The Issue of Idealization in The Philosophy of Money by Georg Simmel

The main question of the text concerns the status of value in Georg Simmel's thinking. According to Simmel, values are submitted to "idealization," which can be considered a kind of "constructed essentialism." Together with the concept of construction, "constructed essentialism" first appeared implicitly in Kant's theses on the human rational equipment containing necessary inborn dispositions and, particularly, in his theses on transcendental schematism. However, it was Fichte and Schelling who applied the term "construction" to the description of cognitive processes. In his theses concerning the idealization of values as conventionally accepted, socially and economically constructed relations, Simmel refers to the anthropological, cognitive equipment: to the human propensity to seek patterns, ideals, and even ideas. Such a formulation of the process of idealization spreads Simmel's concept of value dialectically between constructivism and anthropological essentialism.