Research Catalog

Title

The wisdom of money / Pascal Bruckner ; translated from the French by Steven Rendall.

Author

Bruckner, Pascal

Publication

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2017.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

ix, 282 pages; 22 cm

Summary

Money is an evil that does good, and a good that does evil. It inspires hymns to the prosperity it enables, manifestos about the poor it leaves behind, and diatribes for its corrosion of morality. In The Wisdom of Money, one of the world's great essayists guides us through the rich commentary that money has generated since ancient times--both the passions and the resentments--as he builds an unfashionable defense of the worldly wisdom of the bourgeoisie. Bruckner begins with the worshippers and the despisers. Sometimes they are the same people--priests, for example, who venerate the poor from within churches of opulence and splendor. This hypocrisy endures in our secular world, he says, not least in his own France, where it is de rigueur even among the rich to feign indifference to money. It is better to speak plainly about money in the old American fashion, in Bruckner's view. A little more honesty would allow us to see through the myths of money's omnipotence but also the dangers of the aristocratic, ideological, and religious systems of thought that try to put money in its place. This does not mean we should emulate the mega-rich with their pathologies of consumption, competition, and narcissistic philanthropy. But we could do worse than defy three hundred years of derision from novelists and poets to embrace the unromantic bourgeois virtues of work, security, and moderate comfort. It is wise to have money, Bruckner tells us, and wise to think about it critically.--

Uniform Title

Sagesse de l'argent. English

Alternative Title

Sagesse de l'argent.

Subject

• Money > Philosophy
• Money > Social aspects
• Money > Moral and ethical aspects

Note

• "First published as La Sagesse de l'Argent © Éditions Grasset & Fasquelle, 2016"--Title page verso.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Introduction: Lenin's wishes -- Part One: The worshippers and the despisers -- The devil's dung -- On the eminent dignity of the poor? -- France or the taboo on money -- America, or spiritual money -- Part Two: Three myths about the golden calf -- Money, the ruler of the world? -- Does opulence make people unhappy? -- Has sordid calculation killed sublime love -- Part Three: Richesse oblige -- Should bourgeois values be rehabilitated? -- Getting rich is not a crime (and falling into poverty is not a virtue) -- The hand that takes, the hand that gives back -- Conclusion: An acknowledged schizophrenia.

ISBN

• 9780674972278
• 0674972279

LCCN

^^2016044101

OCLC

959649953

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library