Money, Social Ontology and Law

the conditions according to which an object like a piece of paper, or an

electronic signal, has come to be seen as having a value.

Money plays a crucial role in the regulation of social relationships and

their normative determination. It is thus integral to the very nature of the

“social”, and the question of how society is kept together by a network

of agreements, conventions, exchanges, and codes. All of which must

be traced down. The technologies of money discussed here by Searle,

Ferraris, and Condello show how we conceive the category of the social at

the intersection of individual and collective intentionality, documentality,

and materiality. All of these dimensions, as the introduction to this volume

demonstrates, are of vital importance for legal theory and for a whole set of

legal concepts that are crucial in reflections on the relationship between law,

philosophy, and society.