[탐색] 소크라테스와 화폐, 경제

출처 1: Barry Gordon. "Four Issues in Socratic Economic Analysis", Chapter 3 in Economic Analysis before Adam Smith. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1975. 제한적 자료.

※ 발췌 (excerpt): pp. 42-43,

The philosophers did not leave a legacy which merely recommended a manner of approach to economic issues. Their concern with the origins of social lie and the maintenance of just relationships within in gave rise to a series of insights on particular problems in economics. Apart from those noted above in conncection with their conception of economics, these insights included influential analyses touching on the theories of money and interest, the question of communal versus private ownership of resources, and the theory of value. The contributions of Aristotle in these areas are of special significance for the future development of economic thought in Europe. It is quite impossible to chart the course of that development without appreciation of the positions he took and the ways in which those positions were interpreted. As one modern scholar has observed, 'Aristotle's influence on medieval city economy exerted through Thomas Acquinas was as great as later that of Adam Smith and David Ricardo on 19th century world economy.'[주]1

Opinion is divided sharply on whether or not Aristotle's widespread influence was something which economicsts should welcome in retrospect. For one writer, Aristotle is 'the first analytical economist', and it is he 'who laid the foundations of science and who first posed the economic problems with which all later thinkers have been concerned.'[주]2  For another, Aristotelian economic theory 'was to exert an influence both far-reaching and disastrous over historicans and theologians of succeeding centuries.' This second writer sees Aritotle's 'primitivism and ruralism' a dead weight which inhibited the thinkers of Rome and middle ages, such that tendencie to genuine economic analysis were thwarted. In particular Aristotle was an arch-enemy of economics, since he was equipped with 'a mind that never really understood what currency was' and turned his back on any 'prospect of indefinite increae of real wealth'.[주]3  That such a difference of opinion should exist is explained to a great extent by the combination of bold analytical initiative and sometimes puzzling failures encountered in the analyses considered in this chapter.

The nature and functions of money

In the ^Republic^, Plato recognize that the presence of a division of labour in society gives rise to the need for exchange of commodities amongst its citizens. The process of exchange will be facilitated by the introduction of 'a currency to serve as a token for purposes of exchange'. The end or purpose of money then is its action as a medium of exchange, and for this function a mere symbol or token can suffice.[주]4  The material of which money is composed is of little or no account.

Here, Plato is adoptin a theory of money which can be called 'non-metallist'. Money, to function effectively as money, need not consist of a material that has a value independent of its role as money. Community contract or state fiat establishes the status of something as the medium of exchange. There is no necesary 'commodity' dimension to that medium because of its substance. That Plato was consistent in his non-metallism is illustrated by a passage from the ^Laws^, his last written work. In this passage he advocates a type of policy that was anathema to orthodox monetary theorists of 18th- and 19th-century Europe. He proposes a divorce between international trading currency and the internal circulating medium of the city-state. The latter, he believes, should be devoid of intrinsic, ( ... ... )


출처 2: D.C. Schindler. "Why Socrates Didn't Charge: Plato and the Metaphysics of Money", Communio International Catholic Review, Fall 2009.

※ 발췌 (excerpt):

( ... ... ) There are two points to note here that in fact converge into one, which will be the primary point explored in the present essay. In the first place, Socrates' claim about his own motivation implies that there is a connection between sophistry and money-making. While this implication may not strike one as a great revelation, given that it is a regular and well-known theme in Plat's dialogues,[주]3  we intend to argue that the connection is more essential than typically realized, and that understanding the connection reveals something in turn about the nature of both sophistry and money. Secondly, and perhaps less obviously, Socrates' approach to the charges suggests an intriguing either-or: money ^would^ have been sufficient to explain his activity, so that its removal as a cause requires something else, in this case a reference to "the god at Dephi."  To put it over-simply, money and God appear as competitors for the role of the good that is adequate to explain human behavior. When St. Paul says that the love of money is the root of evil, it would seem that he is echoing a Platonic insight. Our aim in the following is to understand what it is about the ^nature^, the ^inner logic^, of money that inclines it to usurp the divine throne, to see precisely how the question concerning the ultimate end of action serves to distinguish the philospher from the sophist, and then to consider what a ^healthy^ love of money would be. As we will see, Plato's interpretation of the significance of money concerns not just teaching, but in fact all human activities.


2. The ontological meaning of money

( ... ... ) But the question of money has a different profile in Plato's philosophy. Moral question, for him, always turn out to be epistemological questions, which in turn are determined by ontological or metaphysical realities.[주]5  In Plato's understanding, the way one acts (virtue) is inevitably a function of what one takes to be real (knowledge), which depends on the various ways reality can present itself─and vice versa. Before we ask how money ought to be used, it is necessary to ask the more fundamental queston what it ^is^. We would suggest that what Plato contributes to the ancient moral tradition regarding money is to reveal that the question at stake here lies deeper than the attitudes of particular individuals: it is first a question of order, and thus a metaphysical question. To show this, we need to explore what Plato says about money within the context of his broader philosophy.

