The Challenge of Modernity: Simmel’s Sociological Theory [1 ed.] 1138281832, 9781138281837

Table of contents :
Contents
Introduction: Georg Simmel and sociological grand theory
1 Theory of modernity
2 Sociological epistemology
3 Sociology of culture
4 Sociological anthropology
5 Social ethics
6 Outlook: oblivion and rediscovery
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

‘Gregor Fitzi’s book persuasively shows the unity and continuity in Simmel’s thought, whereas often his work has been interpreted as a succession of different phases of development (positivism, neokantianism, philosophy of life) or artificially divided in disciplinary boundaries (sociology, philosophy). The new generation of Simmel scholars is now ready to give up these artificial distinctions which deprives sociological imagination from the stimulus coming from art and metaphysics. A closer scrutiny of Simmel’s sociological theory-building demonstrates that his work takes the form of an ongoing widening of the enquiry into social reality – starting from the analysis of the societal issues in a narrower sense, moving to their socio-cultural implications and premises, and finally turning to the anthropological roots of societal phenomena.’ Vincenzo Mele, editor of the Simmel Studies ‘As a motto for a presentation of Simmel’s sociology, I had always imagined the quote: “For the social researcher or politician, human is not a problem at all, only humans”. Gregor Fitzi’s book gives a decisive insight into the way Simmel deals with the problem.’ Otthein Rammstedt, editor of the Collected Works of Georg Simmel ‘Gregor Fitzi is undoubtedly one of the best connoisseurs of G. Simmel’s thought and work. His book, which can rely on the edition of the complete works – to which he contributed – is timely. The presentation of the themes is pedagogical, clear and fluid without abandoning anything of the subtlety of the Simmelian theses; whether they relate to modernity, the philosophy of life, culture or sociology. The Challenge of Modernity will be an invaluable text to the reader interested in the field of sociological theory; whether student, teacher, researcher or public citizen.’ Patrick Watier, University of Strasbourg

The Challenge of Modernity

The complete collected works of Georg Simmel are now available. Yet, the standing of Simmel’s sociological theory is still a subject of controversy. Is Simmel only a brilliant impressionist, a flâneur in the territories of modernity? Providing an illuminating and coherent presentation of Simmel’s sociological theory, The Challenge of Modernity seeks to demonstrate how Simmel contributed a structured sociological theory that fits the criteria of a ‘sociological grand theory’. Indeed, starting with the theory of modernity and its dimensions of social differentiation, monetarisation, culture reification and urbanisation, it reconstructs the architecture of Simmel’s sociological epistemology. Particular attention is dedicated to the theory of ‘qualitative societal differentiation’ that Simmel develops within his cultural sociology, with the late work being presented as a double contribution to the foundation of sociological anthropology and to the social ethics of complex societies. Presenting the entirety of Simmel’s manifold oeuvre from the viewpoint of its relevance for sociology, this comprehensive volume will appeal to scholars and advanced students who wish to understand Simmel’s relevance for socio-political thought and become acquainted with his contribution to sociological theory. It will also be of interest to members of the wider public who seek a critical assessment of our age in theoretical terms. Gregor Fitzi is Co-Director of the Centre for Citizenship, Social Pluralism and Religious Diversity at University of Potsdam, Germany

Routledge Advances in Sociology

Practicing Art/Science Experiments in an Emerging Field Edited by Philippe Sormani, Guelfo Carbone & Priska Gisler The Great Transformation History for a Techno-Human Future Judith Bessant Occupying London Post-Crash Resistance and the Limits of Possibility Sam Burgum Populism and the Crisis of Democracy Volume 1: Concepts and Theory Edited by Gregor Fitzi, Jürgen Mackert and Bryan S. Turner Populism and the Crisis of Democracy Volume 2: Politics, Social Movements and Extremism Edited by Gregor Fitzi, Jürgen Mackert and Bryan S. Turner Populism and the Crisis of Democracy Volume 3: Migration, Gender and Religion Edited by Gregor Fitzi, Jürgen Mackert and Bryan S. Turner The Challenge of Modernity Simmel’s Sociological Theory Gregor Fitzi The World Multiple Everyday Politics of Knowing and Generating Entangled Worlds Edited by Keiichi Omura, Grant Jun Otsuki, Shiho Satsuka, Atsuro Morita For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Advances-in-Sociology/book-series/SE0511

The Challenge of Modernity Simmel’s Sociological Theory

Gregor Fitzi

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Gregor Fitzi The right of Gregor Fitzi to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-28183-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-27093-7 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

1

Introduction: Georg Simmel and sociological grand theory

1

Theory of modernity

7

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 2

Social differentiation 9 Monetary economy 13 Culture reification 17 Urbanisation 22 Neurasthenia and beyond 27 Women’s emancipation 31 Fashion 35 Simmel and Marx 39

Sociological epistemology

45

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

The dismantling of social ontology 46 The object of sociology 49 Enquiry into social mechanisms 53 Coordinating social structure and social action or ‘social validity’ 59 2.5 Space and social closure 68 2.6 Conflict 73 2.7 Simmel and Durkheim 78 3

Sociology of culture 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7

Qualitative societal differentiation 91 Economy and the social realm 95 Politics 99 Religion 103 Art 108 Eroticism 113 Simmel and Weber 117

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viii Contents 4

Sociological anthropology 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5

5

6

The anthropology of social action 124 The anthropology of social structure 128 The anthropology of social validity 132 Individual life and societal form 135 Simmel and Plessner 139

Social ethics 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5

123

144

Conduct of life in modern times 146 The conflict of normative cultures 149 Individual law and community 153 Emotional nationalism and transnational rationalism 156 Between Kant and Goethe 160

Outlook: oblivion and rediscovery

165

Bibliography Editions 170 Literature 170 Index

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Introduction Georg Simmel and sociological grand theory

In November 2015, 25 years after the ambitious project commenced for the publication of the collected works of Georg Simmel, the Georg Simmel Gesamtausgabe (GSG) was finally completed. This achievement is due to the dedication of the editor Otthein Rammstedt and his collaborators, above all Klaus Christian Köhnke, Rüdiger Kramme and Angela Rammstedt. Thanks to the comprehensive edition, the corpus of Simmel’s writing is finally accessible and now counts among the classical works of sociology. Yet, the standing of Simmel’s sociological theory is still a subject of controversy. This depends mainly on two factors. On the one hand, the cultural context of the rediscovery of Simmel’s thought in the 1980s continues to have a strong influence on his reputation. This is mainly due to David Frisby’s presentation strategy in Sociological Impressionism: A Reassessment of Georg Simmel’s Social Theory (1981). The central thesis of this interpretation was that Simmel must be seen as a radical anti-theoretical sociologist. Accordingly, Simmel’s work was grounded on ‘sociological impressionism’ in the sense of Lukács’ necrologue (1991) and following the stance of flânerie, as Benjamin theorised this with reference to Baudelaire’s poems. Frisby’s great merit was to make Simmel’s work accessible for a time of crisis of theory during the 1980s, and this helped him to gain unexpected acknowledgement, albeit as an anti-theoretical social thinker. On the other hand, there is a long-standing prejudice against Simmel’s sociological theory as a ‘science of the logos’ (Fitzi 2015: 417–426) that is rooted in the efforts to establish a tradition of a so-called German line of sociology by representatives of the conservative revolution in Germany during the late 1920s and 1930s. In particular, Hans Freyer, Erich Rothacker and Andreas Walther excluded Simmel from the discipline’s classical authors because of anti-Semitic and political prejudices (Fitzi 2015: 61–77; Sontheimer 1992: 118 ff.). The idea that there is ‘something wrong’ with Simmel’s sociology was then carried on unconsciously in the post-1945 institutionalisation of the sociological schools in Germany as well as in Parsons’ sociological canon. Parsons was highly influenced by the formulation of the tasks of sociology with its antiSimmel bias in Freyer’s book on Sociology as a Science of Reality (1930), as he states in the Structure of Social Action (Fitzi 2015: 52 f.; Parsons 1949: 762, 774). The research developed in the context of the Simmel Gesamtausgabe has since produced a number of exegetic analyses of Simmel’s work which highlight the

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Introduction

limitations of both approaches (among others Cantó 2005; Dahme 1981; Dahme, Rammstedt 1995; Köhnke 1996; Krech 1998; Fitzi 2002, 2015; Meyer 2017; Rol, Papilloud, 2009; Rammstedt 1998, 2003; Tyrell, Rammstedt, Meyer 2011). Yet, even today an illuminating and coherent presentation of Simmel’s sociological theory is still lacking. The purpose of the present publication is to fill this gap and to show that Simmel contributes a structured sociological theory, although not in textbook form, like Durkheim’s Rules of Sociological Method (1895a/2014) or Weber’s Economy and Society (1978). The debate on the relevant criteria of a sociological grand theory has characterised the dialogue from afar between Jürgen Habermas and Wolfgang Schluchter since the publication of the Theory of Communicative Action (Fitzi 2009; Habermas 1984; Schluchter 2015). In this context, the minimal requirements are defined for a ‘sociological research programme’ that deserves to be part of the sociological canon (Schluchter 2015: 9). The established analytical framework for evaluating the consistency of sociological grand theories is altogether complex, yet it allows a stringent analysis of the theoretical offer and a comparison between the most disparate sociological paradigms. According to Schluchter, Weber’s ‘understanding sociology’, which is grounded on a ‘multilevel model’ for an action, order and culture theory, fulfils these requirements in a paradigmatic sense and does not need any ‘system-theoretical’ integration, as Habermas claimed (Schluchter 2015: 234–272). The same ‘seven key theoretical components’ that characterise sociological grand theory should thus be detectable in Simmel’s work to grant his sociological research programme the dignity of being part of the classical sociological canon. The essential components of sociological grand theory are grouped around three fundamental scientific approaches to the subject matter of social science. They concern the grounding epistemological questions, the ‘social–systematic’ (Gesellschaftssystematisch) and the ‘social–historical’ (Gesellschaftshistorisch) examination of society. Accordingly, evaluating the quality of a sociological research programme means focusing firstly on two epistemological grounding questions of sociology: its definition of the object of sociology as a positive science (first component) and its methodology for differentiating sociology from ongoing societal self-interpretation (second component). Secondly, the inquiry focuses on the three basic elements of the social–systematic examination of society: the theory of social action (third component), the theory of social structure (fourth component) and the theory of their mutual relationship, in the sense of a sociological theory of validity, legitimation or of the so-called micro–macro problematic (fifth component). Finally, the two areas of interest for social–historical sociology will be assessed: the sociological theory of the formation of modern societies (sixth component) and the diagnosis of the present age with the therapeutic propositions to overcome its ailments (seventh component). Following these criteria, the chapters of the present book reconstruct the different aspects of Simmel’s sociological theory to evaluate if, why and how it satisfies the requirements for a sociological grand theory. Simmel defines the object of sociology as a positive science (first component) in his programmatic writings

Introduction 3 on the ‘The Problem of Sociology’ (GSG 5: 52–61) and in the first chapter of Soziologie (GSG 11: 13–42), as Chapter 2.2 shows in the forthcoming analysis. In almost every introduction to his sociological main books, yet predominantly in On Social Differentiation (GSG 2: 109–295), which is discussed here in Chapter 2.1, Simmel develops his methodology for differentiating sociology from the ongoing societal self-interpretation (second component). As is detailed here in Chapters 1.2 and 2.3, Simmel presents his theory of social action (third component) mainly in The Philosophy of Money (GSG 6) and in Soziologie (GSG 11). In his late work The View of Life (Lebensanschauung) (GSG 16: 209–425), Simmel then delivers a sociological anthropological foundation of his theory of social action, which is reconstructed here in Chapter 4. Simmel’s theory of social structure (fourth component) builds the basis for the inquiries into the forms of sociation in Soziologie (here Chapter 2.3), yet also in On Social Differentiation (here Chapter 1.1). A very innovative sociological theory of validity (fifth component) from the viewpoint of the social actor (not of the observer of social action as in Durkheim’s and Weber’s case) is developed in the excursus of Soziologie on ‘How Is Society Possible’ (GSG 11: 42–61), and here Chapter 2.4 is dedicated to a detailed discussion. As far as the sociological theory of the formation of modern societies is concerned (sixth component), Simmel devotes his theory of the parallel differentiation process of social structure and individual personality to this matter in On Social Differentiation (GSG 2: 109–295) and The Philosophy of Money in its entirety (GSG 6), as is detailed here in Chapters 1.1 to 1.7. The diagnosis of the present age is also developed there (seventh component), as well as in Simmel’s theory of qualitative societal differentiation, which is the subject of Chapter 3, whereas the therapeutic propositions to overcome its ailments constitute the core of Simmel’s reflection on social ethics (Chapter 5). After assessing the presence of the different components of sociological grand theory in Simmel’s work, the question of the ‘consistency’ of his sociological research programme can be answered in the affirmative. Yet, much more than this can be found in his writings that is highly relevant for sociology. The richness of Simmel’s paradigm can only be appreciated if all these aspects are addressed. Therefore, the following reconstruction takes into account the specific architecture of Simmel’s sociological work, articulated in five main domains: a theory of modernity, a sociological epistemology, a culture sociology, a sociological anthropology and a social ethics. The present study adopts a particular strategy beginning with a discussion of the concrete problems followed by the more abstract questions. Moreover, it first addresses the analytical–descriptive aspects of Simmel’s work before tackling the normative issues. This is no coincidence, since Simmel follows this methodological approach in his works and formulates it methodologically in the introduction to The Philosophy of Money (GSG 6: 9–14). The starting focus of our following presentation is the sociology of modernity, i.e. Simmel’s critical examination of the historical period in which he lived (1858–1918) and on which he became one of the leading interpreters. Simmel explicitly presented his sociological theory as an answer to the challenges of rapid societal change and the accelerated industrialisation that characterised modern

