‘Capitalist critique and proletarian reasoning fit for our time’ – Peter Linebaugh
Taking the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume as its subject, this book breaks new ground in focusing its lens on a little-studied aspect of Hume’s thinking: his understanding of money.
George Caffentzis makes both an intervention in the field of monetary philosophy and into Marxian conceptions of the relation between philosophy and capitalist development. He vividly charts the ways in which Hume’s philosophy directly informed the project of ‘civilizing’ the people of the Scottish Highlands and pacifying the English proletariat in response to the revolts of both groups at the heart of the empire.
Built on careful historical and philosophical detective work, Civilizing Money offers a stimulating and radical political reading of the ways in which Hume’s fundamental philosophical claims performed concrete political functions.
Table of Content
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
Foreword
An Autobiographical Preface
Introduction: Who is a Philosopher of Money?
PART I: HUME AND HIS CLASS’S PROBLEMATIC
1. On the Scottish Origins of Civilization
2. Civilizing the Highlands: Hume, Money and the Annexing Act
3. Hume’s Monetary Education in Bristol
PART II: HUME’S PHILOSOPHY AND HIS STRATEGY
4. Why was Hume a Metallist?
5. Did Hume read Berkeley’s The Querist? Notions and Conventions in their Philosophies of Money
6. Fiction or Counterfeit? Specie or Paper?
7. Wages and Money: Pegasus’ Mirror
Conclusion: Locke, Berkeley and Hume as Philosophers of Money
Coda: A Critique of Marx’s Thesis 11 on Feuerbach
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
George Caffentzis is a co-founder of the Midnight Notes Collective and coordinator of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa (CAFA). Caffentzis was a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern Maine for over thirty years before retirement. He is the author of Clipped Coins, Abused Words, and Civil Government and Civilizing Money.
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