Prof. Dr. Erol Göka
Those who live with an awareness of the verses, “Spend from what is beyond your needs” (al-Baqarah, 2:219) *(i.e., voluntary charitable giving from one’s surplus — infāq) and “Your wealth and your children are but a trial” (al-Anfal, 8:28), those who strive to earn halal (lawful) sustenance, who open up job opportunities through their efforts, who pay the rightful dues of those who work for them, and who share what they earn with those in need, with the state, and with society—blessed are you. What more could we say to you but offer our prayers? You are the strength of our nation, our society, and all of humanity. May Allah increase your numbers and your earnings…
And yet, there are those who led Professor Ahmet Tabakoğlu to say:
“We have failed the test of wealth. The rationale? We thought that by becoming rich, we would gain prestige. But we forgot that wealth demands responsibility and became enslaved by money. We sought to secure our lives by chasing after status and positions… And for the sake of rank, for the sake of our future, we ended up as ‘Muslims devouring other Muslims.’”
(Interview in Düşünce Magazine, special issue on ‘Money’)
When truth and reality have become so estranged from one another, we must take our heads into our hands and think deeply, consult with one another, and share our concerns… We must speak—but only when it is worth speaking. We must honor our words. We must realize that when we confine ourselves to superficial views, we fail to clarify either the problems or their solutions. The limits of my language are the limits of my world. Words are the home of being. Being finds expression through speech; unless we understand this language through the lens of our own conditions, we cannot connect with Truth.
Of course, for a believer, the word of God is the beginning of all things, the foundation of everything that unfolds. Yet, humankind has been asked, “Do you not reason?”—and from this divine call, the understanding has taken root that “all books exist to help us understand a single Book.” In today’s world, language continues to flow, carrying both philosophy and science in its current. And we, too, must incorporate whatever is beneficial from them into our own understanding.
Reasoning that disregards the etymology of words and concepts, the shifts in their meanings across history and cultures, and the power and limits of human understanding is hardly scholarly. It does not propel our consciousness toward Truth. Take, for example, the concept of the “ruh” (spirit)… The Qur’an contains numerous verses related to the ruh, and one can learn a great deal from both traditional exegeses and academic research conducted in faculties of theology. Once you delve into this knowledge, the first thing you notice is just how difficult it is to understand and interpret the verses on ruh in a scholarly manner.
But that’s only one part of the difficulty—there are also semantic shifts that have occurred in almost every language in modern times. In Turkish as well, when we say “ruh,” a wide variety of meanings may come to mind today. Just consider the official name of my field of expertise: “mental health and disorders.” Need I say more?
In short, we must talk—but anyone who speaks should be clear about what they are talking about and must be careful not to exceed the limits of their knowledge. I understand a bit of philosophy, and slightly more of psychology. That is why I have decided to read, think, and write particularly on the philosophy and psychology of money.
We will be discussing the philosophy and psychology of money, but even observing the historical transformation of the word “economy” is unsettling in itself. In Ancient Greece, economy (oikonomia) referred to “the law governing the management of the household and family.” The term political economy, which we first encounter in 1615, describes a way of thinking that unites the management of private households with that of the state.
With political economy, the religious and traditional moral perspectives are abandoned, paving the way for the emergence of the concept of homo economicus. Over time, economics begins to position itself in the scientific realm as “the science that seeks to allocate scarce resources among infinite needs in a balanced manner.” Terms such as national economy and macroeconomics enter the discourse.
Still, all this is not yet sufficient for economics to be classified as a “pure science.” For that, both uncertainty and historical context must be eliminated, and mathematics must become its guiding method. This milestone was achieved by Paul Samuelson, the recipient of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Economics. With globalization, we now speak of finance transcending spatial and political boundaries and becoming liberalized.
The functions of money—as a medium of exchange, a measure of value, and a store of value—have also transformed throughout this entire process. Without understanding these functions, especially the major shift brought about by the advent of paper money, it is nearly impossible to discuss the subject meaningfully.
Mustafa Özel writes that “Goethe grasped the nature and destiny of paper money with a wisdom that would make economists envious, long before paper money became a global phenomenon.” In Faust, Goethe portrays the use of paper money to cover a budget deficit and revive the economy as nothing less than selling the soul—first the individual’s, then the state’s—to the devil.