4

Introduction

society, starting from the sociological observatory of the fast-growing megalopolis of Berlin (Köhnke 1996). Topics like progressive social differentiation, the monetisation of social life, social conflicts, urbanisation, the crisis of culture and the fragmentation of individuality remained at the heart of Simmel’s whole work. Yet to understand and explain the development of modern society, Simmel devised a complex theoretical framework. Over the years, he submitted a theory of social differentiation, a theory of the social and cultural aftermaths of monetary economy, an epistemological grounding of sociology as a positive science, a sociology of culture in qualitative differentiated societies, a sociological anthropology and a social ethics in which he formulated therapeutic options for coping with the ailments of modernity. The individual chapters of the present book focus on this theoretical development. Chapter 1 analyses Simmel’s theory of modernity. Simmel treats modernity as neither a political–normative project nor an aesthetic attitude to the world. Modernity is the sum of the life conditions that characterise complex societies. Capitalism and the building of the nation state, high societal differentiation, fragmentation of the personality, acceleration of life rhythms, liquefaction of institutional frameworks and normative conflicts are the trademarks of modernity. The task of sociology is to reconstruct their mechanisms and to assess their aftermath on individual and social life. This cognitive approach constitutes the unique quality and actuality of Simmel’s theory of modernity, because it contradicts not only the philosophical anthropological positions that negate the historical transformation of the structure of human life but also every theory of post-modernity. Many of the societal traits that nowadays are associated with the concept of postmodernity constitute for Simmel the grounding traits of modernity, so that from the viewpoint of his sociological theory the modern era continues to persist until today. Chapter 2 focuses on Simmel’s sociological epistemology. It deals with his research project for differentiating between social science, epistemology and social ethics, as he introduces it programmatically in the opening of The Philosophy of Money, and then realises it in the first chapter of his Sociology of 1908. Simmel’s definition of the object of sociology is assessed, as is his conception of social action and social structure. The chapter then analyses the theoretical core of Simmel’s pioneering theory of social validity, concentrating on the specific meaning of his epistemological foundation of sociology based on the notion of the ‘conditions a priori’ of sociation. Hence, the cultural work of the individuals coordinating social action and social structure becomes the central category of the sociological theory of validity. In conclusion, this chapter considers the exemplary quality of Simmel’s examinations of space and conflict sociologies as the two most influential parts of his sociological theory. Chapter 3 is dedicated to Simmel’s theory of qualitative societal differentiation. This is grounded on a sociological concept of culture that represents an extension of sociological epistemology to the various domains of qualitative differentiated societies. Thanks to a comparison with Marx’s and Dilthey’s theories of culture, yet above all with Weber’s conception of societal differentiation in the ‘intermediate

Introduction 5 reflection’ (MWG I/19: 479–522), the reconstruction shows how Simmel makes the concept of culture the grounding category of sociological theory. The result is a theory of qualitative societal differentiation that constitutes a robust alternative to structural functionalism. The economy, the social realm, politics, religion, art and eroticism are explained as objectified sociocultural spheres that are the product of specific a priori characterising of the cultural work of the social actors in the different domains of society. Thanks to this extension of the research focus of sociological epistemology, Simmel develops the key elements for a comprehensive theory of the structuration for high differentiated societies. Accordingly, the chapter reconstructs and presents the common theoretical structure of the different enquiries that Simmel developed in the field of culture sociology. Chapter 4 analyses Simmel’s pioneering contribution to sociological anthropology. It points out that Simmel’s late work – traditionally associated with the topic of life philosophy – develops a unitary theoretical framework that links the disparate inquiries in the field of culture sociology, which Simmel had developed before. Accordingly, the chapter reconstructs Simmel’s sociological anthropology as an extension of the methodology of sociological epistemology to the whole network of cultural spheres that constitutes qualitative differentiated societies. The differentiation of the societal spheres is thereby traced back to the different modalities of the human approach to the world that determine cultural work. Simmel can thus reconstruct the sociological anthropological roots for the fragmentation of modern societal life and individuality. Yet, the question as to whether or not social actors manage to overcome the alienation of their fragmented positioning in complex societies, according to Simmel, cannot be answered by social science. Therefore, sociological anthropology leads up to the normative evaluation of the modern conditio humana, and this is the topic of social ethics. Chapter 5 reconstructs Simmel’s social ethics. The normative integration of complex societies is an incessant challenge. It suffers from the fragmentation of the individuality dealing with the different and at times contradictory logic of societal domains. Only the capacity of individuals to link their different social roles in a meaningful synthesis – in the sense of the cultural work presupposed by the a priori of sociation – can ensure social integration. The achievement of this task, however, is no automatic outcome of social action. Social science can describe the requirements and limits of social integration, but the inquiry into the normative praxis that can overcome modern alienation is the concern of social ethics. The chapter presents the context in which Simmel developed his social ethics, starting with the early Introduction to Moral Science, continuing with the critical assessment of the normative aspects of his culture theory and culminating with the studies on the Individual Law that deliver the therapeutic propositions to overcome the diseases of modernity. The main body of this chapter shows the limits, which Simmel’s ethical conception revealed during World War I, and the way in which Simmel tried to overcome them thanks to a conception of the normative value of the idea of Europe. The book dedicates particular attention to the theoretical and in some cases personal relationships between Simmel and the other representatives of classical

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Introduction

sociology, sociological anthropology and social ethics. By exploring the proximity and differences towards Marx’s position, further attention is paid to the assessment of capitalism and the philosophy of history. In the comparison with Durkheim, the methodological misunderstandings between a sociology of social facts and of social forms come especially to the fore. The relationship with Max Weber is characterised by an intensive and still widely underestimated exchange in the secondary literature concerning the sociological foundation for a theory of qualitative differentiated societies. The relationship of the later founder of philosophical anthropology, Helmuth Plessner, to Simmel’s work gives a vivid example of what Simmel meant, as he noted in his diary, that his intellectual legacy will be like cash, so that every heir would transform his part into a useful purpose according to his nature (GSG 20: 261). Finally, concerning the discussion of social ethics, Kant and Goethe represent for Simmel the two typically opposed possibilities of the modern view of life, so that every ethical praxis in modernity can only oscillate between their contrasting approaches. With regard to Simmel’s art theory as well as to his philosophical publications, it should be noted that they are not part of the present publication, since their reconstruction would extend beyond its scope and shift interest away from the issue of Simmel’s sociological theory. These topics form an essential component for understanding Simmel’s overall intellectual personality, yet they will be presented in separate studies. Concerning the citation conventions, in the following work reference is made throughout to Simmel’s original texts, which are now available in the Georg Simmel Gesamtausgabe, with the acronym GSG being followed by the volume number and the relevant pages. In this way, all scholars who are actively engaged in the global Simmel research community can refer back from the original texts to the respective translations in their native language. As the English translations of Simmel’s works are very fragmented, often incomplete and with few exceptions not consistently aligned with the established text of the GSG edition, the following citation strategy has been adopted. Alongside the citation of the GSG edition, further reference is made to complete book translations in English or to established single essays editions. Where original English translations are available – which are published in volume 18 of the GSG containing Simmel’s English publications (Georg Simmel: englischsprachige Veröffentlichungen 1893–1910) – reference is made to GSG 18. Other English quotes are in author’s translation. For the localisation of every further Simmel text in English translation, I recommend Thomas Kemple’s excellent correspondence catalogue to the GSG edition texts (Kemple 2016). Otherwise, this book refers to Weber’s texts by citing the already available volumes of the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe with the acronym MWG, followed by the reference to the volume number and the pages. All other citations follow the author’s date system. Last but not least, I would like to thank all those whose invaluable support gave me the possibility of writing this book. I owe special thanks to Suzanne Kirkbright for proofreading the manuscript and to Jürgen Mackert, who granted me sufficient free time from our other activities at the Centre for Citizenship, Social Pluralism and Religious Diversity in Potsdam to concentrate on the writing process.

1

Theory of modernity

The debate about modernity gained new impetus during the 1980s. Even before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the social sciences were ready for a critical renewal of their criteria for understanding the contemporary age. During these years, Georg Simmel’s work enjoyed a significant renaissance. While mainstream Marxist sociology was caught up in the crisis, Simmel’s theories seemed to open new avenues of enquiry about capitalist society, its development and its cultural characteristics. In the 1980s, however, the terms of debate on the status of modernity slightly deviated from Simmel’s pattern of understanding. In his lectures on the Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Jürgen Habermas defined modernity as the unachieved project of the Enlightenment (Habermas 1987). This was a normative appreciation. Modernity had to be understood as a project of emancipation. It implied strengthening subjective freedom, and it involved striving for a legally defined context to grant the rational pursuit of individual interest in the economy and politics, in ethics and religion, though mainly in education as the free acquisition of reflexive knowledge. By developing factual logic, however, the different spheres of modern society became increasingly autonomous, thus provoking the fragmentation of individuals’ potential for action. Religion was no longer capable of serving as a unifying power. Hegel and his pupils pinned their hopes on the capacity of reason to reinstate the fragments of modernity to form a new synthesis. This ‘dialectic of the Enlightenment’ might have overcome the crisis of modernity. However, subsequently the expectation of the fulfilment of the dialectic movement of history underwent a profound crisis, as Nietzsche initially pointed out (Habermas 1987: Lecture IV). The final mistrust in realising the unfulfilled project of modernity culminated in Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947/2002). Consequently, for Habermas social science had to discover a completely new basis for which normative understanding of the present-time, if at all, was achievable. This was the starting point for Habermas’ research into the theory of communicative action (1984). Yet, in this context, there seemed little space for Simmel’s assessment of modernity. Unquestionably, Frisby is credited with making Simmel accessible for the debate on modernity and its crisis during the 1980s. He demonstrated how decisive Baudelaire’s and Simmel’s understandings of modernity were for Benjamin’s thought. He reconstructed their influence, which had been overlooked, on

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Theory of modernity

the development of the Frankfurt School (Frisby 1985). Simmel’s status of an inspiring ‘ancestor of culture-bolshevism’, as Benjamin formulated it, was finally acknowledged (Frisby 1985: 38). Simmel became the great master of essayism or the sociological impressionist; he was a flâneur of the spirit, collecting insights into modern society by randomly moving around in the urban space (Frisby 1981: 68 ff.). Frisby’s approach marked a change in Simmel’s fortunes by renewing his appeal for an intellectual class that was tired of the overwhelming symbolic power that characterised the rationalisation and reification paradigms in sociology. Simmel’s theory would present a more differentiated approach to modernity, thus accounting for the development of its different facets and allowing for a foray into its profound contradictions. His analysis of the ongoing monetarisation goes together with his appreciation of its social and cultural consequences: the emergence of social distance, the objectification of social relations, the intellectualisation and aesthetisation of life, and eventually, the rise of ‘neurasthenia’, making the blasé attitude of urban humanity predominant. Yet, according to Frisby, Simmel’s diagnosis of modernity seemed to be deeply related to his personal frame of mind, his biographical and professional situation (Frisby 1984: 47 ff.). Thus, the boundary between the self-description of the educated bourgeois intellectual and the sociological inquiry into the structure of modern society cannot be clearly drawn. Simmel’s analytical skills seem to be limited by his social affiliation and personal idiosyncrasies. The allegation of life aestheticism comes to the fore. Here, Frisby approaches Simmel in the conventional style of the Frankfurt School, which saw him as a competitor for the interpretation of the current situation and the possible development of capitalism (Adorno 2000: 62 ff.). Yet this approach makes it difficult to give convincing answers to two decisive questions concerning Simmel’s theory of modernity. As Frisby himself observes, there is a striking proximity of Simmel’s analysis with Marx’s theory of alienation and reification. To understand their relationship, therefore, it is not sufficient to argue that Marx is a more sociological author because he is a theorist of the production process, while Simmel is less so, since he is a theorist whose focus is the circulation process (Frisby 1985: 107 f.). Only by working out the sociological weight of Simmel’s contribution to the inquiry into modern society does a comparison with Marx become possible in terms of the similarities and differences. A further precondition for understanding Simmel’s theory of modernity is that a distinction can be drawn between his sociological descriptive and social ethical normative appreciation of the topic. These analyses, however, have yet to be developed. The approaches to the issue of modernity that characterised the 1980s debate either exclusively considered the normative aspect of the topic or else omitted to engage in an in-depth assessment of the contrasting sociological and social ethical strands of Simmel’s theory. Accordingly, what follows in this chapter is firstly an exposition of Simmel’s descriptive sociological inquiry into modernity as distinct from his social ethical theory. A separate summary in Chapter 5 will focus on his normative appreciation of the crisis of modernity and the potential to overcome it through an ethic of the ‘individual law of life conduct’.

Theory of modernity

9

Simmel’s sociological examination of modernity proceeds based on the assumption that the quantity and quality of social relationships, which individuals are compelled to entertain in complex societies, change their way of life so dramatically that the assessment of every issue concerning humanity has to be grounded on a theory of society (GSG 11: 13 f.). Consequently, in modern times philosophical anthropology in the classical meaning of the term is no longer possible unless it takes the form of sociology. Yet the question arising is whether there is a theoretical path to be followed to reconstruct Simmel’s sociology of modernity. His best-known contribution to the theory of modernity is his 1903 essay on ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’ (GSG 7: 116–131; Featherstone, Frisby 1997: 174–185). Originally, Simmel gave his presentation as a talk during the First German City Exhibition in Dresden (Irrgang 1903). Invited by the conservative Gehe-Foundation members, who expected a criticism of the moral corruption of the rapidly growing megalopolis of Berlin, Simmel analysed the advantages and disadvantages of modern urban life from a strictly sociological point of view. In the foreword to the conference volume, the organisers complained about Simmel’s approach to the metropolis (Petermann 1903). Yet, ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’ (Die Großstädte und das Geistesleben) became a classical text for the sociology of modernity. On this occasion, before the Gehe-Foundation in Dresden, Simmel condensed all the theoretical strengths that he had earlier expounded in his sociological enquiries concerning the development and the characteristics of modern society. His survey of the ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’ was grounded on five distinct theoretical assumptions that he briefly outlines: 1. A theory of the parallel differentiation process of social structure and individual personality. 2. A theory of the modern monetary economy. 3. A theory of the tension-fraught relationship between subjective and objective culture as an aftermath of the development of monetary economy. 4. An urbanisation theory in the form of an appraisal of the ongoing multiplication of social relationships in delimited space characterising large modern cities. 5. A theory of the tendency to ‘nerve consumption’ (neurasthenia) produced by the increasing frequency of social contacts in urban environments. Simmel focused more intently on developing the two latter points for his talk in Dresden, yet he did so by marshalling several theoretical results he had achieved in his sociological publications between 1890 and 1900.

