertheless often neglected questions. Drawing on interdisciplinary resources, the course will use philosophy to investigate how money is related to themes like religion, politics, morality, nature, and care. Focusing on key concepts such as debt, gift, trust, power, and commodity, the course will discuss classical philosophical texts by Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Spinoza, Locke, Smith, Marx, and Nietzsche, relating them to present-day issues concerning student-debt, care-economy and eco-capitalism.

Learning Outcome

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

  • Understand key concepts relevant to a philosophy of money
  • Reflect and discuss the topics, claims, and arguments of philosophers throughout history
  • Think critically about how these concepts guide and inform our contemporary way of thinking about socio-economic issues 
Literature

Literature

Adkins, Lisa, “Money: a Feminist Issue,” Australian Feminist Studies, 33:96, 167-171, 2018. DOI: 10.1080/​08164649.2018.1517253

Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologica, Fathers of the English Dominican Province, trans. 5 vols. Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981.

Aristotle, Politics, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, J. Barnes (ed.), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. [Politics available online]

Baradaran, Mehrsa, The Colour of Money. Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017.

Benjamin, Walter, “Capitalism as Religion,” in Vol. 1 of Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, ed. by M. Bullock and M. W. Jennings, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996.

Derrida, Jacques, Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, Chicago: University of Chicago Press; First Edition, 2017.

Dostoyevsky, The Gambler, London: Penguin Classics, 2011.

Ingham, Geoffrey: The Nature of Money, Cambridge: Polity, 2004.

Ingham, Geoffrey: Money (What is Political Economy?), Cambridge: Polity, 2020.

Lazzarato, “THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY: A MODEL OF THE DEBT SOCIETY” in Governing by Debt.

Locke, John, “Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and the Raising the Value of Money,” in E. W. Fuller (ed.), A Source Book on Early Monetary Thought, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020.

Marx, Karl, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1, London: Penguin Classics, 1992.

Nietzsche, Friedrich, On the Genealogy of Morals, Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1st edition, 2009.

Platon, Sophist, Hackett, 1993.

Simmel, Georg, Philosophy of Money, London: Routledge 2011.

Sloterdijk, Peter, In the World Interior of Capital, Cambridge: Polity, 2005.

Smith, Adam, 1776, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell.

Spinoza, Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Weber, Max, Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism, London: Routledge; 1st edition, 2001.

The course is planned with physical attendance.
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Class Instruction
  • 28
  • Preparation
  • 122
  • Exam Preparation
  • 150
  • Exam
  • 120
  • Total
  • 420
Written
Oral
Individual
Continuous feedback during the course of the semester
Credit
15 ECTS
Type of assessment
Written assignment
Type of assessment details
Undergraduate requirements (bachelor students):

Requirement to pass the course for undergraduate students (bachelor students) are: a) A syllabus of 1,200-1,500 pages. The syllabus includes both the course literature covered in connection with the course and the assignment literature on which the written homework assignment is based, which the student finds and has approved by the teacher. The syllabus (course and assignment literature combined) may not exceed 1,500 pages. b) Active participation (at least 75% of the hours attended documented by protocol) and preparation of a written home assignment with a scope of 24,000-28,800 characters, i.e., 10-12 pages, based on 600-800 pages of literature as agreed with the course teacher. The assignment is assessed by the teacher. The assessment is based on the 7-point grading scale.

Graduate requirements (candidate/master students):

Requirement to pass the course for graduate students (candidate/master students) are: a) A syllabus of 1,200-1,500 pages. The syllabus includes both the course literature covered in connection with the teaching and the assignment literature on which the written homework assignment is based, which the student finds and has approved by the teacher. The syllabus (course and assignment literature combined) may not exceed 1,500 pages. b) Active participation (at least 75% of the hours attended documented by protocol) and preparation of a written home assignment with a scope of 36,000-48,000 characters, i.e., 15-20 pages, based on 800-1,000 pages of literature as agreed with the teacher. The assignment is assessed by the teacher. The assessment is based on the 7-point grading scale.
Marking scale
7-point grading scale
Exam period

Winter and Summer Exam