Just as political economy ended the religious perspective on money, paper money put an end to alchemy—the ancient attempt to produce gold from base metals. And here we are, living in a world that came after the invention of paper money—a world vastly different from those that came before—trying, within the bounds of philosophy and psychology, to speak about how money affects us. If we can, that is…
“The Philosophy of Money”
In these modern times, we had set out to speak about the influence of money on us—how it pulls us into its vortex and toys with us like a cat plays with a mouse; in other words, to explore the philosophy and psychology of money. But first, we must give credit where it is due. No matter what anyone says on the subject, it will ultimately amount to a footnote to what the German sociologist Georg Simmel has already written. Ours is no different…
Simmel ranks among the most underappreciated geniuses in the academic world. Despite introducing an exceptionally original and profound perspective to sociology, his name was long overshadowed by Marx and Weber, and it was only toward the end of his life—at the age of 56—that he gained formal recognition in academia.
I discovered Simmel while researching sociology’s contributions to the notion of human group-existence for my book “İnsan Kısım Kısım: Topluluklar, Zihniyetler, Kimlikler” (Vadi Publishing). I was so impressed by his work that I devoted an entire section to it, titled “Georg Simmel’s Neglected Sociological Insight.” Simmel approaches sociology by grounding it in human nature and interpersonal relationships. That’s why some have dubbed him “the Freud of sociology.” But I find that label insufficient. Simmel understood—and expressed far earlier and more clearly than anyone else—the flow and importance of psychology and unconscious desires in social life and history, all without falling into the absurdities of drive theory. One should also note Simmel’s influence on Freud’s book Civilization and Its Discontents.
“If history is not to be a puppet show, then it must be the history of spiritual events… Even though it is claimed that the science of history is concerned solely with the account of conscious processes, unconscious processes infiltrate those conscious ones in such varied ways and prepare their groundwork so thoroughly that a full explanation of the conscious cannot be achieved without their help… If there existed a psychology with the rigor of a science of law, then the science of history would, in the same way that astronomy is applied mathematics, be applied psychology.”
This keen insight into the importance of psychology also characterizes Simmel’s sociology. According to him, neither the concept of “society” nor the concept of “individual” can serve as foundational for sociology. In the absence of an ultimate reference point that could grant sociology the status of a science, what remains is only “reciprocal interaction,” within which both society and the individual fade away like ghosts. The principal object or subject that sociology seeks to explain—either in particular or in general—is reciprocal interaction.
Opposed to the notion of a society that exists as a fixed given, Simmel focused instead on the process of socialization—how society comes into being. He believed that the knowledge of reality could only be attained by analyzing each process down to its most elementary motifs, and to do that, one must unravel the interwoven threads of social life that run through everything.
According to Simmel, as society becomes more complex, individuals’ quantitative and structural dependencies increase. In modern culture, as social differentiation deepens, these dependencies grow to the point where they objectify the individual—resulting in a tragedy. Simmel’s thinking diverges sharply from that of Marx. Unlike Marx, he does not attribute economic and social problems solely to capitalism; for Simmel, the root of the problem lies in human nature.
For Simmel, value does not lie in what is easily attainable or what is distant and difficult to acquire; rather, it lies in what is near and accessible, yet still demands great effort. In modern life, money is of vital importance because it provides the necessary means both to establish distance and to overcome difficulty. It represents the very spirit of the age.
Unlike in a barter economy, modern economics makes an infinite chain of exchanges possible through money. As a result, the world becomes increasingly commodified, and human beings grow ever more alienated. It is for this reason that Simmel first wrote The Psychology of Money, followed by his monumental work, The Philosophy of Money—a text that has also been translated into Turkish.
Simmel also sees a connection between the monetary economy and the dominance of rationality. What they share is a kind of neutrality in how both people and objects are approached.
“Money becomes the most terrifying codifier: by making the diversity of objects commensurable, by expressing all qualitative differences solely through the quantitative differences assigned to them, and by presenting itself—through its colorlessness and indifference—as the namer of all values. It hollows out the essence of things, gnaws away at their uniqueness, their particular value, their incomparability, in a way that makes it impossible to escape. Money does not merely stamp its mark on economic life; it extends its imprint to all lifestyles, worldviews, value orientations, and forms of human interaction—it determines the tempo of life itself.”
The efforts of Muslims to resist interest and capitalism under labels such as Islamic economics or Islamic banking are certainly commendable. But perhaps the real hope lies in endeavors that go deeper—those that manage to decipher the role of money and succeed in reviving our souls, which have been tossed about like cotton in the wind.