1.1 Social differentiation The theory of the parallel differentiation process of social structure and, accordingly, the individual personality, is at the core of Simmel’s first sociological work, On Social Differentiation (Über sociale Differenzierung, 1890) (GSG 2: 109–295). As Simmel explains, there is no consistent separation in undifferentiated societies between individuals and the social group. Social relationships are governed by a dense collective consciousness that uniformly shapes individuals’ ways of being, acting and thinking. The duty of solidarity, which interlinks the individual and the social group, is not constrained by any limit. Consequently,

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under the auspices of ‘collective accountability’, every obligation that accrues to one individual automatically applies for the entire family clan. With the quantitative development of the social group, however, social bonds attached to the single person loosen up. As a rule, one can state that the smaller the social group, the less the potential for the individual to develop relationships beyond the original community of affiliation. Conversely, the higher the number of relationships that the individual entertains, the easier it is for him or her to emancipate from each of them (GSG 2: 140). Thanks to their social structure, smaller social groups can be easily integrated, although individuals must accomplish more for the community. In undifferentiated conditions, therefore, not only is the individual more heavily dependent on the social group, but also vice versa. With increasing social differentiation, due to the multiplication of the functional roles society requires, the interdependence between all individuals intensifies, yet the personal bonds weaken. This widens the scope of liberty when maintaining social relationships beyond one’s original background. Individuals now take part in very different ‘social circles’; by means of their social action, they interconnect the disparate domains of society (GSG 2: 237 ff.). Nonetheless, for Simmel, the differentiation of social structure proceeds not without a parallel process that also differentiates the individual’s personality (GSG 2: 169 ff.). Consequently, the development of social structure and individual agency must be assessed in terms of their reciprocal relationship. The rise of modern individuality is a function of the quantitative extension of the social group and depends on the quantity of social circles that the individuals are engaged in (GSG 2: 239). By acting in differentiated societies, individuals become the ‘crossing point’ of highly diverse social circles, so that their particular combination structures their personality in a completely original way. Individuals do not simply live in a family that is part of a clan, a village, a nation and so on, which is established in concentric social circles (GSG 2: 241). In parallel, they entertain complex networks of relationships in professional, economic, political, religious, or leisure circles that involve highly diverse groups of persons. Thus, individuals’ liberty when living in complex societies is given by the fact that the social circles that they participate in are less and less concentric. Moreover, the number of different circles in which particular individuals act has to be seen as an indicator for the complexity of culture (GSG 2: 239). Their combination represents the coordinate system for individuals’ social relationships and becomes increasingly personal depending on which new circles are added. The quantitative development of social differentiation thus leads to both a qualitative differentiation of social structure and a process of stronger individualisation. Society becomes a complex of social circles. Each individual interrelates differently by combining such circles in a uniquely personal way. Hence, a multiplicity of parallel realisations of social networks with various meanings join in the same societal space. Mirror-inverted, as it were, the individual personalities become a matrix of the different specialised social domains that the social actors are engaged in. Their quantitative complexity turns out to be of qualitative importance. Only single fragments of the personality are now connected with the

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different social circles, thus making the individuals increasingly more independent from each other than would otherwise be the case in undifferentiated societies. By the same token, individuals are more heavily dependent on the number of different relationships that they are engaged in, and their personality is more deeply fragmented. The modern condition of life is thus characterised by a wider sphere of liberty, yet also by a feeling of disorientation and senselessness. Modern individuals try to relate the fragments of their personality as well as the different social roles which they have to play in a meaningful synthesis. The dynamics of the social circles, however, fill the personality fragments with ever new meanings and expectations, thus making the task a never-ending process and exposing individuals to alienation. The tension-fraught relationship between social differentiation, the fragmentation of the personality and the need to grant at least some dynamic unity for social agency is a topic that accompanies Simmel’s sociological reflection until his late work. Indeed, for Simmel the social differentiation process also involves a further aspect. Each domain of society gradually produces an autonomous logic whereby each culture sphere becomes independent from the next and triggers a qualitative differentiation of society. In the beginning, individuals merely specialise in the different functions, which the process of the social division of labour demands, to realise their life goals. Afterwards, society’s qualitative differentiated domains develop a powerful influence and select the individual attitudes they need to reproduce their objective logic. Thus, the means of social action become goals, while the process of social differentiation leads to the reification of the social structure (GSG 2: 247). With this evolution, however, the integration of modern society is confronted with an issue that cannot be solved on a purely structural level: in other words, ‘system integration’ does not suffice (Lockwood 1964). For Simmel, a society consisting solely of functional systems would break apart (GSG 11: 33). Only as long as the ‘creativity of social action’1 weaves new relationships between the objectified social circles can complex societies be socially integrated. This performance of the social agency occurs in the everyday dynamics of social reality construction; individuals retain in their hands the multitudinous threads of their social belonging, thus ensuring the cohesiveness of the social fabric. Every individual brings forth a different version of the process of interweaving the various social circles, so making it possible to achieve the social and systemic integration of highly differentiated societies. For Simmel, the creativity and the rhythm of social action thereby replaces the need for normative integration in complex societies. Thus, in contradistinction to Parsons (Parsons 1967), no functional ersatz of ‘collective consciousness’ or ‘collective accountability’ is needed to integrate highly differentiated societies (GSG 2: 139 ff.). On a level of structural analysis, the ongoing social differentiation makes it impossible to achieve any normative integration of society because the manifold and constantly changing combinations of social circles, which social agency produces, can hardly be reduced to an overlapping common pattern. What holds together the social groups is, rather, the increased frequency of social exchanges, which substitutes their missing homogeneity. This is a topic

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which Simmel will develop further in the closing chapter of his The Philosophy of Money under the headline of the ‘tempo of life’ (Tempo des Lebens) (GSG 6: 696 ff.). From the perspective of the analysis of social action, rather than establishing overlapping solidarity bonds that hold social actors together, social agency produces an infinitude of faint lines of relation with intermittent character, so granting social integration. If some social threads tear, the social fabric on others will endure and social agency will build new ones. Only if the majority were lost over a longer period would this lead to a crisis of social structure (GSG 2: 142 f.). From a methodological viewpoint, therefore, highly differentiated societies cannot be seen as a ‘social building’ that is statically founded on clearly defined patterns of social action. Instead, they must be assessed as an ‘organic fabric’ that further exists thanks to its ongoing dynamics of building, severing and rebuilding social relationships. Nevertheless, it must be remembered that there is an important difference between Simmel’s and Durkheim’s theories of social differentiation. Indeed, three years before Durkheim’s Division of Social Labour (Durkheim 1893/2014), namely, in Simmel’s 1890 On Social Differentiation, we already note a theory of the difference between mechanic and organic solidarity which addresses the issues of collective consciousness and anomy (GSG 2: 109–295). The similarities of Durkheim’s and Simmel’s differentiation theories derive largely from their common critical examination of Spencer’s sociology (Spencer 1876/1882–1885). Yet, the striking diversity between them is the fact that for Simmel, social differentiation must be assessed as a parallel process going on within the social group as well as in the individual personality. Social agency is thus considered as a structurebuilding dimension of complex societies. As Simmel’s study shows, the assessment of social differentiation has to be carried out on a strictly descriptive level. Modernity is the stage of history when the differentiation process progressed the most. Due to the fact that in this context the different social circles only address restricted domains of the personality, individuals’ liberty from personal subjection grows beyond every previous limit. Equally, personality becomes so complex and fragmented that it is hardly possible to grant individuation processes. Accordingly, Simmel sees the major risk of the modern human condition in the fact that individuals are less and less capable of coordinating the roles they play in different social circles within a meaningful synthesis. On these terms, Simmel already formulates the core of his later theory of culture within his scrutiny of social differentiation (GSG 2: 241). Simmel’s On Social Differentiation gave an important impetus to the development of sociology because it transformed into processual concepts its theoretical groundings, which were caught in ontological dichotomies. The first sociological assessment of the development of modern society in Germany was Tönnies’ book on Community and Society (Tönnies 1887). Tönnies’ theory proposed a juxtaposition of two structural concepts of society that were historically grounded in the premodern and modern time by founding them on two variations of the human will: a more organic one and a more interest-oriented one. Three years later, Simmel published On Social Differentiation, yet he had moved to a completely different

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terrain of sociological theory building. Tönnies identified a double dichotomy between the ontological concepts of ‘community’ (Gemeinschaft) and ‘society’ (Gesellschaft) on the one hand, and between the ‘organic’ (Wesenswillen) and the ‘interest-oriented will’ (Kürwillen) on the other. Alternatively, Simmel assesses the contrasting forms of social relationship and the different types of personality as successive degrees of a parallel ongoing process of social differentiation. His approach therefore initiates a dissolution of the ontological concepts put forward in terms of traditional social theory. He also supplies an assessment of the processes leading from undifferentiated to complex states of social reality. This is the first step in a theoretical problemising of the ‘sociological basic concepts’ that will be completed in the Sociology of 1908 (GSG 11) by grounding Simmel’s epistemological project on the concept of ‘sociation’ (Vergesellschaftung). Later on, this approach had a strong influence on Max Weber’s construction of the ‘Basic Concepts of Sociology’ (Weber 1921/2013).

1.2 Monetary economy Simmel provides his theory of the modern monetary economy in his book titled The Philosophy of Money (1900) (GSG 6; Simmel 2004). As his foreword explains, every domain of positive science presupposes a preliminary analysis of its epistemological foundations and a concluding résumé of the implications of the ongoing development of its subject matter (GSG 6: 9–14). With reference to the rise of the modern monetary economy, The Philosophy of Money works out both strands of inquiry. Starting from individuals’ social action and their appreciation of objects’ material value, on the one hand, Simmel analyses the conditions enabling the development of money as a societal institution (‘Analytical part’: GSG 6: 23–371). On the other hand, he assesses the consequences that the rise of the monetary economy induces for the conduct of life and for individuals’ personalities (‘Synthetic part’: GSG 6: 375–716). Firstly, we encounter an analysis of the development of modern social structures starting from the assessment of social action and, secondly, an analysis of the consequences that the established social structure has on the shaping of social action. Simmel summarises the two inquiries under the heading of ‘philosophy of money’, but he immediately clarifies that they must be seen as an epistemology and diagnostic of societies hosting monetary economies. Both are necessary to found the science of modern societies (GSG 6: 10). The Philosophy of Money presents wide-ranging and different strengths of theoretical analysis. Its core, however, lies in the assessment of the societal dynamics, which occur between the ongoing liquefaction of traditional qualitative value arrangements and the upsurge of rapidly changing quantitative definitions of value which is mediated by money. The issue of ‘modern relativism’ comes to the fore. This development and the related conflicts make any normative integration of societies quite arduous if they are grounded on the monetary economy. The crux of this matter is whether modern societies can be integrated at all and, ultimately, by what means. To adopt Simmel’s view, the route to answering this

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class of questions means that social science has to make an unedited effort to renew its theoretical framework. To this end, The Philosophy of Money moves from criticism of the substantialist way of thinking that characterises traditional social and political theory. Such an approach treats the objects of the social world from an ontological point of view and considers them as the appearance of an ‘enduring essential core’ of social reality (GSG 6: 93 f.). Alternatively, as Simmel argues in his 1902 ‘Tendencies in German Life and Thought since 1870’ (GSG 18: 167–202), in modern, complex differentiated societies, the feeling of an ongoing liquefaction of the traditional institutional frameworks for action, ethical conceptions and political cultures strongly affects everyday social life (cf. Bauman 2000). Thereby, however, the legitimation of social institutions does not disappear but seems to become increasingly limited in time and space. The topic of ‘intermittent normative validity’ comes to the fore, and along with it, the question of whether this is sufficient to integrate complex societies. For Simmel, the structure of modern positive law best shows how social orders can carry on without retaining enduring legitimacy. No positive law-content can raise the claim of having eternal validity. New laws obtain their legitimacy from the previously existing legal corpus by eliminating the outdated content of the law that was legal only to date (GSG 6: 98). As well as the unity of the social body based on the countless attractions and rejections of the acting individuals, the unity of the legal system emerges from the reciprocal foundation of validity between its elements. In Simmel’s view, a similar mechanism leads to the institutionalisation of money as a universal equivalent mediating between economic values (GSG 6: 121). The Philosophy of Money reconstructs its historical and structural development. The establishment of money as an autonomous, institutionalised social structure, consisting of a ‘relativist balance’ between economic values, can carry on brilliantly for longer periods but is also prone to being overturned at any time. The development of the monetary economy is thus the most striking example of the tension characterising modern societal fabric: it can carry on only as long as its social relationship patterns are intertwined with each other and, therefore, ‘relative’ to each other. The monetary price of a commodity expresses the ‘measure of exchangeability’ existing between it and all other goods on the market. Their ‘reciprocal relativity’ crystallises within the expression of their respective value in monetary terms. Hence, the economic value of the objects of exchange lies in the relationship that they reciprocally enter into. Furthermore, money progressively becomes the autonomous expression of this relationship. ‘Money is simply “that which is valuable”, and economic value means [to count something,] to be exchangeable for something else’ (Simmel 2004: 119). Money thus guarantees no specific content value. Rather, money acquires its content only by introducing the validity of an alternative entity. It is a condensed relationship of relativity between foreign values. ‘It is value turned into a substance, the value of things without the things themselves’ (ibid.). However, by such means money produces social relationships. The latter are indeed intermittent; they connect actors only for the time of the exchange. However, by taking place over and over again they assure

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the continuity of social interaction. The intermittent social relationships among individuals, who encounter each other as bearers of subjective value-conceptions during economic exchange, thus become autonomous as a social institution called money. This instils objective validity into value-conceptions by placing them in a reciprocal relationship or by ‘relativising’ them. Thus, money expresses nothing other than the relativity of things for which it procures value. At the same time, however, money forms the static pole compared with the perpetual fluctuations and counterbalances of their subjective valuations (GSG 6: 124 f.). By virtue of the intrinsic quality of representing the exchangeability of things, money’s abstract and universal side comes into play. As it is spent in exchange for commodities and fills the gaps emerging from consumption-induced value fluctuations, money contributes to the continuity of the economic chains of events, whatever their length. In other words, it secures the ongoing transformation of subjective in objective values and vice versa. ‘This significance of money shows itself further, in an empirical way, as stability of value, resulting from its interchangeability and lack of specific qualities. This is regarded as one of the outstanding and most useful characteristics of money’ (Simmel 2004: 123). In monetary logic, only what is ‘relative to other’ has a value. However, the objects of the world therefore become intertwined with each other and bind their bearer in social relationships of exchange. Such reciprocal relations are intermittent, but their frequency holds the social fabric together. Long-term investments and loans are only possible if the increasing length of the economic teleological series (Zweckreihen), i.e. the causal chains of social action that are needed for a thriving economy, are ensured by the stability of money’s value as a social institution. As long as money possesses this quality, it owes this to its function of a purely abstract expression of the economic relations between things (GSG 6: 131). In the same measure as the fluctuations of money’s economic values (i.e. its liquidity) become more volatile, the stabilising function of money (i.e. its solidity) becomes more significant. Thus, the dynamics of complex society can be assessed only as a conflict-prone relationship between the ongoing rhythm of the monetary economy, that is, the relentless relativising of subjective values, on the one hand, and the institutional principle, which legitimises money as a universal economic equivalent, on the other. To adopt the terms of Simmel’s late sociology of culture, one can say that a steady ‘conflict between life and forms’ (Konflikt zwischen Leben und Formen) integrates complex differentiated societies grounded on the monetary economy. The mature monetary economy, which relies on the advanced reciprocal relativity of economic values, establishes the function of money as a universal equivalent and elevates it to its meaning for modern societies. Here, the monetary price of a commodity merely represents the expression of its exchange relationship with other commodities, and no notion of fairness or equity can fabricate this. It is a morally neutral, fluctuating value. Herein lies the objectivising function of money. Only the relativity of the objects in comparison to each other determines their objective value by decoupling this from the subjective value-conceptions of the individual actors. ‘The distance, which drove apart the subject and the object

