As evidenced by its continued appearance throughout the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James, the language of finance has served as a particularly useful source of examples and terminology to help those the authors convey the important elements of their respective messages. For Emerson, economic terminology is used to negatively describe the unfavorable aspects of the mundane physical world in which human beings live, in order to contrast it with a higher and spiritual plane of existence, as well as to denigrate the mentalities that lead people to focus on trivial matters and not on business. larger and more significant aspects of the universe. In contrast, James uses metaphors of money and credit to provide tangible examples to his audience in order to clarify and expound his abstract pragmatist theories. His use of the image of money and exchange has no negative connotations; rather, they are particularly useful literary tools that allow him to make the reader understand his point in other words. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay One of Emerson's most notable uses of financial language is in "Self-Reliance," where he writes that "society is a joint-stock company" in which the members agree, the better to secure each shareholder's bread and butter , of giving up the freedom and culture of the eater” (Emerson, “Self-Reliance” 212). In this particular simile, the company is compared to a very particular type of economic or corporate institution, the joint stock company, which is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "a body of persons combined or incorporated for some common object, or for the purpose of 'execution or joint execution of anything'. Using this particular form of business model, Emerson creates the image that civilization is a kind of contractual agreement made by humans in which their individual resources are pooled or amalgamated together in exchange for a part of this larger whole . “Shareholder” is the term used to describe the individual's role in the company, a word that in most cases is devoid of any positive or negative connotation: it is simply the name given to an individual who holds a stake in some sort of organization. However, in this case, the word seems to have a disturbing tone based on what follows in the passage: namely, that one of the expectations that accompanies entry into the role of “shareholder” is the “renunciation of the freedom and culture of eater." (Emerson, “Self-Reliance” 212). Emerson is bothered by these restrictive or conformist rules required for admission into the social order because they dictate what would be favorable for the group as a whole and not necessarily what would be the ideal solution for the individual. For example, the joint-stock company he mentions exists for the preservation of bread by a group of people, although a problem arises when a concern affecting the larger mass of shareholders, in this case the safety of bread, threatens limit what each taxpayer is capable of doing with their own bread. This particular type of society serves as an example to highlight the lack of power that the individual holds over the group, resulting in such an imbalance that each member of the society is forced into conformity by the increased pressure placed on him. by the majority. He even goes so far as to argue that “the most required virtue” in this type of social order is “conformity,” which ultimately indicates that not only is this particular social form designed to satisfy the needs ofmany to the detriment of a few, but that by entering this type of society the individual actively agrees to sublimate his own interests to pursue the projects deemed best by the group (Emerson, “Self-Reliance”212). Commercial language is also used to great effect negatives in “Circles.” In this case, it is Emerson who denounces an imaginary “broker” for his obsession with the ultimately meaningless concept of money and financial gain. Contrasts are used in this particular passage to create a dichotomy between himself and this imaginary figure: while for the broker "there is no principle but arithmetic", Emerson values ​​"love, faith and truth of character ”; while the broker can “separate one duty…from all other duties and concentrate [his] forces mechanically on the payment of money,” Emerson is unable to ignore his other (but unmentioned) responsibilities (Emerson, “ Circles” 179) . As a result of this process of contrast or “othering,” Emerson creates a straw version of the money man, someone who appears to lack basic human principles such as love or faith and who is instead greedily fixated on the business of acquiring even more wealth. . He then knocks that figure down in the next paragraph by claiming a moral high road, claiming that "though slower, the progress of my character will liquidate all these debts without injustice to higher claims" - the implication here is that the broker's course of action resolves such claims would be in conflict with these divine laws and that living like Emerson is the only way to pay off the debts one owes on a spiritual level. A fixation with money is dangerous because it keeps a man focused on earthly or social debts, as evidenced by Emerson's rhetorical question: “if a man were to devote himself to paying notes, would not this be an injustice? Do you have no debts, just money?” (Emerson, “Circles” 180). Although he does not specify what these other debts specifically are, he certainly believes them to be more important than financial ones based on his final rhetorical question: "must all debts owed to you be deferred by a landlord or banker?" (Emerson, “Circles” 180). Once again, he invites the reader to answer his question in the negative: this imaginary intermediary will not be judged by any power with interests, such as land or banking interests, that are in tune with his. According to Emerson, to focus exclusively on monetary or worldly gain is to be obsessed with a minor, trivial area of ​​human experience