Horkheimer grounded the exchange principle’s universality in biblical talionic justice rather than economic history

Evidence

The Old Testament saying of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ means a regulation of barbaric punishment, which was fundamentally a moderation, because previously there had been no fixed sentence at all. So when it says that nothing more will be done to you than what you have done yourself – that this is the price you have to pay – this assumes the principle of exchange. All of jurisprudence at the time was based on exchange: to this extent, Professor Adorno’s theory is confirmed. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1152

Categorization

• QUESTION: Horkheimer reads talionic law as evidence of exchange’s deep history — is this a conflation of juridical equivalence with economic exchange, and does it prefigure the ‘domination/exchange’ equation in Dialectic of Enlightenment?
• XREF: Links to the Book of Exodus/lex talionis as moderation-of-barbarism reading, which aligns with Hegel’s and Horkheimer’s philosophies of right as progressive repression. — connects to: Horkheimer and Adorno located capitalism’s core in the exchange principle — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 1635
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to the sacrifice article: talionic punishment as a moderation of prior unbounded violence parallels the logic of sacrificial exchange-averting-greater-harm.