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from their original unity, [is] embodied so to speak by money’ (GSG 6: 136; author’s translation). Money not only offers exchangeability due to its technically matured means but also establishes itself as independent from the empirical actors. Furthermore, money embodies the economic valuation of goods, which have become a social institution, by granting expression to their reciprocal relativity. Nevertheless, the validity of money is limited on the space–time axis, so that sociologically it may be described as a steady dialectic between destabilisation and the institutionalisation of value assumptions. As long as its cycle goes on, it has the potential to integrate complex differentiated societies. If its function fails, modern societies fall apart. The historical examples of hyperinflation during the Weimar Republic 1919–1923 or of Japanese deflation in the 1990s show what consequences the regression of the societal institution of ‘money’ can have. ‘Modern relativism’, namely the liquefaction of traditional normative contexts emerging in the wake of modern societal change mediated by money, confronts sociological theory with not only the issue of moral and cultural pluralism but also the growing complexity of social interaction. This particularly applies to the transformation of the temporal and spatial framework of associational processes. According to Simmel, in complex societies social actors are exposed to a growing number of short-time social contacts, so provoking an exponential intensification of the individual life experience. Hence, an ongoing ‘tempo of life’ (Tempo des Lebens) arises (GSG 6: 696 ff.). This tempo strengthens the function of money by mediating social interaction that can no longer be handled personally because of a lack of time resources. Added to the increased temporal rhythm of sociation, the mechanism of the money economy associates the growing length of the ‘causal chains’ (Zweckreihen) necessary to reach the goals of social action (GSG 6: 263 f.). Social actors find themselves increasingly in social relationships with anonymous others who are located beyond face-to-face interaction. This makes every communicative coordination of the common social action impossible in normative terms, as postulated by Habermas’ theory (1984). Only money has the potential to mediate the growing number of interactions that take place beyond face-to-face contact. Only money – as a universal relativising instrument – has the potential to express the possibility of transforming subjective into objective valuations at every passage of the teleological chain. For social agency, this change in the shape of social interaction induced by the monetary economy has decisive consequences. Economically motivated valuations place in question every consolidated balance between the different value spheres that individuals are engaged in, and so increasingly dislocate the respective domains of individual personality. Subjective valuation and objective validity collide with unedited frequency, increasing the need of relief mechanisms to cope with the related tension. The more differentiated the social circles individuals participate in, and the more fluctuating their combination, the greater social actors’ disorientation becomes. While the human mind strives to balance what is unequal, the rhythm of the monetary economy continuously creates new ‘marks of comparison’ (Vergleichsbestimmungen) between things. This requires mental appropriation, and the resulting effort has the consequences which Simmel deals

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with in his study on the metropolis (GSG 7: 116–131). In his diagnosis concerning the consequences of the monetary economy for society as a whole, Simmel focuses instead on modern relativism. The more the life of society becomes dominated by monetary relationships, the more [clearly] the relativist character of existence finds its expression in conscious life, since money is nothing other than a special form of the embodied relativity of economic goods that signifies their value. (Simmel 2004: 518) Instead of being granted by common normative orientations, the integration of modern societies depends on the intermittent relationships of value objectification mediated by the social function of money. The rhythm of sociation accelerates. Social relationship extends increasingly beyond face-to-face interaction. Society holds together as long as it can afford the accelerated rhythm of sociation required by the monetary mediation of complex social differentiation. This is an objective condition in societies grounded on the monetary economy, viz. on a capitalist production and consumption process. The issue for sociology is, then, to understand the costs and benefits of this arrangement of society. Simmel develops a sociological epistemology to answer the related descriptive questions and a social ethics to deal with them from a normative point of view.

1.3 Culture reification In the final chapter of The Philosophy of Money, Simmel offers the first synthesis of his sociological theory of culture (GSG 6: 617 ff.). This is a building block for his conception of modernity. The focus here is on the aftermath of the development of the monetary economy for shaping social action and the individual personality. Through the ongoing monetarisation of social reality, intellectual skills get the upper hand over the emotional skills of social actors (GSG 6: 591 ff.). The higher specialisation of social tasks and roles induced by enduring social differentiation multiplies the necessary steps to reach the goals of social action. Yet money enables actors to bypass the growing length of the ‘causal chains’ (Zweckreihen), so that societal development strengthens the meaning of monetary exchanges. From its function as an instrument, money mutates increasingly to a purpose. Moreover, its property of relating highly distant domains of society to each other deeply influences the way of life in differentiated societies. The capacity to distance oneself from emotions along with the rational approach of calculation turns out to be crucial for social interaction. The way in which individuals act becomes less personal and more generic. Instead of unilateral decisions, there is a call for more objectivity and calculation – hence also a lack of character, yet greater detachment and cool intellectualism become necessary. Progressive differentiation is instigated by the intimate domain of life, where emotions play an essential role, as opposed to a public sphere in which thinking and reckoning mediate social relationship. Culture offers the behavioural patterns that allow individuals to relate these different

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domains of life to each other, so that the rapid change of modern society affects its constitution. For Simmel, culture is founded on the specific human attitude to the world. Following their will and using their intelligence, human beings transform the objects of the world to adapt them to their needs. Things become cultivated. By doing so, however, individuals at once cultivate and transform themselves. This is the cycle of culture. With the ongoing historical development, however, individuals become increasingly dependent on their cultural heritage. Simmel’s theory of the parallel differentiation of social structure and personality comes into play in founding sociology of culture. In a theoretical exchange with the Neo-Kantian debate at the time (Rickert 1896), Simmel defines the difference between nature and culture from a sociological point of view (GSG 6: 617 f.). Culture is the product of socially mediated human action. As an expression of human will, it consists of objects that are cultivated by ideas. Fine arts reveal the dynamics of the process in its most typical form. The creativity of human action produces cultivated objects which obtain the dignity of art. Conversely, the acquaintance with the objet d’art cultivates the individual personality and becomes the source of new creativity. Culture, therefore, must be seen as a process of appreciation radiating from human action into things and back to individuals. Yet Simmel is a theorist of the modern age, so he asks the question of the state of affairs in highly differentiated societies by enquiring into the function of the culture process in the present, as he argues in his article on ‘Personal and Material (Sachliche) Culture’, a synthesis of the closing chapter of The Philosophy of Money (GSG 5: 560–582). Empirical evidence imposes itself on the observer of modern life. Things and technique become increasingly sophisticated, but the culture of individuals fails to progress at the same pace as the different tendencies of social life show (GSG 18: 167–202). Here, Simmel addresses Marx’s themes of the fetishism of commodities and alienation (Marx 1887: 61 ff., 323 ff.). The social relationships involved in capitalist production are perceived as objective relationships between commodities and thus become non-transparent. Within the production process, the worker faces machinery that is a condensed storage of reified culture, so that he has no more informed overview about the production process. At the same time, however, Simmel widens the analytical focus from the capitalist factory to society as a whole. Its modern development witnesses the triumph of factual culture. To form and educate itself, the individual mind relies on the contents of objective culture. Yet their quantity and multiplicity make the process of acquisition and the connection of its fragments increasingly arduous in any subjective synthesis. The central thesis of Simmel’s early culture theory is, therefore, that the discrepancy between objective and subjective culture broadens to an unmanageable level (GSG 5: 562). The treasure of objective culture continuously expands, and subjective culture can only follow from a remote distance. The creativity of social action is seriously challenged because it becomes increasingly problematic to connect the disparate objective contents of culture that individuals are confronted with. In terms of action theory, therefore, the number of roles which social actors are compelled to play makes it extremely difficult to achieve any process of

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autonomous role-making. On the one hand, the fragmentation of life contents is augmented, and on the other, the logic of the different societal domains becomes increasingly autonomous from the individual will. Simmel is highly attentive to demonstrating how modern societies are confronted with a global challenge because of the conflict between objective and subjective culture, and not merely with a crisis of the social class of the educated bourgeoisie (Bildungsbürgertum). The crisis of the culture process jeopardises the integration of complex societies by augmenting the tension between social structure and social action. This is not a problem just for the ideal of education as a free acquisition of reflexive knowledge, which modernity inherited from the Enlightenment, as Habermas points out (1987). On the one hand, to reproduce the structure of complex societies, its members need to embrace the reified objective culture. On the other hand, to adapt to culture’s continuously changing conditions for existence, societies need the active intervention of social actors who modify objective culture. However, because of the objective culture’s unmanageable complexity, individuals encounter increasing difficulty to achieve this. The conflict between the individual’s function logic and that of society therefore threatens to tear apart the social fabric. A sociological question arising here is what causes this development. Simmel’s answer is that the culture crisis is a direct consequence of the modern division of labour in both production and consumption (GSG 5: 564 f.; GSG 6: 630 f.). Therefore, he does not switch from the analysis of the production process to that of consumption. Instead, he develops each of these simultaneously by adopting Marx’s point of view and extending it from the domain of economic production to the multiplicity of the differentiated domains of complex societies. Modernity is observed as a process of negative individual specialisation under the impact of the capitalist division of labour. In contrast to classical craftsmanship, in industrial production the product is completely detached from the producer. It no longer carries any meaning as a realisation of the worker’s planning will, but merely as an output of the objectified logic of the production process. Through the reification of the commodity, an alienation of human agency takes place: there is a division not only between producer and production means but also between worker and work products. The latter become the fragmentary sum of objectified performances in an alienated production process and thus are diametrically opposed to an artwork. Product completion occurs at the expense of the producer’s development. The worker can only be aware of a fragment of the production process. Moreover, he only earns money equivalent to his work input; he does not own the product of his effort, which becomes autonomous and extraneous to him as a commodity (GSG 5: 566 f.). A similar development, according to Simmel, is to be observed in shaping the consumption object (GSG 5: 564). Through the capitalist division of labour, there is a change from artisan manufacture for the single client, which is characterised by a personal relationship between consumer and object, to the objective reality of the standardised industrial commodity. The objectifying process thus induces alienation not only between the worker and the machine but also between consumers and the commodity.

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Simmel, however, reads the commercialisation of the workforce and its products as an aspect of the overlapping social differentiation process, separating the individual personality from the contents of his or her activity and ultimately contrasting them as elements of an objective world with reified logic. The producer no longer fabricates the entire product but only fragments of it, so that his influence becomes increasingly fragmentary. The individuation process is frustrated by the fact that there is a socially determined division between the active centre of the personality and its external areas. This situation could only be overcome by the reciprocal integration of the centre of action with the various social roles performed in relation to a meaningful life-task. Yet, the open question for the conduct of life in modern differentiated societies is how this goal could be achieved. Thus, in Simmel’s culture theory, we encounter the first formulation of the central social ethical issue (GSG 5: 565). Later on, he addresses this in the context of his concept of ‘individual law’ (GSG 12: 417–470). In his sociological theory, however, Simmel proceeds to an analytical–descriptive explanation of the question about how social interaction mediates the conflict between social agency and social structure. For him, this is presented as the central theoretical problem of sociology (GSG 11: 41). Accordingly, over the years, Simmel proposed three different theoretical frameworks to answer the related sociological question of ‘validity’, that is, the tension-fraught merging of social structure with social action. These involve the theory of lifestyle (GSG 6: 591 ff.), the theory of the sociological a priori (GSG 11: 42–61) and the sociological anthropology (GSG 16: 212 ff.). In The Philosophy of Money, Simmel presents an initial sociological analysis to answer the question of how subjective and objective culture – or, alternatively, social action and social structure – can hold together. Here, he regards ‘lifestyle’ as the social institution that dynamically regulates their relationship (GSG 6: 655 ff.). Every domain of society proposes pre-formed life conduct patterns to face the culture conflict, yet the most effective are granted to individuals by belonging to a particular professional group. Lifestyles are technical surrogates for the titanic effort demanded of the modern personality to build a meaningful synthesis out of the random combination of social circles it is engaged in. Money plays a decisive role in this context. Therefore, a theory of social consumption is needed to analyse how the contrast between social action and social structure is empirically coped with through monetarily mediated social interaction. One can choose different objective contents of societal life and put them together in an apparently meaningful synthesis by purchasing commodities and activities that qualify the presumed unity of the personality. The successful lawyer dresses in characteristic suits; he drives a fancy car, lives in a smart suburb, eats in fashionable restaurants, plays golf in an exclusive club, reads fashionable novels, buys up-to-date music or art and so on. His life, or the combination of social roles and contents of objective culture which his professional lifestyle suggests, makes sense to him, even if it does not solve the persistent conflict of culture. A different combination of commodities, attitudes and activities characterises the lifestyle of the punk rocker, the metalworker and the single mother as well as of all other members of society. Consumerism therefore becomes a decisive means of social

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integration in complex societies. By contrast, not disposing of money implies not only material deprivation but also the failure of the integration processes. The conflict of culture constitutes an overall human condition in modern, highly differentiated societies, thus concerning everybody irrespective of their class affiliation. Yet, the social inequality allows privileged social strata to rule out the alienation of modern culture through the deployment of money. Economically discriminated groups miss out on this instrument and are more severely exposed to alienation. The ongoing differentiation processes of modern societies and their increasing rhythm of sociation seriously challenge the integration strategies operated through lifestyles. Social actors are therefore frequently forced to improvise individual solutions or to capitulate before the increasing fragmentation of social life. Simmel argued that this tentative and open-ended process of integration between objective and subjective culture beyond the lifestyle routine needed a further theoretical dimension to be explained. A specific task arose from this synopsis that required analysis of the issue not only in terms of the social structural level of lifestyle theory. Sociology had to understand how the integration of social structure and social action could be achieved in modern society. Therefore, Simmel developed the approach of sociological epistemology, that is, the account of the conditions under which social structure and action could merge in complex differentiated societies. His analysis was given in his 1908 excursus of Soziologie in the chapter ‘How Is Society Possible?’ (GSG 11: 42–61; English: GSG 18: 498–518). The most global effect of culture differentiation is exposed by the progressive amalgamation of its objects in coherent reified world domains, or by their qualitative connection in autonomous culture spheres (GSG 5: 574). Unlike Durkheim, Simmel does not obtain his conception of qualitative differentiation from the analysis of the division of labour within liberal professions (Durkheim 1950: 47 f.). Rather, his analysis of the disproportion in the improvement of subjective and objective culture allows him to observe the merging of culture contents into reified qualitative complexes based on an autonomous logic. A counter-trend to this development would only be possible if the creativity of social action could burst the objectified structure of culture. Simmel thus reformulates Marx’s thesis of the conflict between the productive forces and the means of production as a global societal issue. He ascertains a conflict between subjective cultural life, namely the creativity of social action, and the objectified cultural forms or the rigidity of social structure. This topic remains a central aspect in Simmel’s further reflection on sociology of culture. Related to this position is an explicit criticism of every naïve belief in progress. The expansion of the objective culture formations follows an autonomous factual logic that is neither progressive nor regressive. Empirically, it can merely be observed that material progress does not automatically imply an improvement of the life conditions of humanity. The assessment of the social questions induced by capitalist economy confirms this appraisal, as Simmel observed in the study on the ‘Tendencies in German Life and Thought since 1870’ (1902) (GSG 18: 167–202). Moreover, the conflict between objective and subjective culture makes it increasingly difficult to govern the structural

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development of modern society, which becomes perplexingly autonomous from the human will. This appraisal could become the starting point for cultural pessimism, as it emerged in 1920s literature on decadence (Herman 1997). Yet, as we will see in more detail in the chapter on sociology of culture, Simmel arrived at a completely different conclusion. Moreover, he showed in what sense religion, art and eroticism constitute manifold attitudes to life and the world, thus allowing for the rupture of the reification of culture forms. Therefore, he also developed a critical position towards ‘pessimism’ as a cultural keyword at the turn of the 19th century (GSG 2: 9–19).

