Georg Simmel: The Money Equivalent of Personal Values
The importance of money within the system of appreciation is measurable by the development of the money fine. We first encounter in this area, as its most peculiar manifestation, the atonement of murder by payment of money an occurrence so frequent in primitive cultures that it makes specific examples unnecessary, at least for its simplest and most direct form. Less appreciated, however, is not so much the frequency as the intensity with which the relationship between human value and money value dominates legal conceptions.
The Philosophy of Money by Georg Simmel
German philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel published his magnum opus, The Philosophy of Money, in 1900. It is an amalgam of history, economics, sociology, social psychology, and cultural commentary. Simmel focuses on the psychological and sociological effects of money as a cultural determinant. Discussing the meaning of money is for him a matter of discussing money as a phenomenon. He describes the experience of money and analyzes the preconditions that give money its meaning: consciousness, social relations, and values.