The recent history of finance has been widely portrayed, by both critics and practitioners, as a story about risk. As pointed out by Mary Poovey, focusing on risk entails forgetting uncertainty. In this paper, I argue forgetting uncertainty leads to an inability to distinguish between rational and mystical modes of financial thinking. Using literary-theoretical analysis, I read three exemplary texts across each other: Frank Knight’s seminal 1921 treatise, Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit, which helped justify the modern corporate financial form; Elie Ayache’s 2010 The Blank Swan, a philosophical account of derivatives trading that exemplifies more recent developments in finance; and Don DeLillo’s 2013 Cosmopolis, a novel that remediates the structures of thought implied by the other texts’ philosophical commitments. This textual nexus allows me to explicate the characteristic form of financial mysticism, rendering it visible against claims that derivatives and financial theory have fully rationalized finance.

评论家和从业者都将最近的金融史广泛描述为关于风险的故事。正如 Mary Poovey 所指出的，关注风险需要忘记不确定性。在本文中，我认为忘记不确定性会导致无法区分理性和神秘的金融思维模式。使用文学理论分析，我阅读了三篇相互借鉴的示范文本：弗兰克·奈特 1921 年的开创性论文《风险、不确定性和利润》，这有助于证明现代公司财务形式的合理性；Elie Ayache 的 2010 年《空白天鹅》，对衍生品交易的哲学描述，体现了金融领域的最新发展；和 Don DeLillo 的 2013 Cosmopolis，一部修正其他文本的哲学承诺所暗示的思想结构的小说。这种文本联系使我能够解释金融神秘主义的特征形式，使其与衍生品和金融理论使金融完全合理化的主张相悖。