In Taberna

XX - THE DESTRUCTION OF MONEY When we study the financial and currency system of today, we enter an area where there reigns profound confusion. There can be no doubt that we are living in an era of general deterioration of currencies. This is shown by the withdrawal of precious metals from circulation and by the constant migration of gold in its flight from danger zones to zones of greater financial safety. Inflationary and deflationary movements, devaluations, and withdrawals from circulation affect all currencies, which have to be protected artificially by the most intricate regulations. Possession of precious metals or foreign banknotes, export of holdings by the owner or his agents, re-importation of currency into the country of its origin – all are put under the strictest control. Eventually, under pressure of exchange difficulties, we see the state reverting to a kind of primitive barter economy, an economy of peculiar financial and economic consequences. All these mysterious and...

The tyrants of the spirit. - Only where the ray of myth falls does the life of the Greeks light up; elsewhere it is gloomy. Now the Greek philosophers rob themselves of precisely this myth: isn't it as if they wanted to remove themselves from the sunshine and go into the shadows, into the gloom? But no plant avoids the light; basically, those philosophers were only seeking a brighter sun, the myth was not clear and luminous enough for them.They found this light in their knowledge, in what every one of them called his "truth." At that time, however, knowledge still had a greater luster; it was still young and still knew little of all the difficulties and dangers of its paths;" Nietzsche -  HATH