1.4 Urbanisation Simmel provides his urbanisation theory in the renowned 1903 study on ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’ (GSG 7: 116–131; Featherstone, Frisby 1997: 174–185), which evolved from the lecture which he delivered on this topic during the First German City Exhibition in Dresden (Irrgang 1903). The central issue of modern life, as he addresses it here, is the conflict between the autonomy of the individual and the dominance of society, and the resistance of the subject against the sociotechnical mechanisms outperforming him. Following the method of his culture theory, in his examination of metropolitan life Simmel pursues a specific goal of inquiry. He questions the capacity and the limits of the urban environment as a sociotechnical product to sustain balance between individual and societal life. The striking point about his study is that the theory of neurasthenia occupies such a central position in the assessment of modern urban life. The choice depended on the way Simmel understood the question that the Gehe-Foundation asked him to speak about in Dresden. This concerned the influence of sociotechnical urban mechanisms on the minds of social actors. The hosts had expected Simmel to speak about the ‘collective intellectual forces of the large cities’ (die geistigen Kollektivkräfte der Großstädte) (Petermann 1903: I). Thus, the talk became a stumbling block with fateful consequences for Simmel’s further academic career, since one of the participants at the conference, the historian Dietrich Schäfer, later wrote the negative and anti-Semitic report that cost him the appointment as full professor in Heidelberg in 1908 (GSG 24: 286–289). The outcome of the Dresden conference was that ‘to fill the gap’ the editor of the proceedings felt compelled to personally add a paper to the publication in which he reviewed the developments of the German publishing industry (Petermann 1903: 207–230). So much for the misunderstandings. According to Simmel, to understand the impact of the urban environment on the life of the mind, the phenomenon of the increasing nerve activity in large cities must be assessed (GSG 7: 116). Humans are ‘differential beings’, so that their receptivity is stimulated by the discrepancy between successive impressions, whereas regular stimulation consumes less awareness. Based on this assumption, Simmel drafts a quasi socio-mathematics concerning the psychic costs of interaction by taking into account its rhythm and by assessing the emotional energies which social actors have to invest in it. Social interaction in urban environments

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compels individuals to process a growing amount of perceptions, emotions and fluctuating images. Unlike life in the countryside or small cities, in the metropolis the density, speed and multiplicity of accidental encounters characterising social interaction in urban space adds up with the number of social contacts due to private and professional life. The consequent spillover of emotional input forces social actors to develop an unprecedented distance to their own sensorial perceptions, provoking the ongoing cooling-down and intellectualisation of the urbanite. The urbanisation theory provides an explanation for the psychological aftermaths of social interaction in urban spaces (GSG 7: 117). This shows that in 1903 Simmel already had at his disposal the basic principles for the development of his latter sociological anthropology (GSG 16: 209 ff.). By definition, the intellect is more adaptable and comes into operation where the frequency of social contacts increases, whereas the mind is rooted in the deeper strata of the psyche, which are emotionally more susceptible. The modern intellectualist attitude, therefore, can be seen as a necessary reaction to the multiplication of social exchanges, protecting the more sensible layers of the mind. Considered as a sociological type, the urbanite develops defence mechanisms against the uprooting of the individuality provoked by the emotional impact of the social interaction in urban spaces. Moreover, to prevent the sociotechnical mechanism of the large city from violating the inner core of the personality, the reaction to social interaction is transposed to its superficial and less sensible organs. The lack of physical distance induced by the increased density of sociation is counterbalanced by the establishment of fictitious social distance. Instead of reacting spontaneously, the urbanite mediates social contacts by objectivising them intellectually and eventually by interposing monetary relationships between him and his fellow citizens. To establish a morphology of the modern urban milieu, Simmel gives an account of the main phenomena constituting the object of urbanisation theory (GSG 7: 118). The large city is the elective place for an increasing monetarisation of life because only money can mediate the countless number of short-term interactions with unknown partners that occur in the urban space. Thus, the exchangevalue of objects and social relations, which are dealt with intellectually, triumphs over their use-value, more strongly addressing the deeper layers of the mind. The urbanite has a cooled-down relationship towards not only the deliveryman and the domestic but also the wider circle of people within his social commerce. Reckoning and detachment take the upper hand in his attitude towards the world, thus enforcing the anonymity of social interaction. As a consequence, urbanity implies an overall objectification and quantification of social relationships that conjugates formal equity with ruthless hardness. Moreover, the intellectualist attitude of the urbanite provokes a social regulated break within the personality whose life cannot be delimited to its pure rational and monetary aspects without consequences. The urban variation of the conflict of culture comes to the fore. Large cities are the focal point for the typical phenomena of modern alienation, the result of which is multiplied through the density of social interaction in the urban milieu. The social appeasement in small cities or in the countryside remains in profound contrast to life in the metropolis, but in return ‘town air makes free’. The freedom to combine

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membership in very different social circles without relationships that require personal dependence is incomparably greater in the large metropolitan areas. Urban agglomerations offer the best nourishing terrain for the two most characteristic phenomena of modernity: the development of intellectualism and capitalism. Yet the question as to whether intellectualism or capitalism first came into being remained unresolved for Simmel in 1903 (GSG 7: 119). A year prior to the publication of Max Weber’s first essay on ‘The Protestant Ethic’ (Weber 1904/1905), Simmel thus formulates Weber’s issue by leaving its central point undecided. We know that Weber critically read The Philosophy of Money, but we do not have any trace of an exchange on the topic of the origins of intellectualism between the two founders of sociology (Weber 1991). In his religion sociology, Weber decidedly argued that modern occidental rationalism developed long before modern capitalism. On the contrary, for Simmel there is no preferential direction of causation between the rise of intellectualism and the monetary economy. What is evident is merely the fact that the place where the modern spirit became increasingly rationalist, transforming the world into a calculation sample, is the large city. Urban environments consist of the agglomeration of such multifaceted interests and needs that only an ongoing rationalisation of the conduct of life and social relations can cope with their complexity. Gradually, this development establishes its own institutions. Only within the timeliness and accuracy of the sociotechnical apparatus of metropolitan life can the dislocation of the action field in urban environments merge into a functioning social space. Punctuality, predictability and accuracy arise from the dilatation of social life frameworks in large cities and endow them with their materialist and rationalist character. Modern intellectualism and the monetary economy colour the subjective contents of life to such an extent that they provoke a progressive exclusion of instinctive and self-confident impulsions from social interaction. To express this in Weberian style, rationalism progressively subjugates social reality by leaving no space for emotionality, charisma and character. According to Simmel, this development is deeply related to the formation of the most characteristic phenomenon of urban life: the blasé attitude (GSG 7: 121). The unedited frequency of sensorial inputs in densely populated areas would provoke a complete exhaustion of the mind if every emotion induced by social interaction were to be experienced in depth. Hence, the spillover of nerve stimulation in the metropolis compels social actors to a further protective measure going beyond modern intellectualism: the complete denial of reaction. Monetary economy decisively contributes to the emotional blunting of the urbanite. By reducing the world items to simple specimens of exchange-value in a comprehensive monetary flow, money levels life contents to an indistinct mass of emotionally neutral impulsions. The lack of qualitative differences by the simultaneous quantitative multiplication of sensorial stimuli leads to an ongoing reification of the world, mortifying the spontaneity of the mind in experiencing it. The subjective consequence of the process is a substantial aloofness of the urbanite toward persons and objects. The blasé attitude joins the diffuse mistrust before fugitive contacts with fellow urbanites and leads to a reserve, which can turn into aversion, repulsion and fear of contact (GSG 7: 123).

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Instead of indifference, the increased frequency of encounters in urban spaces thus eventually provokes antipathy, but only because emotional clashes can be avoided in this way. What looks like a dissociation, according to Simmel, in reality is a societal institution, viz. a form of sociation, permitting coexistence under the conditions of condensed social interaction characterising urban environments. Paradoxically, the dulling of sensorial perception in large cities directly represents the major cause for an intensified individualisation tendency (GSG 7: 128). Because of the widespread blasé attitude, it is increasingly difficult to bring the individual personality to bear in urban environments. The everyday fight for recognition sinks in the mire of modern sensorial dullness. To attract the attention of the fellow citizens, individuals must increase the differentiation effect of their personality by giving it unique attributes, which may be able to excite the exhausted sensitivity of the social circle. Extravagance, fancy and precious attitudes or caprice – all this belongs to the repertoire of the urbanite’s individuality. Not the contents of behaviour, but the ‘way of being different’, of singling oneself out, plays the decisive role. Social encounters in the urban space are too short and unique, so that an instantaneous snapshot of the personality must replace all its complexity. Because of the lack of spatiotemporal resources to deploy deeper social exchange, a process of self-stereotyping characterises the approach to the social world of the metropolitans. Large cities bear the highest crystallisation level of impersonal culture, which is incorporated in institutions, buildings, transport means and sociotechnical life rhythms. The hypertrophy of objective culture leads thus to the atrophy of individual culture. The rescue of the urbanite’s personality is then only possible through an exaggeration of the individualisation processes in a stereotyped and often caricatural way. In a double torsion, objective culture production and individualisation processes become autonomous from each other and develop a stereotyping logic leading to a complete self-reference on both sides. From the point of view of Simmel’s sociology, therefore, the rise of what Luhmann (1984/2005) will call later autopoietic social and psychic systems must be seen as an output of the ongoing crumbling of the social fabric induced by the conflict of culture. It is a pathology of modernity tearing apart the logics of social action and social structure. It became the central concern of Simmel’s descriptive sociological theory to describe how this tensionfraught relationship develops (GSG 11: 42–61), whereas answering the related normative question was the starting point for the development of his social ethics (GSG 12: 417–470). The growing divergence between individualisation processes and objective culture production further brings to the fore the development of two different conceptions of individuality competing with each other in highly differentiated societies: quantitative and qualitative individualism (GSG 7: 49–56). Both are to be seen as a product of the historical development of modern societies. Quantitative individualism is the expression of the emancipation project of the Enlightenment that Simmel considers still valid in 1901. Every human must be granted an equal degree of freedom from social constraint. Liberty and equality, the ideals of the French Revolution, therefore, provide the normative basis for the existence

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of modern societies, grounding them on the legal primacy of the individual visà-vis the social group. Nevertheless, they also conceal a contradiction because the increase of individual freedom in the economic domain provokes a diminution of social equality. Accordingly, for Simmel it is not a case that liberty and equality were integrated by the ideal of fraternity to compensate for the divergence between the aspiration to complete individual independence and the necessity to grant fair life conditions to everyone. The divergent character of quantitative and qualitative individualism is to be explained with the different historical conditions for their rise. Under the Ancien Régime before the French Revolution, the emancipation process of the bourgeoisie focused on the need for relief from the feudal ties of personal dependence, incorporated in the privileges of the upper social strata. The abolishment of the constraints would have permitted freedom for everybody and thus, at least was the belief, equality between citizens. The 18th-century rationalist ideal of individuality, however, applied to an abstract conception of humanity and failed in the new historical reality of industrial capitalism that arose from the abolishment of the Ancien Régime. Hence, in the 19th century, the ideals of liberty and equality shifted apart (GSG 7: 52). On the one side, socialism developed the conception that only the preliminary realisation of social equality could assure the background for everyman’s freedom. On the other side, with Weimar Classicism and above all Goethe’s view of life, a second ideal of individualism arose: the claim of freedom to self-fulfilment instead of only independence from external constraint (Berlin 1966). Individuals should be allowed to be qualitatively different from each other because in historical reality only unique human beings were to be found and not an abstract humanity. The dynamics of modern society evidences a complex problematic concerning the realisation of both ideals of individualism. The conception of qualitative individualism collides with the aftermaths of modern social differentiation. The hypertrophy of objective culture, viz. the difficulty in realising a meaningful synthesis of social roles that individuals must play, challenges the realisation of its claim of self-fulfilment. Realising the ideal of quantitative individualism instantly suffers under the increasing social inequality due to class division in capitalist society. According to Simmel, however, there is further evidence that must be taken into account. In the large city, as the intensifying location for all the conflicts of modern societies, the realisations of the two conceptions of individuality compete with each other. The development of the sociotechnical mechanisms assuring the functioning of the metropolis improves the levelling implementation of quantitative individualism. Yet their legitimation through the creativity of social action requires the realisation of qualitative individualism because only a certain degree of self-fulfilment induces the individuals to become bearers of modern social structures. Thus, a never-ending conflict dynamics between social equality and individualisation processes takes place, the most acute theatre of which is located in the metropolis. Finding out ways of realising a positive synthesis between both forms of individualism capable of linking the rationalist culture of the 18th century with the historicist culture of the 19th century therefore became a constitutive aspect for Simmel’s social ethics project (GSG 7: 56).