that ignores larger, aesthetic issues such as love, truth, or character that he mentions in this passage. At best, the pursuit of money is a distraction from the pursuit of deeper truths; at worst, it causes men to abandon all principles that impede their ability to increase their wealth. Emerson's adoption of a corporate metaphor in "The Transcendentalist" allows him to comment on the fundamental uncertainty and lack of knowledge at the heart of all of humanity's endeavors. He makes this point by referring to a “sturdy capitalist” who, despite his efforts to build a structurally sound bank – based on “how deep and square” the blocks of “Quincy granite” that constitute the “foundations of his banking system “home or exchange” – is ultimately at the mercy of a vast, uncontrollable universe (Emerson, “Transcendentalist” 109). Even if he tries to design his building in an architecturally sound way, this diligence is counterbalanced, if not rendered irrelevant, by the fact that the Earth is nothing more than a “mass of unknown materials and solidities, red-hot or incandescent… Thatends in almost perfect sphericity” (Emerson, “Transcendentalist” 109). This contrast between the image of the most suitable shape for a solid construction, a “cube corresponding to the corners of its structure”, and the spherical shape of the planet is a perfect example of the intrinsic impotence of the banker over his world: he does not fail to obtain what he wants or needs to build the bank, and rather must make do with what the universe has made available. Action verbs are employed to create a sense of lack of control in his metaphor. For example, the lit planet on which the building is located “rotates away”, consequently “dragging bank and banker with it at the speed of thousands of miles an hour, it knows not where”; similarly, he refers to a “wild balloon” as a symbol of “all his state and faculties” (Emerson, “Transcendentalist” 109). But what exactly is this particular state? The adjective “robust” is particularly interesting, as it refers to being firmly built or constituted and in most contexts is related to the construction of buildings and not humans. Such usage is surprising given that Emerson's metaphor also includes the assembling of a structure – which would be more natural for an adjective like “sturdy,” making his decision to instead label the banker with that particular term all the more significant. By identifying him with a label that would better fit the bank instead, Emerson is deliberately associating the capitalist with his own ill-conceived enterprise to create some sort of solid foundation in a world that is nothing more than a “little cubic space at the edge of the world.” . an unimaginable abyss of emptiness” (Emerson, “Transcendentalist” 109). Like the bank, it does not exist in an area that is ideally suited to its construction or personality; he wants to live in an environment that accommodates his principles and beliefs in the same way that he wants a square piece of land on which to build his square building. However, just as the unfortunate truth is that the planet is spherical and therefore not ideal for an angular building, its particular mindset is not ideal for realizing the vast and unimaginable nature of the universe in which it resides. In this particular passage, Emerson refers to the capitalist and his bank as examples of a kind of wrong thinking, one that doesn't take into account the bigger picture: this man values ​​building a small bank more than knowing that the planet rotates through an unimaginably vast cosmos. Once again, money and finance are agents of distraction, two interests that lead those involved into systems of thought that are unaware of how the universe actually works. Finally, Emerson uses the language of commerce - the acts of buying and selling - to indicate the value he places on causes relevant to social welfare issues. Moving away from his use of financial terms and institutions to negatively describe ideas and concepts that he believes are in opposition to his own, he admits here that he places a certain value on money and doesn't like spending it on people he can't relate to, noting that “I'm envious of the dollar, of the dime, of the dime that I give to these men who do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong” (Buell, 213-14). A first reading of this line seems to complicate Emerson's view against money and finance because they distract men from the search for higher absolute truths. However, upon further examination, the issue becomes not so much the giving away of some of his earthly wealth, but rather the demand or compulsion imposed on him by society to help others to whom he does not feel responsible. Money isn't the important thing here; it's rather the wait:“don't tell me – he exclaims – to put all the poor in good situations... are they my poor?”. (Emerson, “Self-Reliance” 213). Whether it is the donation of money, time, or even some useless item in which he has no interest, Emerson would be against assisting others on the principle that it is not his obligation to assist those he does not care about; his only duty is to help those he truly cares about. Here he introduces another financial term to describe this group of people, writing that “there is a class of people to whom for every spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if necessary” (Emerson, “Self-Reliance” 213). In this line, his affection is the goods for sale, while the terms "buy" and "sell", which are opposites in the economic sense, are here used synonymously: they are both methods of transferring one's concern from oneself to a part deserving. This last bit of economic terminology is used differently from his other expressions of such language in that it lacks a downside: he is not actively using the phrase “bought and sold” to attack what he sees as the misplaced priorities of those who are interested in making money as he does with other phrases and in other passages; rather, it appears to