Carl Menger’s review, published on 26 January 1901, assesses Simmel’s attempt to establish a philosophical inquiry into money beyond the limits of economics. Its central objection concerns disciplinary scope: Simmel correctly perceives the limitations of historical economics, but mistakes those limitations for the boundaries of economic science itself. Menger admires the book’s intellectual ingenuity while rejecting its claim to extend monetary theory systematically.
The review first reconstructs Simmel’s two-part project. The analytical part derives money from the conditions of life that sustain its meaning, addressing value, monetary substance, and money’s place in purposive activity. The synthetic part reverses this direction, examining money’s effects on individual freedom, personal values, and the style of life. For Simmel, as Menger presents him, historical explanation cannot exhaust the conceptual, psychological, and ethical significance of money. Its effects on inward experience and culture also require philosophical interpretation where exact knowledge is unavailable.
Menger’s criticism turns on the distinction between historical inquiry and theory:
Der Vers. hat in demselben nur die historische Nationalökonomie im Auge, deren Unzulänglichkeit in Rücksicht auf die Bedürfnisse der Wissenschaft und des Lebens (bei aller Anerkennung ihrer selbständigen Bedeutung) er richtig empfindet, zum Teil klar erkennt. Dagegen scheint er auf dem Gebiete der Wirtschaftstheorie nicht genügend orientiert zu sein.
English translation: In it the author has in view only historical economics, whose inadequacy with regard to the needs of science and of life (with full acknowledgment of its independent significance) he rightly senses and in part clearly recognizes. In the field of economic theory, by contrast, he does not seem to be sufficiently informed.
Economic theory, Menger argues, already investigates money’s nature and functions by tracing them to their ultimate intelligible causes, including psychological causes, while taking development and local variation into account. Simmel’s proposed philosophical analysis therefore occupies ground that monetary theory already claims. Menger also signals methodological reservations about that analysis, though the short review does not elaborate them.
The same objection governs his treatment of Simmel’s synthetic inquiry:
Auch die Aufgaben, die der Verf. jenseits der wissenschaftlichen Nationalökonomie sucht und in dem synthetischen Teile seines Werkes zu lösen unternimmt, sind der wissenschaftlichen Nationalökonomie nicht fremd.
English translation: The tasks, too, which the author seeks beyond scientific economics and undertakes to solve in the synthetic part of his work are not foreign to scientific economics.
Menger points to economic and socialist discussions of money’s benefits and disadvantages, its relation to freedom and personal goods, labour money, and imagined worlds without money. These precedents need not appear in every monetary theory or employ Simmel’s approach to undermine the asserted novelty of his disciplinary territory. Menger further judges many economic treatments superior in clarity and substantive knowledge.
The closing verdict preserves the distinction between stimulating insights and a foundational advance:
Eine wesentliche Vertiefung der nationalökonomischen Geldlehre (etwa eine systematische Erweiterung derselben diesichts und jenseits ihrer bisherigen Grenzen) werden indeß weder die Wirtschaftstheoretiker, noch, wie wir glauben, die Philosophen darin finden.
English translation: An essential deepening of the economic theory of money (say a systematic extension of it within and beyond its previous boundaries) will, however, be found therein neither by the economic theorists nor, as we believe, by the philosophers.
The review’s significance lies in its expansive conception of economic theory. Menger does not exclude psychological causes or money’s cultural consequences from economics; he invokes their existing place within it to challenge Simmel’s rationale for a separate philosophy of money.
This work was divided into 1 sections when it entered the library's research corpus—an apparatus for search and citation, not necessarily the author's own table of contents. Each title opens its summary.
Put a question to this work; the Librarian answers from its 1 sections and cites the passage.
Ask the Librarian