Ancient Greece, the cradle of Western civilization, gifted the world democracy, theater, and philosophy. But could its most enduring intellectual legacy be intertwined with something as mundane as money? In his insightful book, scholar Richard Seaford argues precisely that: the revolutionary advent of coined money in 6th century BC Greece fundamentally reshaped human thought, laying the groundwork for abstract philosophical concepts that still resonate today. This exploration delves into Seaford’s compelling thesis, examining how the tangible reality of early Greek Money sparked a cognitive shift towards understanding the universe as an ordered, intelligible system.
Seaford’s analysis begins not with philosophers, but with Homer, the epic poet whose works offer a window into the economic transactions of early Greece. In Homeric society, reciprocity reigned supreme. Exchanges were personal, embedded in social relationships, and often took the form of gifts rather than impersonal trade. Yet, even in this idealized world, cracks appeared in the system of reciprocity. Gifts, meant to bind, could sow discord, highlighting the limitations of a purely relational economy. Interestingly, Homeric poems also depict sacrificial rituals where equal shares of meat were distributed, pointing towards a contrasting model of communal and standardized exchange.
The development of the polis, the Greek city-state, marked a turning point. It synthesized the communal aspect of sacrifice with the durability and exchangeability of prestige goods. Temple offerings of durable figurines, representing sacrificial animals, became increasingly common, symbolizing this fusion. This period saw Greek temples evolve into repositories of wealth, safeguarding durable contributions like precious metals and figurines. Crucially, these temples began to redistribute wealth, often as payments for services. Seaford posits that this practice, rooted in the ancient concept of a universal right to a share of sacrificial meat, paved the way for the emergence of coinage. Just as sacrificial meat was divided into equal, standardized portions, so too were pieces of metal, eventually leading to early forms of Greek money.
A silver tetradrachm, a common form of ancient Greek money, showcasing the owl of Athena. The standardization and symbolic value of such coins were pivotal in shaping abstract thought.
The sixth chapter of Seaford’s book forges a crucial link between Greek animal sacrifice and the dawn of coinage. Sanctuaries, acting as communal hubs, needed reliable, lasting contributions to sustain sacrificial rituals. The security offered by these sanctuaries allowed for the redistribution of precious metals, often as payment for services. This practice, Seaford argues, drew from the ancient notion of a shared right to sacrificial meat, translating into pieces of metal that, like the meat, needed to be uniformly sized and of consistent quality – essentially, early coins. The introduction of precious metal into communal sacrificial distributions, Seaford contends, laid the foundation for public trust in the inherent value of coins. The very act of stamping a coin reinforced this trust, eventually supplanting the role of sacrificial ritual in generating collective confidence. This stamp, a marker of authenticity, imprinted a form or sign onto the metal, signifying what Seaford calls an “ideal substance” – a concrete yet abstract value distinct from the metal itself.
This “ideal substance” is key to understanding Seaford’s argument. He suggests that the collective recognition of the symbolic value of standardized metal pieces in sacrificial rituals led to a defining characteristic of Greek coinage: fiduciarity. Early Greek coins weren’t just valued for their intrinsic metal content; they were accepted on trust, based on the political or social authority guaranteeing their value. The stamp on the coin wasn’t a measure of quality or quantity but a sign of redeemability, of value conferred by a trusted entity. This innovation, Seaford argues, necessitated the recognition of a fundamental dichotomy: the sign (form) versus the substance. While the metal had intrinsic worth, the decisive element was the sign, implying a homogeneous, ideal value distinct from the physical metal. Seaford pinpoints this fiduciary quality of early Greek money as the catalyst for the philosophical leaps of the era.
Moving into the fifth century BC, Seaford examines Greek texts that, while not explicitly theorizing about money, reveal its inherent properties. Money, as it emerged in these writings, was homogeneous, representing an “embodiment of absolute abstract equivalence between commodities.” It was impersonal, detached from individual identities, becoming a universal objective for action and a universal means to achieve ends. Its power was seemingly limitless, as was the desire for it. Crucially, money united opposites – concrete in its material form yet abstract in its numerical value and the “ideal substance” it represented. This analysis of Greek money’s characteristics forms the bedrock for Seaford’s later comparisons between these monetary attributes and the metaphysical principles of the Presocratic philosophers.
Seaford challenges purely political explanations for the rise of Greek metaphysics, such as those proposed by scholars like Lloyd and Vernant, who attributed cosmology’s emergence to unprecedented developments in impersonal law, public space, and public debate in 6th century BC city-states. Seaford counters that these city-states weren’t unique in these political aspects. Their economic systems, however, were distinctive. The Ionians, pioneers of both coinage and philosophical cosmology, provide a compelling case study. Seaford proposes a “cumulative argument,” correlating the development of coined money with the rise of early Greek cosmology. He argues that the Ionians’ material principles and Parmenides’ concept of the One are “unconscious projections” of the ideal substance of exchange-value – the abstract value embodied by Greek money.