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1.5 Neurasthenia and beyond Neurasthenia and the blasé attitude are only two expressions of the complex behavioural pathologies induced by the rise of the monetary economy. To explain their incidence in The Philosophy of Money, Simmel develops his theory of social action (GSG 6: 292 ff.). When the actor decides on the purposes of action, external conditions determine how, i.e. with which means the aims can be achieved. In an advanced monetary economy, however, the chains of causation from purpose to realisation become progressively longer. To attain their goals, social actors must concentrate intensely on the means that they employ. Thus, the more complex the conduct of life, the competition for resources and the division of labour in modern societies, the less social actors can focus on the ultimate goals of action. The horizon of expectation sinks by limiting the attention threshold to the next necessary action steps. Since money increasingly plays the decisive role of an instrument mediating social interaction and bypassing the length of causal chains, it mutates from a means to a goal of social action. Pushed by this development, several psychic pathologies relating to money arise which are typical for modern societies. The fact that money becomes an ultimate goal conforms to the factual logic of the capitalist economy, but it can also outstrip its needs. This development characterises different pathologic attitudes to the handling of money (GSG 6: 308). The basic phenomena are, in this respect, two opposite forms of behaviour that make money an absolute goal of social action: ‘greed’ (Geldgier) and ‘miserliness’ (Geiz). In both cases, only the fact of owning money appears to be valuable, whereas things on their own account become worthless. The causal chains of action hold fast here through the feeling of possession either by pushing to boundless accumulation or to denial of spending even the smallest sum (GSG 6: 310). Most typically, this attitude constitutes the approach to life of the meaner individual. Money becomes an ultimate purpose and does not tolerate any further absolute value alongside. By simultaneously abstaining from consumption, money as the universal medium of monetary exchange procures for his owner a feeling of power and distinction related to a negation of social action. At the other end of the scale, dissipation can be regarded as the opposite of miserliness, even though in a way, it follows the same logic, albeit under a negative sign. The profligate too, and in an extremely intensive way, feels the value of things only during the moment when he transforms money into other bearers of value. He buys these feelings at the cost of the dissipation of his patrimony, and apparently through indifference to the value of money (GSG 6: 322). He does not, however, draw any attention to the value of the things which he purchases, but only for the sake of the feelings of monetary loss that occur in this process. The further evaluation of the social processes, which diminish the capacity of appreciating objects’ use-value by reducing them to their mere exchange-value mediated by money, introduces cynicism and the blasé attitude as further consequences of the related dulling, albeit with different results (GSG 6: 332). If greed and miserliness induce the establishment of money as the only final purpose of social action, cynicism and the blasé attitude contrastingly focus on

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the degradation of all other purposes. The negative prejudice related to the use of money and levelling the action objects which accompanied the former two becomes even stronger in the latter two attitudes. At the end of the process not only are the single unities of value negated that are not crystallised in money but also value in itself. The cynic represents the polar opposite of the enthusiastic attitude. The latter approach elevates every assessment to a positive end, whereas the former insists on the meanness of every expression of value. For him there are no real differences of value, so that all contents of the world are levelled to the bottom. Disposing of money decidedly strengthens the cynical attitude because it makes all sorts of values indifferently available for the affluent individual by immediately negating everything to the person who is not. The ultimate homeland of cynicism is, therefore, to be identified in the stock market where the most significant circulation of money takes place and all items have nothing but a highly fluctuating value. Here, what is a subjective attitude for the cynical individual becomes an objective social process (GSG 6: 334). The final repercussion of the dulling process, levelling the value feelings of the social actors, concerns not only quantitative but also qualitative differences between the objects and therefore their heterogeneity. It is an achievement of the monetary economy that the interest in the common aspects of things is reinforced at the cost of the appreciation of their singularity. Under the terms of modern economic logic, every worldly item can exist only as a quantitative specimen of the same substance: money. The extreme psychological consequence of this development is given by the blasé attitude that, in Simmel’s view, becomes an endemic occurrence in modern society. Whereas the cynic can still be moved to an evaluation of the objects of social action, albeit a negative one, in the case of the blasé attitude every reaction to the differences between values vanishes. The blasé individual feels everything with dull and grave tonality by refusing to react to impulsions. His decisive nuance of mind is not cynical devaluation, but indifference. As Simmel relates with implicit reference to the achievements of the psychological theory of neurasthenia (Beard 1890; GSG 5: 214), in psychological terms, exhausting pleasures count as the cause of the blasé attitude. Seen from a sociological point of view, however, this is not sufficient to explain the diffusion of the phenomenon in modern societies. The specific social roots of its development need to be taken into account. The more mechanical and uncomplicated the purchasing of objects and services becomes through the monetary economy, the more things seem to be dreary and uninteresting. What can be indifferently bought loses attraction and value. Not a subjective dissolute conduct of life, but the increasing circulation of money, therefore, provokes the diffusion of the generalised indifferent attitude towards the objects of the world addressed by the theory of neurasthenia (GSG 6: 335). The psychological aftermaths of the societal change related to the monetary economy, however, can assume different shapes. The cynic generally does not want to dispense with his attitude to life, while the blasé individual, on the contrary, aspires to overcome dulling, yearns thanks to extraordinary excitements and hopes to finally feel something again (GSG 6: 336). The narrowness and

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calculating objectivity of everyday life in modern society wants to be compensated for by plenty of feelings and consuming possibilities (Schulze 1992). Hence, the modern desire for excitement and extreme impressions increases, thus promising at least for a moment that the objective meaning of things and social relations can be forgotten. In a sort of Faustian movement, the rationalism of modern specialisation overturns into a kind of sentimental irrationalism that is in a hurry to embrace experience (GSG 17: 244). This subjective attitude corresponds with the colourfulness of the metropolitan streets and soirées which Simmel observed in Berlin in the Belle Époque. The objective development of modern consumerism finds the most typical and phantasmagorical expression in world exhibitions (GSG 17: 33–38). They provide an exponential multiplicity of different commodities whose only common denominator is offering an amusement effect to the visitors. Such heterogeneity concentrated in a narrow space provokes a complete hypnotism of perceptiveness: the visitors collect so many disparate impressions that, in the end, only a superficial feeling of fun persists. This diffuse sensation of pleasure for Simmel is a particular expression of the modern dulling process. The loss of importance and pregnancy in single impressions is compensated for by their compression in a superficial and deflated feeling. The city, where the world exhibition takes place, becomes a phantasmagorical location that, for a short while, represents the whole world. Visitors experience a generalisation of the shop-window effect. A suggestive arrangement of commodities emerges that exalts the overweight of the capitalist offer in the face of every possible desire of single consumers. An aesthetisation of market concurrence comes to the fore, endowing commodities with a new significance thanks to their arrangement. Through this aesthetic superadditum, capitalism can outperform the modern dulling of the single value-perception by creating an overwhelming collective manifestation of commodities (GSG 17: 38). The hypnotic effect of exhibitions reaches an even higher level when the displayed items are not simple commodities but raise the claim of being artworks. From the Paris Salons to the Biennale of our time, the visitor of art exhibitions obtains an idea of the variety of current artistry within minutes and in full concentration (GSG 17: 242–250). A manifold sum of objets d’art is ready to be perceived and evaluated in the narrowest span of space and time, so that the mass of images and their overhasty approval or disapproval fuse in a dull sequence of impressions which balance all the extremes. A growing emotional distance emerges towards the single impressions, transforming modern art enjoyment into a superficial blasé activity. While the observer certainly takes note of the individual artwork, he or she no longer appreciates anyone. The result is vague aestheticising and a consumerist relationship to art, which is grounded on the multiplication of contradictory impulsions that are equally a cause and an effect of the modern blasé attitude. On the one hand, the feeling of the modern urbanite becomes increasingly delicate and nervous, so that he can only stand faded colours and every gaucheness hurts his sensibility. This societal development for Simmel is the pathway that led to the rise of impressionism (GSG 17: 246). On the other hand, however, the modern urbanite has a frantic need of the greatest

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excitement. He feels the call of the wilderness and wants to climb the Alps and wander into virgin forests (GSG 5: 91–95). He wants to still his compulsive need for emotional shocks in the hope of being deeply moved once again. For Simmel, this attitude is at the origin of the artistic movement of Expressionism. The contradictory character of the blasé attitude embosses the physicalness of modern humanity by generating a dialectic between hyperaesthesia and anaesthesia. In art shows, this dialectic results in a conflict between the spatial juxtaposition and the temporal sequence for the perception of artworks. The quantity of the exhibited artworks makes a deepening into the significance of the single oeuvre impossible and only a fleeting mixture of impressions is possible. Simmel thus seizes the prodromes of what became the image flood of our epoch. The mind supplants the disruptive spatial disorder of impulsions, with which it is confronted in art exhibitions, and perceives them as an accelerated flow of images, rapidly provoking a saturation of the receptivity (GSG 17: 247). For Simmel, here lies the difference between art exhibitions and a tour of classical museums, thus allowing (perhaps during his time) a lasting deepening regard for single artworks. With his studies on the world and art exhibitions, Simmel anticipated different motives of critical art theory that Benjamin later developed in The Arcades Project (Benjamin 2002). Moreover, the studies on neurasthenia allowed Simmel to seize the development of the institutions of social interaction, like rituality and tact, thus managing the increasing need for recovery from the modern spillover of impressions by creating neutral spaces of extreme formalised reciprocal social action. The ideal type of these institutions, yet also the protomodern root for the development of the modern public sphere, for Simmel, are to be found in formalised sociability (GSG 12: 177–193). Sociability valorises a basal attitude of the human approach to the world: the game (GSG 12: 179). An activity that adopts patterns of social interaction and transposes them into a virtual dimension, exonerating the participants from all the gravity of real life. By playing games, individuals access a dimension that is not void amusement because it maintains the symbolic meaning of reality. A similar process takes place where sociability arises by separating the pure form of social interaction from all its contents. The pure formal relationship to reality spares sociability all the habitual frictions of social action. For the sake of the simple charm irradiating from the release from every stress, interest and goal, the social forms of being together, for or against each other, obtain a life of their own. The process of sociation becomes a value per se, rescuing the social drive from every material constraint. Sociability attaches the highest importance to the form, specifically the good form, as the only residual instance holding together its loosened elements in a unity of reciprocal action. It thus gains its effortless plenty and its symbolic significance. The conflict between the autonomy of the individual and the dominance of the sociotechnical mechanisms characterising the modern metropolis comes here to a specific and abstract solution. In its pure shaping of sociability, it has no objective purpose beyond itself, so that it is fully dependent on the personality of its participants. Accordingly, they are not allowed to emphasise any of their skills explicitly as long as they participate in sociability.

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Hence, this consists of a process of ‘derealisation’ that cannot lean on any material interest. Tactfulness is therefore essential because it represents the only remaining means that permit the individual to find orientation in a domain where no interaction is steered by clearly identifiable interests. A remarkable sociological structure appears. Nothing can enter sociability that relates to the objective significance of the person. No wealth, social position, erudition, celebrity, exceptional capacities or merits of the individual are allowed to play a role in the sociability; only a light shade of this is permitted, and it consists of the same immaterial sociable substance. It is considered as rude and tactless to bring moods, ill humour, excitement or depression into sociability. Here, everybody wears a mask and is only an element of an association formally held together by its behavioural rules, so allowing the personality to fearlessly reveal itself because none of its real contents can be revealed (GSG 16: 109). Therefore, the stronger sociability is formalised, the more it is possible to leak contents of intimacy, so that many individuals, for instance, would be embarrassed to show up in everyday life with an outfit that perfectly fits in at fashionable parties. Etiquette, courtesy, granting the other the maximum joy of interaction as a condition of their own joy are the requirements of sociability. At the same time, it is an accomplished democracy and an unreal, artificial world. Sociability is the game where everybody imagines being equal to everybody else and where everyone pretends to cherish everyone. Yet, the sociable attitude is not mendacious because all participants know that the founding role of the game is derealisation. Sociability becomes a lie only if it degenerates to pure appearance, thus hiding dishonest intentions. Sociability is an abstract replay of real sociation and must remain a performed society, where every participant consequently plays his role following the rules of and for the game’s sake. Through the derealisation of the personality, in sociability individuals temporarily overcome the conflict between subjective and collective purposes in a direction that remains in opposition to the blasé attitude of modern life because it transposes the tragic struggle for life into the symbolic game of a realm of shadows. Here, no dulling is possible because every expression of intent is only a playful emulation of real interest. Simmel’s investigation of sociability provided the foundation for successive developments in the examination of the civilisation process by Elias (1997) and in the anthropology of the public sphere by Plessner (1924/1981; Fitzi 2015: 227 ff.).

1.6 Women’s emancipation There are two further topics of Simmel’s theory on modernity that he omitted to address or only partially addressed in his essay on large cities: namely, women’s emancipation and fashion. The handling of both topics can be considered as an application of the theory of social differentiation (GSG 2: 109–295). With regard to women’s emancipation, there have been different assessments of Simmel’s theory with contradictory results (Boella 2006; Gilcher-Holtey 1992; Leck 2000: 131 ff.). The best way to understand Simmel’s position, however, is to compare

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it with the debates taking place on the topic in his time. Otto Weininger’s work on Sex and Character (Geschlecht und Charakter) published in 1903 gives an ideal–typical insight into the arguments many academic intellectuals deployed to oppose the idea and the movement of women’s emancipation at the turn of the century (Weininger 1903). Arranged in a scheme of racist and anti-Semitic positions concerning the ‘animal character’ of black people and the ‘feminine character’ of the Jew as well as of modern culture, Weininger – himself a converted Jew – exposes his theory of the difference between man and woman. Moreover, he makes a distinction between ‘man’ and ‘woman’ or ‘Weib’ and reduces women exclusively to their reproductive function. The whole book is a frantic essay to demonstrate that every intellectual achievement in human history was a performance of men. Therefore, Weininger develops his theory of bisexuality and claims that if there were intellectual performances achieved by women they were the product of the prevailing masculine element in their soul. These women could consequently not be considered as women (Weininger 1903: 79–93). Recurring to innumerable allegedly objective empirical results of physiology and experimental psychology, Weininger aims at funding the supposed unequal distribution of intellectual skills between man and woman in an ontological way. The argumentation results in a substantial denigration of female sexuality. The greatest impediment to women’s emancipation is, says Weininger, woman herself. Given the reproductive function of the female body and the alleged fixation of the female mind thereupon, women would be unable to achieve every emancipation. The only possible exception would be the explicit negation of femininity through an ascetic conduct of life. The bottom line of Weininger’s argumentation is, therefore, that only behind the secure walls of the cloisters would women’s emancipation be imaginable. Weininger’s neurotic approach to the topic as well as his substantial hatred for everything that did not match his stereotypical conception of masculinity attracted copious criticism and soon became the object of psychiatric inquiry (Probst 1904). Theodor Lessing made Weininger’s stance the object of a case study in his book on so-called Jewish Self-Hatred (Lessing 1930/2004: 109 ff.). Yet, surprisingly enough, Weininger also encountered plenty of bipartisan consent in the literary milieu, and his book was a great audience success (Harrowitz, Hyams 1995). Simmel referred to Weininger in an added passage for the edition of ‘Female Culture’ within the miscellany Philosophical Culture (Philosophische Kultur) published in 1911, although he did not discuss his theory (GSG 14: 243). In contrast to Weininger, readers of Simmel’s essays on women’s emancipation and female culture find themselves in a completely different universe. Simmel’s early text on the 1892 jubilee of the women’s emancipation movement is a review of Hippel’s work: On the Civil Improvement of Women (Ueber die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber) (Hippel 1792). In the short essay, Simmel shows that starting from the 18th century, and above all thanks to the reflection on human rights in German culture, there is a positive valuation of women’s emancipation (GSG 1: 284–294). The thought that the rank of women was held artificially low already circulated in the 18th century, and the claim for human rights prepared

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favourable ground for gender equality. However, what went without saying in the Age of Enlightenment was that emancipation was understood primarily as a matter of access to education. Yet some authors advanced further, and for Simmel, Hippel was the most prominent reference in this respect (Hippel 1792). By locating the causes of women’s subordination in the structure of society, he anticipated a number of arguments that founded the women’s emancipation movement during the 1890s. The radical awareness that women’s condition is not a natural state but the product of an historical development must be seen as Hippel’s permanent merit. The limit of his conception, however, according to Simmel, was that women’s claim of having access to self-determined professional activity did not play any role in his reflection. Yet, the major problem of the women’s emancipation movement for Simmel resided in its internal conflict, as he noted in the report on the ‘Women’s Congress and Social Democracy’, written in 1896 (GSG 17: 39–45). The movement was divided into a bourgeois and social democratic wing, so that the women’s worker organisations declined the invitation to participate in the congress and instead sent their delegate Clara Zetkin. She presented the positions of the social democratic women’s movement, pointing out that only within an overall emancipation of the working class could the struggle for women’s rights achieve its goals. Jeanette Schwerin, the speaker of the bourgeois women’s emancipation movement, answered that the purpose of an improvement in working conditions for proletarian women was an integral part of her organisation’s claims and pleaded for a unification of the two movements. For Simmel, the congress experimented with a classical contraposition between the revolutionary and the reformist strategy of the labour movement. The decision was between an overall transformation of the social order in one move and a progressive change of the partial aspect that would result in the end in a similar global reshaping of society. Simmel rather saw in Zetkin’s position the heritage of the Hegelian speculation on the philosophy of history than a practicable political programme. Moreover, he tended to embrace the idea of a progressive realisation of civil, political and social legislation as a more practical path for the action of the women’s emancipation movement. The issue, however, was how sociology could assess the opposition between the two fractions of the women’s emancipation movement as a product of the historical development of the industrial age. Simmel observed two parallel changes in women’s condition. Working-class women were wrested from their traditional role of child carer and endured working conditions which prevented them from reconciling wage labour and parenting. Bourgeois women stayed within a traditional role, but they felt its redundancy because technical developments and the change of family structures diminished the domestic workload. To make use of their free energies, they aspired to more freedom and access to the professional world. Wage labour was therefore a constraint for working-class women, while for those middle-class women economic autonomy remained an ambition. In both cases, the development of culture tore women away from the traditional pattern of life, yet without giving them new domains of activity that could grant their self-fulfilment. The bourgeois women looked for new rights to accept new duties

