Desire and Intellect: Individuation in Capitalism, or Simmel vs. Marx

• Authors: Mikołaj Ratajczak
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The aim of this text is to compare Simmel’s and Marx’s notions of two subjective faculties, desireand intellect, and the role each plays in modern capitalist societies. While Simmel understands the faculties asindividual, Marx’s critique of political economy presents their social, public, and trans-individual character. Thesetwo perspectives differ over the particular economic sphere in which we ought to locate the social production ofsubjectivity. Simmel locates such production in market exchange, the formal, symbolic expression of which ismoney, thereby leading to the notion of an intersubjective social reality as the effect of monetary relations betweendesiring and calculating individual subjects. Marx, for his part, treats both desire and intellect as trans-individualfaculties, and locates the social production of subjectivity in the sphere of production as subsumed under capital.

Keywords

EN

capital; desire; intellect; modernity; subject; individuation

• Publisher: Polskie Towarzystwo Socjologiczne
• Journal: Polish Sociological Review
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 204
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 499-515

Dates

published

2018-12-19

Contributors

author

Mikołaj Ratajczak

• Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences

Identifiers

DOI

10.26412/psr204.06