In Money and the Early Greek Mind, Richard Seaford argues that the invention of money and coinage was instrumental in the development of concepts of the universe as an impersonal, abstract system. Arguments in a similar vein were made by the German Marxist Alfred Sohn-Rethel, who argued that the origins of Kant’s idea of the transcendental subject and of the foundations of scientific abstraction can be traced back to the introduction of coined money in ancient Greece.
The purpose of this post is to explore the relations between money, abstract thought and panpsychism.