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because domestic work could not satisfy them. Working-class women found themselves in the opposite situation: they were forced to leave the house because one salary no longer sufficed to support a family. In both cases, for Simmel, a particular aspect of the overall conflict of culture characterising modern society comes to the fore. The objective conditions of life advance far more quickly than individuals can ever adapt to. The culture of things and techniques sets up challenges and develops consequences that no longer match individual persons’ historically grown life conditions. Seen from this standpoint, the bourgeois middle-class and working-class women’s emancipation movements were, despite all opposition, two sides of the same overall societal change. These considerations lead Simmel to ask the question concerning the cultural signification of the women’s emancipation issue. This is the topic of the study about ‘Feminine Culture’, which he published in 1902 (GSG 7: 64–83), as well as of the résumé of his positions in ‘Tendencies in German Life and Thought since 1870’ (GSG 18: 185–190). Here the theory of culture as well as the theory of social differentiation serves as a guideline for the investigation. The objective meaning of the women’s emancipation movement could not only be that certain positions within society can be held by women instead of being occupied exclusively by men. Simmel expected more from the women’s emancipation movement and in some respect an even greater impulsion to change than the one coming from the worker’s movement. The issue for him was, however, what kind of developments were to be expected. In history, human culture had been, with little exception, predominantly masculine-dominated. Moreover, for Simmel, the way modern culture works turns intensely to masculine energies, feelings and intellectuality. Social differentiation, the degree of specialisation characterising professions and the objectified quality of modern culture at large are of a masculine substance. To sharpen oneself to a one-sided performance, which is differentiated from the overall personality, so that a social fracture goes between the objectivised domains of action and the subjective personality, is for Simmel a consequence of the masculine-determined shaping of society. Modern social differentiation and its alienated trait are, therefore, to be seen as a product of masculine domination in culture and society. According to Simmel, women seem to offer stronger resistance to the modern process of social and individual differentiation by maintaining a stronger unity of the personality. Opening up male-dominated positions and professions to women therefore means, on the one hand, an emancipation overcoming the limitation of women’s work to the domestic domain. Yet, on the other hand, this advancement is bought by an adaptation to the masculine scheme of social and individual differentiation. Faced with this development, the question arises as to what kind of culture transformation women would undertake if their emancipation could go beyond the level of adapting to masculine-determined social structures (GSG 7: 69). Simmel poses the question as if a development of modernity may be possible which is alternative to the one involving capitalism, masculinity and highly developed social differentiation. This topic will become a dominant aspect for his analysis of art as well as social ethics, which together with female culture for him represent the many possibilities of overcoming the existing, compulsive evolution line of modernity.

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Could women design a different form of culture matching female criteria? Simmel’s answer is positive. Women can perform things that men cannot, producing alternative ways of doing things and a different approach to the divisions of labour. By way of example, Simmel refers to medicine. Women possess strong empathic skills that can be positively employed in diagnostics and therapy. Similar considerations apply to science, literature and art. In this regard, Simmel recalls the names of the female representatives of Berlin’s avant-garde: Dora Hitz, Kathe Kollwitz and Kornelie Wagner (GSG 7: 74). With the development of female culture, completely new variations and domains of culture would emerge which are the product of the female difference. This resource would lead to a renewal of objective culture arising from societal change induced by the women’s emancipation movement. Simmel would not deny that this kind of advance faces several difficulties. The improvement of women’s independence requires societal and economic conditions that were not granted at that time. Therefore, it was to be expected that women’s emancipation would at first undergo a stage of adaptation to masculine culture and social order. During this time, however, a better capability of distinguishing between masculine and feminine culture would arise, so that women’s contribution to objective culture could be recognised. This transitional period could be seen as a preparation for the time when women’s culture would take its own direction. The distinction between quantitative and qualitative individuality here once more guides Simmel’s inquiry. Before it can come to an overall deployment of female culture, there must be a phase in which society has to care for the greatest possible gender equality (GSG 7: 81). Only after this step would it be possible to reach a new synthesis and realise the ideal of a new objective culture that is enriched with the nuance of female productivity. Thus, according to Simmel, the representatives of the theory of female difference shall also initially engage in the struggle for gender equality. Indeed, this is a precondition for the development of women’s culture. Only at the close of his reflection does Simmel briefly concede that there is possibly a substantial difference between the masculine and feminine mind. It is said that women were better at adapting to the flow of events, have less drive for an ontological fixation of things and were thus better equipped to live in modern societies. If this were genuinely the case, for Simmel, this question can only be answered in a speculative way. Yet female psychology, as it can be experienced empirically, must be seen as a product of the historically grown role of women as housekeeper and nurse (GSG 7: 289–294). Consequently, one thing is sure. The more women leave the household, the more they take part in the production of objective contents of culture – not only of ephemeral services that cannot last, because their products are consumed straightaway.

1.7 Fashion Fashion is produced in every human culture. It is a classification tool for structuring segmentary differentiated social groups (Durkheim, Mauss 2011) as well as an instrument for enforcing social stratification (Bourdieu 1984; Veblen 1899). A powerful momentum of societal transformation is associated with the world of

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fashion (Elias 1997). Yet, the particularity of the modern fashion phenomenon is its dynamics, the acceleration of its change and the apparent upward mobility it unleashes. Simmel focuses on these aspects and therefore continues the analysis of the topic under his conception of modernity by linking it to an extended discussion of the theory of social differentiation. He addressed the social phenomenon of fashion at various stages of his sociological work, in On Social Differentiation (GSG 2: 217) as well as in the chapter of The Philosophy of Money that concerns lifestyle (GSG 6: 639 f.). Simmel also compiled essays ‘On the Psychology of Fashion’ (GSG 5: 105–114), ‘Women and Fashion’ (GSG 8: 344–347) and more generally ‘Fashion’ (in English), published in 1904 in the International Quarterly (GSG 18: 355–386). In 1905, there followed a summary of his insights in a separate monograph on The Philosophy of Fashion (GSG 10: 9–37), appearing in Hans Landsberg’s series on ‘modern issues’ (moderne Zeitfragen). Simmel’s working hypothesis for the analysis of fashion has anthropological character, because it assumes that humans are dualistic beings and, therefore, it constitutes a preparatory step for his further reflection on the duality of human nature. Indeed, this idea becomes one of the centrepieces for the development of Simmel’s sociological anthropology and social ethics. A human person’s need is for movement and rest, productivity and receptivity, commitments to other people as well as self-assertion. In social relationship contexts, this implies that individuals seek affiliation to a social group as well as quiet, solitary moments, as Simmel previously observed with respect to lifestyle (GSG 6: 655 ff.). In The Philosophy of Fashion, he points out how social actors’ motives for affiliation are based on the psychological inclination for emulation, thus revealing his awareness of Tarde’s psychology of imitation. Simmel was well informed about the theory because of his book review in 1890 (Tarde 1890; GSG 1: 248–250). Imitation can be considered as the crossover of collective behaviour into individual life. It imparts in social actors a feeling of not being alone and relieves them from a permanent assumption of responsibility. In so doing, the imitation drive becomes a powerful instrument for the reproduction of social structures and behavioural patterns. However, social action does not expend in imitation because it also has an active component – indeed, this is Simmel’s criticism of Tarde’s social psychology. The creativity of social action is grounded on the need to differentiate oneself from the mainstream action patterns of the social group (GSG 10: 10). Hence, the psychological drive to distinction can be considered as the second basic impulsion of social behaviour.2 For Simmel, what is interesting about fashion is that it brings both tendencies into reciprocal action as the condition for the continuity of its cyclical existence. Fashion is, of course, the imitation of given behavioural patterns, thus granting individuals social backing, yet at the same time being the expression of a differentiation drive and fulfilling the need for distinction, setting individuals and social groups apart from the anonymous mass of the fellow human being. Fashion succeeds due to its constant recreation of novel contents to enrich life. It also procures a feeling of progress by clearly differentiating society’s yesterday from its tomorrow. In this respect, fashion becomes a central momentum

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for the restless quest for innovation which characterises intensely urbanised modern societies. In contrast, as Simmel shows in the study on ‘Sociological Aesthetics’, premodern and especially despotic societies are characterised by rigid symmetric social patterns (GSG 5: 197–214). These make the domination of larger groups in conditions of segmentary differentiation easier than when borders between social groups are erratic and fluctuating. Yet, once despotic rule diminishes and society becomes more fluid, the principle of social symmetry survives as a mere aesthetic motive, reappearing in the standardising drive of fashion. For Simmel, the idea of reorganising society from not only an ethical but also an aesthetic point of view is also associated with the socialist imaginary, especially in the literary formulation of its classical utopias such as in Campanella’s The City of the Sun (GSG 5: 205 f.). The rationalist character of socialism shines through in his interest in harmony and symmetry. Yet, modern societies are characterised by their irrational development oscillating between order and disorder. The intermittent character of modern social structures confronts social actors with a massive spillover of impulsions, thus strengthening the need for regularities, which can be obtained either in the abstract projection of political utopias or through the concrete praxis of fashion emulation. Even a perfect social mechanism, however, would inspire the individual need for deviation and freedom. According to Simmel, the dialectic between alignment and deviation would thus probably also continue in a socialist society, even if its most decided expression is to be found in the highly liquefied social reality of capitalist societies. The development cycle of fashion in modern society shows how, on the horizontal axis of intensified specialisation of various social roles and capacities, social differentiation involves a spatial dimension. The same applies on the vertical axis of social stratification. Complex societies are divided into different social groups that have unequal access to material and symbolic resources and stay in a relationship of reciprocal setting apart. Furthermore, in Simmel’s view, social differentiation proves a rhythmical development on the temporal axis. A dynamics takes place that distances social groups from each other for the sake of distinction and an opposite process of rapprochement due to the emulation of the upper class through emergent social groups. Fashion serves both tendencies and results in a getaway and catch-up game with a specific temporal rhythm. The reason for fashion’s social appeal is basically that it is always a ‘class-fashion’, initially characterising the leading social strata by singling them out from the rest of society and aggregating their members by virtue of their appearance (GSG 10: 11). Thus, fashion becomes a constitutive element in the processes of elite building and social stratification. Yet, fashion develops specific dynamics and also has an opposite effect on social inequality due to bottom-up emulation between social groups. Social strata that are situated lower tend to imitate the way of life of the upper class, namely at least participating in the appearance of prestige emanating from its well-being. The result is a fictitious, viz. symbolically upward, mobility. As a reaction, higher-situated social strata try to differentiate themselves anew by adopting a different fashion style. So, the cycle of fashion restarts from the beginning.

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The faster the social dynamics move, the higher the frequency of fashion variance. Historically, from the early 19th century European societies experienced a speeding up of societal change that was advanced by the dissolution of traditional rigid class barriers. In consecutive waves, the successful fight for political emancipation of the Tiers État induced an ongoing acceleration of society’s development rhythm. The middle classes became the leading strata of modern societies; they discovered fashion as an expression of a state of mind to coincide with the restlessness of their aspirations for upward mobility. Yet, other social strata adopt different attitudes to fashion and especially to its modern, fast-moving variance (GSG 10: 31). The upper classes tend to be more conservative because they fear that change could jeopardise their position of pre-eminence in society. At the other end of the social scale, and in contrast to the affinity for uncertain social change in the middle classes, the working classes are characterised by latent conservatism and the fear of shifting social orders. Their extremely weak social and economic positioning can be easily compromised by every novelty and thus for them the fast-changing rhythm of fashion does not create the same attractiveness. In general, fashion is a societal phenomenon that is intrinsically related to the lifestyle of society’s marginal groups resulting from the fragmentation of traditional social orders. The protagonists of new fashion tendencies are often social pariahs, members of the demi-monde or bohemians who have a fraught relationship with institutionalised patterns of behaviour and an affinity with the aesthetic impulse of deconstruction (GSG 10: 25). On a symbolic level, fashion becomes a projection area for emancipatory expectations. It is an ephemeral tyrant, allowing more scope for deviant behaviour and personal freedom than power structure does; fashion offers an important relief for a simulated break with the rationale of collective behaviour. Moreover, the trappings of fashion grant a person liberty to set subjective priorities, though without leading to an overthrow of social affiliation. The fact that women may be more receptive to fashion depends for Simmel on the historically determined weakness of their social positioning. This strengthened the need for collective orientation patterns to protect the personality and made strong individualisation quite difficult. Therefore, emancipated women who seek selfdetermination tend to emphasise their indifference to fashion (GSG 10: 22 ff.). The ordering impulsion of fashion dovetails with historical situations where traditional social orders have been broken through and social structures increasingly lessened. In common with monetary values and positive law, fashion therefore has an ambiguous legitimation character that makes it a typical modern phenomenon (GSG 6: 98, 121). On the one hand, among its mandatory properties is the transitory character of all content. Fashion lacks any factual logic because it relies on the contingent need for self-differentiation of the upper class from the rest of society. What is in vogue is simply modern at the single moment and permits the cycle of vertical differentiation to advance. In other words, the fashion world cultivates a new symbolic demarcation when social order has lost its traditional rigidity. On the other hand, despite its transitory character, every new fad raises the claim of absolute validity. Fashion modes represent a variation of modern social structures that draw on absolute legitimacy, although within clearly

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delimited spatiotemporal boundaries. Fashion is always class–fashion and lasts as long as it guarantees distinction from the rest of society. Individual fashions therefore rapidly lose their validity. Yet, fashion per se pretends to be immortal; it appears as the only unchanging thing because it is itself change, viz. a reciprocal action of the trend for social distinction combined with that of social emulation. Fashion is a powerful means of social closure and exclusion; however, the rhythmic flow of its imitation cycle allows social barriers to be burst through. Consumerism facilitates the apparently upward mobility generated by fashion and partially grants satisfaction from the need for social ascent, yet without a substantial alteration of life conditions. Consequently, the development of the monetary economy questions the balance between the two basic tendencies of fashion. The temporal rhythm of fashion alternates more quickly between reproducing and dismantling social stratification, so that it progressively jeopardises its social ordering function. This acceleration provokes the rise of an even more blasé attitude towards the contents of fashion, so that its rhythm enters a sensationalist spiral and produces an even higher level of neurasthenia in modern societies.

