Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/63

 SIM MEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF MONEY 49

it may be doubted from the point of view that reality also as such can be perceived in certain psychological orders, which are regulated by the same laws as valuing. It may be shortly shown what Simmel means by subjectivity of value. The phenomenon that one and the same object is valued differently by different persons, and, on the other hand, that difference of objects need not mean difference of value, makes the valuing subject a responsible instance, whose different relations must be regarded as causes. The subjectivity and objectivity of value the bone of contention in economic science from the beginning of scien- tific investigation up to the psychologically exact deductions of the Austrian theorists of marginal utility are here investigated from quite new points of view. We meet with the riddle of value on a philosophic foundation, as we want it so badly for the purposes of economic theory. But has the riddle been solved? I hardly believe it. New sparkling surfaces have been cut on the crystal, but it has not yet become transparent. We have become a good deal richer in knowledge of psychological truths, but even they leave many contradictions in life still unsolved. The investigations into the subjectivity of value show us that value can never be attributed to an object from arbitrary reasons ; its foundation is rather the negative one : that value or valuing cannot cling to things like color or scent ;L_the subjecj._ tivity of value is only our copying of an objective determination.

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Thus value must belong to a category in which objectivity also lays claim to being acknowledged. Subjectivity and objec- tivity may be only stages, may exist one by the side of the other, the locus of value. And that is of highest importance, as subjectivity and objectivity have no right to take up the whole sum of existence must belong to a category which makes allow- ance as well for our feelings as for the structure of reality, and which may be named the supersubjective one. Psychologically objective value is really very closely connected with subjective value. As objective value in the abstract it may be considered as the norm of subjective value, built up on the human faculty to quasi-objectify emotional quantities. What Simmel develops is an eclectic combination of the theories of value of the Austrian