Beginning with a few of Saussure’s ideas from Course of General Linguistics;the author tracks the development of money as signs fulfilling their pecuniary function.The principle of the arbitrariness of linguistic sig...Beginning with a few of Saussure’s ideas from Course of General Linguistics;the author tracks the development of money as signs fulfilling their pecuniary function.The principle of the arbitrariness of linguistic signs,postulated in Course,is the leading concept under which all forms of money are grouped for study.In its evolution from the primitive consumable forms such as salt,leather and grain to the last abstract forms of accountable digital writing,the money sign is increasing its level of arbitrariness between signifier and signified value and thus becomes “better for thinking” (Levy-Strauss) and communicating.The second part of the paper considers the main contributions to the field of semiotics pertaining to money and economic value,and thus highlights the originality of the model,in which the arbitrariness of monetary signs and the scarcity of money tokens in circulation form the model’s foundation.The author’s analysis,applying the dyadic sign,reveals the relationship between the value or meaning of a monetary sign and the temporal dimension of our experience.The article concludes with some hypotheses about the homology between the primordial finitude of human temporality (Heidegger) and the principle of scarcity/finitude of money in circulation as a condition of their value.展开更多
文摘Beginning with a few of Saussure’s ideas from Course of General Linguistics;the author tracks the development of money as signs fulfilling their pecuniary function.The principle of the arbitrariness of linguistic signs,postulated in Course,is the leading concept under which all forms of money are grouped for study.In its evolution from the primitive consumable forms such as salt,leather and grain to the last abstract forms of accountable digital writing,the money sign is increasing its level of arbitrariness between signifier and signified value and thus becomes “better for thinking” (Levy-Strauss) and communicating.The second part of the paper considers the main contributions to the field of semiotics pertaining to money and economic value,and thus highlights the originality of the model,in which the arbitrariness of monetary signs and the scarcity of money tokens in circulation form the model’s foundation.The author’s analysis,applying the dyadic sign,reveals the relationship between the value or meaning of a monetary sign and the temporal dimension of our experience.The article concludes with some hypotheses about the homology between the primordial finitude of human temporality (Heidegger) and the principle of scarcity/finitude of money in circulation as a condition of their value.