As the Greek thinkers generally affirmed, human beings are naturally social creatures, and, for Plato, money is one of the institutions that makes complex co-existence possible. When Plato has Socrates lay out the most basic social form theoretically conceivable, the initial sketch of the ideal city in ^Republic^ II, money makes an early appearance. There are several things that human beings need by nature, and people tend to differ naturally in their aptitude to provide for one or another of those needs. Rather than each person providing individually for all of his own need─which would eliminate the necessity of society altogether─each does what he does best, and exchange with the others. The manner of exchange, he says, is "buying and selling," and the means that enables the transaction is money, or he puts it here (371b), a [그리스 문자 표기 어휘], which Allan Bloom transaltes as "an established currency as a token for exchange," but which might be more directly rendered as a "conventional symbol for the sake of exchange."[주]6  The existence of this currency, plus the fact that those who produce what is bought and sold do not have the time to wait in the market for the demand for their wares, gives rise to a class of people who do not produce, but rather who work directly with money themselves: the tradesmen (if they buy and sell within their own city) and merchants (if they travel from city to city) (371c-d). According to Socrates, in a "rightly governed city," these will be people unable to produce normally because they are physically weak or useless. In addition to these people who work directly with money, there will be people of strong bodies but weak minds, and so unable to be either producers or tradesmen themselves, who sell their labor. Socrates calls this class of people the "wage-earners."

Now, Socrates refers to this simple social form─constituted mainly by producers, but secondarily by tradesmen and wage-earners─as the "true" city (372e), and appears to be satisfied with it, but Socrates's main dialogue partner in the ^Republic^, Glaucon, raises an objection. According to Glaucon, this city of "utmost necessity" is fit more for pigs than for human beings, that is, it represents a city for purely natural beings that lack the adornments of culture. Socrates is thus prompted to expand what he had initially sketched as the basic form of human community, and the expansion introduces ambiguities. If he calls the first the "true" city, the second is a "feverish" [그리스 문자 어휘] city, one that is inflamed precisely because it is no longer based on natural necessisites, but, as Socrates puts it, on luxuries, that is, on objects of non-necessary desire. ( ... ... ) Socrates observes that such a city will necessarily grow in sie, and lead to conflict with other cities, especially if they too "let themselves go to the unlimited acquisition of money" (372d).

There are two interesting things to note about this initial descrption: ( ... ... ) Now, whether the distinction between necessary and non-necessary desires is the ^same^ as that between good and bad desires is a question to which we will have to return.[주]7  In any event, Plato is suggesting that a city that lacks the internal order of nature will necessarily end up going to war precisely because it has no meaure. In an off-hand way, Socrates remarks that, with the distinction between necessary and non-necessary desie, we have in fact discovered "the origins of war."[주]8

The second thing to note is that Socrates appears, here, to sum up the whole of this order of life in a single phrase, namely, being handed over to "the unlimited acquisition of money." In other words, the love of money appears as the paradigm of a non-necessary and therefore boundless desire. This appearance gets substantialized toward the end of the ^Republic^ when Socrates proceeds to compare the pleasure enjoyed in different orders of life, that is, in lives founded on different objects of desire or kinds of love. There are three basic orders, ( ... ... ... ... )

Once we see that the love of money entails an inversion of means and ends, we can illuminate its significance by connecting it with one of the main recurrent themes in Plato's dialogues, namely, the theme of rhetoric. ( ... ... )

How does this problem illuminate Plato's view of the nature of money? Money is not wealth; it is the ^appearance^ of wealth. ( ... ... )

( ... ... ) We recall that, when Socrates introduced money in the ideal city, it was precisely as a token, as a "symbol" of exchange, and thus as something that has its reality in allowing the transition from one real good to another. When this means is elevated above the actual goods it is meant to enable, it becomes a pseudo-good, a thing in itself that now ^substitutes^ for real wealth.

( ... ... )

Moreover, we ought to now to consider that the same separation gives it a kind of pseudo-divinity, insofar as it makes money both universal and a-temporal. On the one hand, money is utterly indifferent, in itself, as to it use; it is a potential for anything, which is another way of saying that money is "omnipotent." Socrates suggests in book I of the ^Repubic^ that money, as generally understood, is not so much a particular good as it is something that transcends any particular activity and makes one willing to do it, i.e., makes that activity a kind of good, if only in an instrumental sense (more on this later).[주]18  In this respect, it is universal goodness in an abstract sense. On the other hand, its abstraction also makes it timeless in a certain respect. ( ... ... ... )

( ... ) In short, Socrates rejects the idea that money ought to be the "prime mover" of any human activity as a rule. The only good, in fact, that he permits in book I for the engagement in work, it seems, is the negative one, avoidance of punishment. ( ... ... )


출처 3: Anthony F. Natoli. "Socrates and Money: The Translation of Plato, Apology 30b2-4", Mnemosyne (2015) 1-27. 자료.


