Flirting with Things: Simmel on Coquetry and Money

Abstract

This paper reconstructs Simmel’s arguments on coquetry in light of his Philosophy of Money. There are remarkable similarities between money and flirtation as Simmel understood them. Both are characterized by a paradoxical form of desire for which satisfaction is synonymous with dissatisfaction. Moreover, both are the locus of a specific type of power (i.e., power as pure possibility) and a corresponding kind of submission (experienced as adventure). Yet, unlike money, coquetry can become play for play’s sake. It thus symbolizes life in a different way. Located between economy and art, flirtation permits reconciling opposites that in money appear in maximum tension.