European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

THE CRISIS OF OUR TIME: THE ROOTS

Fabrizio Pezzani*

ABSTRACT

The process of “financialization” of the real economy may well mark the end of the road. The sociocultural model that has progressively asserted itself in the USA, and to lesser degree in Europe, is a form of capitalism focused on maximizing individual profit. And as always, the aim determines what the optimum method is to achieve this. Severino clarifies the sense of this statement very well by reminding us that Aristotle emphasized the possibility of a reversal whereby the means becomes the end and the end, the means. In chrematistics, instead of being a means wealth becomes the aim of life and, in fact, saying “one makes money to live” is very different from saying “one lives to make money”. In the capitalist model ‘the aim is internal, namely, it is an economic aim, as opposed to the traditional concept of economics from Aristotle to Hegel in which the purpose of producing wealth is outside the economic process, or rather, life is good, worth living; so where the aim of the economic aspect is the ethicalreligious aspect’. (E. Severino, La bilancia. Pensieri sul nostro tempo [The Balance. Thoughts concerning our Times])

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