출처 4: http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php/4320-Socrates-The-Nature-of-Money

※ 원출처가 의심스러운 온라인 게시물.
※ 발췌 (excerpt):

( ... ... )

Socrates:

My dear Amphytrion, banks do not initially need money to lend money. Xerces, borrowed from Babylon banks because he was short in gold coins. The money to build Persepolis was created through promissory notes. Everybody honoured these notes in the civilised world, from the Indian Kingdom of Magadha to the borders of Libya.

( ... ... )
Amphytrion:

This is quite a revelation, Master. But the banks in Babylon could not have created these notes without at least a deposit of gold.

Socrates:

Not quite so. Although an initial deposit and a capital would certainly help, what is crucial is the support of the King. Why would bankers hoard too much gold if nobody asks them for gold in exchange of notes? No rational trader would hoard too much gold. We know very well what happened to the gold hoarded in Egypt, which was robbed even in the most sacred places by invaders, including King Kambyses when he plundered Egypt.

Amphytrion:

But Master, do you mean to say that bankers are able to create money? How can this be?

Socrates:

My dear Amphytrion, money is but the shadow of credit. When the King decides to pay back his initial debt the credit notes are cancelled and money is destroyed. As soon as a new supply of sandalwood is needed, the banks issue new promissory notes at the request of the king, which guarantee that the holder of these notes could ask the banks for a payment in gold. I must stress that these notes are created as a result of a credit granted to the King.

( ... ... )


출처 5: 플라톤. <소크라테스의 변명> 황문수 옮김. 문예 1999. 구글도서

※ 발췌:

( ... ... ) 즉 '위대하고 강력하며 현명한 아테네 시민인 그대, 나의 벗이이여, 그대는 최대한의 돈과 명예와 명성을 쌓아 올리면서 지혜와 진리와 영혼은 최대로 향상하는 것을 거의 돌보지 않고 그러한 일은 전혀 고려하지도 주의하지도 않는 것이 부끄럽지 않은가?'라고 말입니다. ( ... ... ) 내가 돌아다니며 하는 일은 노인이든 청년이든 가리지 않고 여러분의 육신이나 재산을 생각하기에 앞서서 우선적으로 영혼의 최대의 향상을 고려해야 한다고 설득하는 것뿐이기 때문입니다. 나는 여러분에게 돈에서 덕이 생기는 것이 아니라, 공적이든 사적이든 간에 덕에서 돈과 다른 좋은 일 생긴다고 말하는 것입니다. 이것이 내 가르침이며, 만일 이러한 가르침이 청년을 타락시키는 이론이라면 나는 해로운 사람입니다. ( ... ... )


출처 6: 이현우. "소크라테스의 죽음에 숨은 이유", 시사인 2015년 4월 30일.

※ 발췌:

( ... ... ) 가라타니는 제자인 플라톤에 의해 소크라테스의 진의가 왜곡되었다고 보며, 소크라테스와 플라톤의 사상을 분리하고자 한다. 플라톤은 이오니아의 정신과 철학에 대한 비판을 '소크라테스'의 이름으로 수행했지만 ( ... ) 정작 소크라테스는 이오니아의 사상과 정치를 회복하려고 한 마지막 인물이었다는 게 가라타니의 핵심 주장이다.

이오니아란 소아시아 서부의 좁은 해안과 에게 해 동부의 섬들로 이루어진 지역을 가리키는 고대 지명으로 현재는 터키와 그리스의 일부다. 이오니아의 도시국가(폴리스) 시민들은 아테네와 그리스 본토에서 건너온 이민자들로 구성돼 있었는데, 이들은 ( ... ) 자신이 속할 도시를 자발적으로 선택했고, 도시는 이들 간의 사회계약을 통해 성립되었다. 그러면서 시민이 지배자와 피지배자로 분화되지 않은 '무지배' 형태가 탄생했는데, 이 무지배를 '이소노미아'라고 불렀다.

이소노미아는 구성원들의 실질적인 평등에 근거하는데, 이오니아에서 이 평등의 바탕은 시민들의 자유였다. 토지가 없는 자는 타인의 토지에서 일하는 대신 다른 도시로 이주했기에 대토지 소유나 부의 독점이 이루어지지 않았다. 말하자면 ‘자유’가 ‘평등’을 강제했다. 이와는 달리 그리스 본토에서는 화폐경제 발달이 심각한 부의 불균형과 계급 대립을 가져왔다. 이에 대한 대응으로 스파르타에서는 자유를 희생하는 대신에 교역을 폐지해 경제적 평등을 강화하고자 했다. 반면 아테네에서는 시장경제와 자유를 유지한 채 다수인 빈곤층이 소수의 부자로 하여금 부의 재분배를 강제하는 시스템을 만들었는데, 이것이 아테네의 데모크라시(민주정)이다. ( ... ... ) 소크라테스가 아테네 데모크라시에 위협으로 간주돼 사형을 선고받은 것은 그가 의식하지는 않았더라도 이오니아의 이소노미아를 아테네에 다시금 복원하려고 했기 때문이라는 게 가라타니의 재해석이다.