TITLE:
Christoph Türcke’s Studies on the Origins of Money in Sacrifice
AUTHORS:
Alberto da Silva Moreira
KEYWORDS:
Money, Sacrifice, Capitalism, Religion, Christoph Türcke
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.9 No.4,
April
20,
2021
ABSTRACT: This
paper examines the contribution of the German philosopher Christoph Türcke to
the understanding of the origins of money, which according to his
paleo-historical and phylogenetic reconstruction are to be found in sacrifice,
the oldest form of religion. The study is part of a broader, mostly bibliographical
research about capitalism as religion, which purpose is to analyze capitalism
as everyday life religion. Türcke approached the Critical Theory and Freud’s
psychoanalysis, adding to these, a
theory of traumatic compulsion to repetition as a creative force in culture and
Civilization. In his work “Mehr! Philosophie des Geldes” (More! Philosophy of
Money), referred to Simmel’s homonymous book, Türcke traces back the origins of
money and currency to the mechanism of ritual sacrifice. According to him, sacrifice
is based on the payment of a debt or guilt that is exchanged for an offering of
equivalent value, the victim. In the sacrifice ritual and its compulsive
repetition, Türcke locates both the starting point of Homo sapiens
mentalization process and the beginning of payment in human history. Since then
and despite of all the changes he underwent money never lost its deep
rootedness in the sacred sphere.