A collection of ancient Greek silver coins. The variety and standardization highlight the pervasive influence of coinage on Greek society and thought.
Delving deeper, Seaford draws a striking analogy between the characteristics of coined money and Anaximander’s principle, the apeiron, or ‘unlimited’. Both are boundless, impersonal, abstract, sources of all things, and perpetually in motion. While acknowledging that socio-political factors might explain Anaximander’s use of concepts like penalty and justice, Seaford argues these explanations fall short of accounting for the profound similarity between the apeiron and money. Even if Anaximander’s cosmos reflects socio-political relations, it must also project the most groundbreaking innovation of his time – money – as a foundational “substrate of all commercial activity.” Just as earlier societal shifts, like the move from sacrificial communality to monarchy, were projected onto the cosmos, so too, in this era, was monetary value.
The question of why early Greek cosmologies leaned towards monism – the idea of a single underlying principle – is addressed by Seaford through a multifaceted lens. He acknowledges the influence of earlier mythic cosmogonies that depicted the world emerging from a single, undifferentiated mass. However, he goes beyond this, identifying psychological and socio-political dimensions. Mythic cosmogonies, he suggests, mirrored the “cosmic projection of self-formation,” a concept central to mystery cults. They also reflected the historical rise of monarchy and its unifying power. Philosophical cosmogony, while retaining the psychological element, diverged from myth by replacing personal universal power with the impersonality of money. This fusion, Seaford concludes, resulted in an “unconscious merging of ideas from mystery cults with the sublimation of monetary value.” The substitution of the socio-political element with the monetary factor fostered “a cosmology of impersonal, all-underlying substance with a tendency towards abstraction.”
Heraclitus and Parmenides, key figures in Presocratic philosophy, exemplify this sublimation in their ideas about abstract being. Seaford connects this concept to the similar abstractions of money and mind. Both, he argues, are abstractions – embodied yet, in a sense, invisible. Each is a singular, controlling entity uniting a multiplicity. For Heraclitus, the abstract logos stemmed from the “mutual reinforcement” between the invisible logos of money and the “invisible unitary self.” Parmenides, focusing solely on the abstract, conceived of the One – a single, self-sufficient, impersonal, unchanging, abstract sphere. Seaford attributes this to the aristocratic ideal of individual self-sufficiency, “reinforced and abstracted by the pervasive abstraction of money.”
Pythagoreanism, with its central tenet that “number is all,” represents, according to Seaford, the “sublimation of the concrete plurality inherent in commerce and practical politics,” contrasting with Parmenides’ focus on abstract unitary value. He also explores Protagoras’ subjectivism, suggesting that early Greek thinkers were beginning to recognize the human tendency to project themselves and their institutions onto the world – a process Seaford terms “deprojection” or “desublimation.” While unaware of their own projection of monetary value onto the cosmos, Protagoras, in his “man is the measure” doctrine, comes close to this realization. Parmenides’ One embodied monetary value abstracted from circulation, implying a distinction between being and seeming. Protagoras’ “deprojection” of monetary value, however, contributed to his “subjectivist challenge to the distinction between being and seeming.” Even Protagoras, Seaford suggests, unconsciously projects monetary value, but in a way that emphasizes its subjectivity, leading to a kind of self-deconstruction.
Seaford’s thesis, while insightful and meticulously argued, is not without its critics, as highlighted in the original review. The reviewer points out that Seaford’s focus on historical explanations might not appeal to scholars solely interested in the philosophical content of Presocratic texts. Seaford’s tendency to downplay intellectual explanations in favor of socio-political, religious, and psychological factors is also noted. Furthermore, the reviewer questions the mechanism of “projection” itself, a cornerstone of Seaford’s argument. While parallels between Greek money and Presocratic cosmological principles are undeniable, the reviewer argues that Seaford doesn’t fully clarify how this “projection” actually occurred, or why it must be the primary driver. The critique suggests that the mechanism remains somewhat of a deus ex machina, lacking the clarity needed to fully validate Seaford’s ambitious thesis.
Despite these criticisms, Seaford’s work offers a compelling and innovative perspective on the origins of abstract thought. By meticulously connecting the emergence of Greek money with the development of key philosophical concepts, he invites us to reconsider the relationship between economics and philosophy. His book serves as a powerful reminder that even the most abstract intellectual pursuits are often deeply rooted in the material realities of their time. The legacy of Greek money, therefore, extends far beyond the economic sphere, potentially shaping the very foundations of Western philosophical and intellectual traditions.