be a meaningless metaphor. It is simply a way to succinctly symbolize his commitments to a certain group of individuals in a clearer form. In contrast to its use in Emerson, who used financial language to describe principles and ways of thinking contrary to his views, the concept of William James' pragmatist works incorporate business terms to provide concrete, easily recognizable examples that convey the more aesthetic points present in his lessons. One of his most frequent such expressions is the phrase “money's worth,” which is the phrase he uses to describe the actual practical value of an experience (James, Pragmatism 41). Just as actual monetary value is the amount of money that equals the theoretical value of an object or service, James's version of the expression is the “group of attributes” by which “every substance here is known as” and which is “ in any case revealed through them” (James, Pragmatism 41). For example, the particular monetary value of matter, he writes, is simply a set of individual, bodily sensations such as “color, shape, hardness, and the like” that are combined to create a broader, aesthetic term (James, Pragmatism 43). Unlike credit or check writing, which use money in an abstract or theoretical sense (meaning that no physical currency is exchanged, but only a representation of it that all parties involved agree to value), the Cash has a tangible physical meaning. It's worth distilling it to its most basic and absolute form. It itself has value. Therefore, it is particularly appropriate that James uses the financial example of hard currency to represent his equally pared-down depiction of human existence. Another aspect of this term is its belief that the dollar value of a word, principle or concept is not immediately accessible: followers of pragmatism must be willing to do their own distillation to reveal this. “You must get out of every word its practical dollar value,” he extols his readers, since deducing the truth about an idea requires breaking it down into its simplest, if not most obvious, elements (James, Pragmatism 28). He then proceeds to use the phrase "put it to work in the flow of your experience" to describe how he wants the idea of ​​dollar value to be employed, that is, to use it to identify and discern the actual fundamental attributes that make up an individual concept or object(James, Pragmatism 28). James uses the idea of ​​cash – the actual currency in which value is placed – as an example of what to look for because he wants his readers to identify the equally valuable parts of their lives, from which the basic elements of all the others derive experiences. and conceptions are created. The sure way to determine whether or not an idea is meaningful, James notes, is to evaluate what difference it makes in one's life that that particular idea is true. One of the key ingredients, if not the only one, that constitutes his version of the “Absolute” – the personified representation of universal and objective ideas – is “the great difference in our particular experiences that its true being makes,” which in definitive is “its monetary value when interpreted pragmatically” (James, Pragmatism 37). It is the difference that arises from whether a particular concept is true rather than false that complicates the definition that James had previously given for his concept of money value. Value here is not simply the meaning of a word or concept reduced to its absolute form, but now also comes from how much of a difference that term being true makes in someone's life. This redefines the entire system of assigning meaning to terms, moving away from assigning importance based on an autonomous and universal definition and basing value on personal and individual experiences. Unlike the physical, tangible value of money that James associates with his refined conception of sensory experience, he uses the more abstract system of credit to address the need for truth to be collectively adopted and accepted. “The truth,” he writes, “lies mostly in the credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs 'pass' as long as nothing challenges them, just as banknotes pass as long as no one rejects them” (James, Pragmatism 91). Just as the value of a dollar bill depends on whether both the seller and the buyer believe in the idea that this meaningless strip of paper actually has a designated value that makes it possible to exchange it for some other commodity, the truth requires recognition of its value. accuracy from multiple parties to make it valuable. Just as in a financial system, “we negotiate on each other's truths,” James observes, and through this process of mutual exchange, a system of shared ideas is created that is completely dependent on the correctness of the truths exchanged (James, Pragmatism 91). For the whole arrangement to work properly, it is necessary that “you accept my verification of one thing, I yours of another” (James, Pragmatism 91). However, just as the key piece of information underpinning all markets is the assumption that there is real value behind the dollar amounts bandied about, the absolutely vital requirement for a society based on accepting the truths of others is that those truths are all in fact true. James compares truth without a system of “direct face-to-face verification” to a “financial system without any monetary base” – in both examples, it is when the concrete, motivated value on which the abstract rests disappears that the structure collapses . Ultimately, truth, like financial markets, requires some sort of objective confirmation to keep the entire system on solid ground, with James noting that “beliefs factually verified by someone are the pillars of the whole superstructure” (James , Pragmatism 91). Without this verification process, no system or society based on the concept of truth exchange can ever be founded without the risk of massive collapse. Continuing to use financial terms such as cash and credit to illustrate his philosophical points, James introduces.