“Despite my disdain for wealth, if I could choose, I would pick whatever is best that it can offer me.” Seneca, On the Happy Life. Money is a promise that seeks wisdom. The expression must be understood with a double meaning: it is wise to have money, it is wise to question it.

Pascal Bruckner narrates the history of money and wealth, examining money from a philosophical and political perspective and analyzing our attitude towards it. Some of us are poor, others are newly rich, and few are heirs and keepers of great fortunes.

What feelings does money provoke? What material ambitions do people have and which of them do they confess? We live in societies where envy is considered reasonable and where the Christian idea of the poor being rewarded in the afterlife still prevails.

“The Wisdom of Money” clarifies our prejudices, reveals our weaknesses, and illuminates the human ambitions that can be realized in modern democracy. Bruckner refers to the “Wise” of antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the great ideologies and religions, writing the long history of money and along with it the dream of man to become rich.