The contribution examines Karl Polanyi's analysis of the fictitiousness of the commodity description of money, and its suitability as a reference for the analysis of the commodification of money within contemporary markets for credit and finance. Any critique of the commodification of money that draws on Polanyi's influential argument should distinguish between two fundamentally different meanings of the occurrence of money as a commodity: the institutional system that makes some commodity money versus the commercial practice that turns money into a commodity. Only a particular strand of Polanyi's analysis provides a point of reference for a comprehensive critique of the commodification of money, rather than the monetization of some type of commodity. Departing from the aspects of Polanyi's analysis that are specific to the political economy of the gold standard, the article draws on Polanyi's material account of the essential contributions of public organization and social convention in the constitution of money. On these grounds, the commodification of money is potentially objectionable as the social disembedding of a common public institution.
The article provides a moral analysis of the commercial trade of financial claims against private debtors. Secondary debt markets process a type of object that differs from regular commodities. The specificity of debt lies in its peculiar relationality that is in tension with its legal constitution as a commercial object, or with its treatment as a mere thing. The constitution of a credit claim presupposes a corresponding financial liability. Thus, debt relations are constituted by polar correlates of deontic modalities. Debt buyers do not obtain mere monadic objects, but intersubjective rights of action against debtors. In turn, they arguably do not become mere owners of abstract claims, but successors to a position in a preceding social relation that is imbued with moral limitations and responsibilities. Markets for debt should thus be subjected to the deontic logic of credit relations, not to the norms of ownership in things.
The article looks at competing conceptions of solidarity. The main focus lies on the universality or partisanship that is associated with moral obligations stemming from solidarity. It appears that the reference to a 'solidum', or a uniting commonality, is crucial to understanding solidarity. In the article, solidarity is defended as a morally significant relation that is wider and more inclusive than direct or intimate relations of friendship, love or loyalty, but simultaneously narrower and more exclusive than universal notions of justice or humanity. Due to their basis in uniting communalities, relations of solidarity are normatively dependent, i.e. the moral content of the shared identifications that ground solidarity determine its moral valence.
Der Band versammelt philosophische Beiträge, die den Theorietyp des Autonomieperfektionismus in historischer und systematischer Perspektive beleuchten. Im Zuge von Immanuel Kants Kritik an früheren perfektionistischen Ethikentwürfen – insbesondere die von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz und Christian Wolff – entsteht ein neuer Theorietyp, der nicht wie die früheren Konzeptionen auf die Beförderung von Glück abzielt, sondern auf die Beförderung von Freiheit, die Bedingungen ihrer Ausübung sowie eine Bestimmung der Grenzen staatlicher Interventionen. Die Beiträge beschäftigen sich in historisch-systematischer Absicht mit Positionen des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts und bieten Darstellungen zu Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Schiller, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx und anderen Autoren.
Die Verortung von Moses Hess innerhalb der Ideengeschichte der Anerkennung ist am ehesten über seine Beziehung zur frühsozialistischen und junghegelianischen Gesellschaftskritik, insbesondere hinsichtlich der Gattungswesen- und Entfremdungskonzeptionen von Feuerbach und Marx, zu begreifen. So lässt sich das Gesellschaftsmodell, für das Hess in seiner Zurückweisung von Geldwirtschaft und Marktgesellschaft eintritt, sinnvoll über den Übergang der Feuerbachschen Religionskritik zur Marxschen Kritik der kapitalistischen Wirtschaftsordnung einordnen. Anerkennung besteht demnach in einem geteilten Bewusstsein eines übergeordneten menschlichen Gattungszusammenhangs, der in seiner angemessenen institutionellen Verwirklichung die Abschaffung von Wettbewerb, Geldvermittlung und Privateigentum erfordern würde.
Cet ouvrage offre un état des lieux des théories de la reconnaissance aujourd'hui et une contribution à penser de nouvelles perspectives. Il intègre, d'une part, une discussion relative au paradigme de la reconnaissance et aux cadres théoriques susceptibles d'être mis en œuvre. Il cherche à mesurer, d'autre part, la pertinence et la fécondité de ces théories ainsi que leur potentiel critique dans différents domaines des sciences humaines.
Solidarity is commonly invoked in the justification of public health care. This is understandable, as calls for and appeals to solidarity are effective in the mobilization of unison action and the willingness to incur sacrifices for others. However, the reference to solidarity as a moral notion requires caution, as there is no agreement on the meaning of solidarity. The article argues that the reference to solidarity as a normative notion is relevant to health-related moral claims, but that it does not provide a convincing foundation of claims to universal health care. References to universal solidarity obliterate an important distinction between those moral demands that are founded on principles like justice, recognition, or humanity, and those demands that stem from partisan relations in communities. While there is no 'separate essence' of solidarity that could be referred to in order to argue for the conceptual necessity of solidarity's partiality, some features may reasonably be stipulated as being essential to solidarity with a view to its systematic function within moral philosophy. The normative and motivational force of the ties invoked by solidarity is particularly relevant when basic moral demands are not met, and societies are in need of significant forms of communal relatedness.
This article is concerned with the structure of monetary denominations of economic value. Marx and Simmel analyze this structure by means of references to objects of mere catallactic validity. These objects are ontologically atypical insofar as they are particulars of the genus commodity. Understanding money through generic particulars elucidates the conceptual link between money as a unit of account and money as a means of payment. This initially perplexing idea captures a fundamental characteristic of money without committing to either a commodity theory or a claim theory of money. A modification of the notion 'commodity' allows for a conception of money as a generic particular that is consistent with contemporary accounts of money as abstract purchasing power residing in different forms of liabilities and claims denominated in a common quantitative scale.
In this paper we discuss Pettit’s attempt to prove the compatibility of consequentialism with common moral psychology. By specifying how moral agents should deliberate, Pettit’s indirect consequentialism allegedly saves pure consequentialism from becoming revisionary or self-effacing. After discussing various possibilities of understanding his model of moral deliberation, we object that indirect consequentialism cannot meet both challenges at once. If it does not turn into a self-effacing theory, it still runs counter to common moral psychology. Ultimately, we suggest that the aspiration to stay true to ordinary moral psychology gives moral philosophers a reason to abandon strict value neutrality.