A Tragédia da Liberdade, Ante-Tragédia da Cultura na Filosofia do Dinheiro

Abstract

In Philosophy of Money (1900), money is a permanent splitting liberation and fluidification, until it takes any form through equalizing in quantity all qualities it bounds to. This process also happens: in objects, more and more ephemeral and independent from man, leading to an objective culture that gets farther away; and in subjects, exposed to a continuing splitting process, thereby gaining a negative freedom with no properties and purpose. This menaces man’s individuality which is neither an isolated subjectivity nor an agglutinated objectivity. In 1911, Simmel describes human life as a tragedy of culture, an attempt to contain the living matter creating successive forms that, once created, begin to drain its contents. This view was already acknowledged in the Philosophy of Money as the tragedy of freedom. By only using money as a means, acting on positive freedom, we overcome successive resistances (non-freedom forms) and advance to our individual purpose.