Books by Marc (Harvard University) Shell

He demonstrates how literature and philosophy have been driven to account self-critically for a "money of the mindthat pervades all discourse, and concludes the book with a discomforting thesis about the cultural and political limits of literature and philosophy in the modern world.

The author explores how both money and language give "worth" by providing a medium of exchange; how the development of money led to a revolution in philosophical thought and language; and how words transform mere commodities into symbols at once aesthetic and practical.