1.8 Simmel and Marx Simmel knew Marx’s works published until 1918. Therefore, he could not read the German Ideology and the Economic-Philosophic Manuscripts, which appeared in the 1920s and 1930s, but was familiar with The Communist Manifesto, Capital and the Theses on Feuerbach that belonged to the standard readings among social scientists at his time. In his younger days, Simmel was a pupil of Gustav Schmoller, who must have acquainted him with the debates about the critique of political economy that were taking place in the Social Policy Association (Verein für Sozialpolitik) (Thomas 1995). In comparison with Marx’s theory of capitalist society, it can be noted how Simmel is inclined to extend Marx’s insights and observations about the domain of industrial relations to society at large. Moreover, Simmel considers the complexion of several phenomena in terms of their patterns and influence on highly differentiated social reality. For example, alienation is one such issue that Simmel examines and works into a theory of the fragmented modern social actor, by taking into consideration Marx’ reification theory (GSG 5: 560–582). Further references allude to Marx’s conception of the conflict between productive forces and the relations of production which become the basis for Simmel’s late ‘life and forms paradigm’ (GSG 16: 181–207). Simmel’s theoretical application was necessary to develop social science beyond the methodological and subject-specific boundaries of the critique of political economy and to constitute sociology as an independent science. Thus, Simmel did not intend to confute Marx’s theory of capitalist society. He scrutinised it, adopting and extending those aspects fitting into his research programme for the foundation of sociology. He expressed criticism towards certain aspects that, in his assessment, did not match the reality of highly differentiated societies. When Simmel started to write The Philosophy of Money around the turn of the century, the status of value theory was one contentious point between the

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schools of economics. Marginalism, among others advocated by Carl Menger, established a concept of subjective economic value that was an alternative to the classical theory of work-value by Ricardo and Marx (Marx 1887; Menger 1871; Ricardo 1817). Contrastingly, Simmel’s interest focused on the two sociological issues related to the development of the modern monetary economy. Firstly, the social requirements necessary for the rise of economic valuation and ultimately of money as a social institution. Secondly, the impact of the rise of the capitalist economy on the modern conduct of life. This inquiry probed the ‘interplay’ (Wechselwirkung) of social action and social structure that permits and characterises the very existence of capitalism. With reference to Marx’s theory of capitalist production, Simmel’s interest, therefore, consisted in constructing ‘a new storey beneath historical materialism’ (GSG 6: 13; Simmel 2004: 54). Marx’s theories of work-value, reification and the relationship between the economic base and cultural superstructure, as well as of the historical development of capitalist society, were addressed, too, as the manifold topics of Simmel’s research in The Philosophy of Money. Yet Simmel embraced neither the paradigm of classical economics nor theories of marginal utility. From the viewpoint of Simmel’s epistemology, in The Philosophy of Money, every domain of positive science has two boundaries. The lower boundary is given by the fact that science necessarily makes certain axiomatic assumptions about its object, though without subjecting these to scrutiny so that such assumptions fall outside of its research scope. The upper boundary of positive science corresponds to the domain where abstract and normative questions relating to its topic are brought into focus but cannot be answered by the same means (GSG 6: 9). Thus, for every scientific topic an epistemology and ethics must be developed to assure the knowledge of related questions that are outside the remit of positive science. Turning to the appraisal of historical materialism, the outstanding matters concern the causal relationship that Marx established between the economic base and society’s cultural superstructure. Marx’s criticism of Hegelian dialectics was grounded on the assumption that all forms and contents of culture emerge from corresponding factors of economic production. The Philosophy of Money was basically to complement this account with proof of the circumstance that economic valuations are for their part the expression of cultural attitudes held by social actors, as Simmel wrote in the self-announcement of his book (GSG 6: 719–723). Max Weber was later to describe the intended aim as revealing how material interests are indeed a basic motive for social action, but that culturally determined attitudes ‘set the switch stands’ that permit their articulation (MWG I/18: 101–121). In other words, this method highlights how all theoretical elements founding the intellectual reality of society on material factors of the economy simultaneously face the necessity of assessing the dependence of these factors on institutionalised cultural attitudes held by social actors. Accordingly, the course of history has to be understood as an ‘interplay’ (Wechselwirkung) of material and ideal factors, so that neither the first nor the second can be considered as the exclusive causes of its development. In the critical review of Stammler’s book on historical materialism, Simmel therefore clarified

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that to understand modern society it was not enough to complete a simple inversion of its paradigm with its monocausal explanatory style which suggests the development of the societal base as a product of its legal superstructure (GSG 1: 363–377). Such assumptions enabled Simmel to legitimise the necessity of developing sociology as a method to enquire into the reciprocal action between the societal base and the superstructure by examining both directions of the causation chain. Therefore, The Philosophy of Money undertook the construction of a ‘new storey beneath historical materialism’. It moved the interplay between society’s economic base and its cultural superstructure to the heart of its investigation. The first product of Simmel’s methodology in The Philosophy of Money was the analysis of the genesis of valuation. Hence, the core of value theory was a study of the increased distance between the subject and the object of social action that was produced by the ongoing process of social differentiation. The subjective valuation of things is treated as reliant on the augmented distance towards the goals of social action. Objects therefore have to be recognised as independent from the will of the subject and thus as having a value (GSG 6: 23 ff.). The basis of valuation can neither be taken as the labour time, which is socially necessary to produce a commodity, nor as its marginal utility because it is function of the ongoing social dynamics which are embedded in economic action. In turn, objective economic values rise thanks to the process of reciprocal acknowledgement between market actors. This establishes the exchangeability of commodities, viz. the comparability between related subjective valuations. The objectifying social mechanism of exchange that compares a single commodity with the plethora of commodities which may potentially be exchanged with it thus transforms subjective valuations into an objective relationship of the reciprocal equivalence between commodities (GSG 6: 52 ff.). As the monetary economy develops to an advanced stage, the mechanism of exchange becomes an autonomous social process that assures automatic reciprocal acknowledgement between subjective valuations. Furthermore, it facilitates the existence of money as the central integrating institution of highly differentiated societies. Accordingly, objective economic valuations become the result of the intermediation of economic action by money. What is a performance of institutionalised social action then appears to be the product of the autonomous action of commodities that takes the shape of the fetishism of commodities (Marx 1887: 61 ff.). Simmel’s analysis in The Philosophy of Money reconstructs the social processes transforming the coveted items of subjective desires into objective economic values by interrelating them within the autonomous value-sphere of the economy. The twofold subjective and objective character of economic valuation is explained by the dynamics of social action, yet without postulating any ontological status for the concept of value. Value is neither a substance which physically crystallises into a commodity by expenditure of the labour force nor merely a subjective–psychic evaluation resulting from the coincidence of offer and demand in marginal utility. Simmel’s sociological theory of economic values thus has clear consequences for positioning The Philosophy of Money towards political economy. On the one hand, this rejects the approach of tracing value

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back to muscle work in a physically monocausal explanatory style (GSG 6: 584). On the other hand, however, it avoids founding objective economic values within an advanced monetary economy on mere subjective value assessments. Simmel regarded economic valuation as founded on the continuity of innumerable social relationships of exchange that are intermediated by money and make the economy an autonomous social sphere. Such social dynamics could not be explained by monocausal, physic or subjectivist psychic heuristic approaches. If it is correct to say that, unlike Marx’s analysis of capitalism in Capital book one, The Philosophy of Money treats the exchange mechanism and not the production process at the centre of the modern economy, then this approach does not have the aim of confuting Marx’ theses on capitalism. The purpose of Simmel’s inquiry is to show that the development of the monetary economy rests on two kinds of social relationships: the relationship of domination within the production process and the relationship of value objectification within the circulation process. If this process fails, as becomes apparent during periods of economic crisis, inflation or deflation, then the valuation process of capital also fails. In a developed market economy, the objective valuation of commodities becomes the precondition for their subjective valuation. This phenomenon is part of the overlapping reification process of modern societies that Marx traced back to the fetishism of commodities (Marx 1887: 61 ff.). In his theory of culture reification, Simmel refines this insight by extending it beyond the economy to the tension-fraught relationship between the social actors and the institutionalised role models that they have to play in the different domains of modern society. The multifaceted objectivation of symbolic social orders makes cultural reification an overall phenomenon that social action has to cope with. Over and above this, however, for Simmel a different societal development has to be taken into account that generalises a further aspect of Marx’s theory of modern capitalism as a structural dimension of culture conflict (GSG 16: 181–207). It concerns the shaping of culture in its entirety. Simmel’s diagnosis about the development of culture in the epoch of the European peace between 1872 and 1914 was sobering, because the creative cycle of culture innovation seemed to him to have come to a substantial standstill. The historical process that time and again produces new lifestyles, new cultural and artistic movements and eventually new social forms substituting older ones seemed to rotate in on itself. In this context of analysis, Simmel pointed out that Marx was the first social scientist to have elaborated a theory of historical development that takes into account the ongoing tension between the social drive for change and the tendency for pure reproduction of established social forms. As Simmel published his 1918 essay on ‘The Conflict in Modern Culture’ in the final year of World War I, he had to bear in mind the pressure of censorship and could not nominate Marx. Nevertheless, he precisely reported his materialist conception of history (GSG 16: 184 f.). Marx’s merit was, for Simmel, to detect the motor for historical change within the economic domain in the shape of a conflict between productive forces and relations of production. Marx’s theory of economic conflict, however, had to be extended to the whole of society. Moreover, it needed to be understood as an

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enquiry into the conflict between productive cultural forces and the established forms of culture in the various qualitative differentiated societal domains. Yet, in the face of the substantial cultural stagnation of modernity, Marx’s forecast of a dialectic evolution towards new relations of production had to be critically assessed. Simmel did not believe that the Russian Revolution of 1917 would provide the expected breakthrough of history and referred instead to the empirical evidence of the changed quality of the culture conflict in Western Europe as the crucial development of modernity. In the different domains of society, the productive forces of culture showed an ongoing tendency to refuse every coagulation in a new culture form (GSG 16: 185). No longer was a struggle of the productive forces to be observed against obsolete forms of production. Rather, their struggle was against every possible form which they could assume, and even against the principle of form itself. Simmel considered this attitude as the central characteristic of the different culture trends that emerged during the period 1872 to 1914. However, one artistic movement that for him incorporated the rebellion of cultural forces against form in the most typical way was Expressionism (GSG 16: 190 f.). Culture conflict pointed out the circumstance that modernity showed no clear development line; rather, it seemed to be trapped in an overall condition of substantial stagnation that was only set under way again thanks to major destructive crises, such as had intervened during World War I. This disturbing novelty showed for Simmel that a postdialectical theory of history was vital in order to understand modernity. A critical assessment of historical materialism (GSG 9: 401–417) therefore constituted a central aspect of Simmel’s reflection in The Problems of the Philosophy of History (GSG 9: 227–419). Historical materialism’s persuasiveness lies in the fact that it aims at reconstructing the unity of history behind its manifold discrepancies by making it plausible for the development of culture and the economy to be intertwined. All social action should be traced back to the human incentive to produce and reproduce immediate life, and for Marx, this meant going back to economic relationships. Historical materialism can thus contribute to counteracting naïve realism by gaining a deeper understanding of all items of reality from the assessment of any notable variation detectable under the influence of economy. However, this is a methodological hypothesis to explain history, which in itself remains an irrational succession of manifold events (GSG 9: 403). The epistemological problem with historical materialism in Simmel’s estimation is still the following: it pretends that economy is not only a means to explain but also the factual reason for the existence of social superstructure and its development. The methodological reduction of the historical complexity of events to the one chain of causation between the economic base and the cultural superstructure therefore surreptitiously becomes hypostatised to a law of nature. The hypostatised approach of historical materialism conflicts with the fact that in history different concurrent chains of causation can be observed. Simmel portends, for instance, the circumstance that in Germany and Italy the emergence of the nation state followed the development of the capitalist economy, whereas in England and France the chain of causation followed the opposite sequence.

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Moreover, as Simmel writes with implicit reference to Weber’s 1904/05 released essays on ‘The Protestant Ethic’, it can be shown that the effort of demonstrating that the rise of Calvinism is a product of the development of economic concurrence clashes with the historical fact that ascetic Protestantism was raised long before the upsurge of the capitalist economy (GSG 9: 405; Weber 1904/1905). In conclusion, historical materialism is to be perceived as a potent tool of explanation, but its claim of realising a sort of naturalistic retracing of events is to be considered erroneous. For Simmel, this is related to the fact that within historical materialism the development of the economy remains unexplained. Rather, it is described only metaphorically, while noticing that some older production forms ‘become obsolete’ or some new forms were ‘already developed’ at a certain moment, but without explaining by what means or why. For Simmel, therefore, Hegel’s metaphysical conception of the self-formation of the idea lives on as the dialectic of the self-unfolding of the economy in history (GSG 9: 408). This approach must be overcome by integrating historical materialism within a reconstruction of the inverse chain of causation that clarifies what influence the cultural orientation of the social actors has on economic behaviour. Historical materialism is right when it claims that considering God’s realm as the final aim of history may be considered as an ideological phantasm. Nevertheless, as a religious ideal within the consciousness of social actors, this can develop a very concrete effect on historical development, so that it falls to sociology, as one of its tasks, to explain how this can happen.

Notes 1 In recent years, the idea of the ‘creativity of social action’ has been conceptualised by Hans Joas from the point of view of a pragmatist theory of society. Cf. Joas (2005). 2 Of course, here could be a starting point for a comparison between Simmel’s and Bourdieu’s conceptions of distinction. Cf. Bourdieu (1984).

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From On Social Differentiation in 1890 (GSG 2: 109–295) until Sociology in 1908 (GSG 11), Simmel developed different strands of sociological theory dealing with issues of modern society. On the one hand, The Philosophy of Money presents a theory of social action with respect to the prolonged causal chains, alienation, intellectualisation and neurasthenia. On the other hand, it provides a theory of social structure as well as of its autonomisation and reification. Simmel’s assessment of modern society culminated in a diagnosis about the conflict of culture, which juxtaposed the creativity of social action and the growing self-referential reproduction of social structure. As Simmel then concluded after World War I in his essay on ‘The Conflict of Modern Culture’ (GSG 16: 181–207), in historical terms modern society did not advance towards major breakthroughs and new paradigms of social interaction. Rather, it showed cyclical fluctuation between stagnation and destructive crises. A considerable challenge for social science was therefore to deliver the theoretical means to understand the dynamics of societal crisis. Hence, the enquiry into the mechanisms that intermediate the ongoing conflict between social action and social structure became of crucial interest for sociology. As we noted, Simmel delivered his first analytical appraisal of the problem by showing how lifestyles allow predesignated processes to mediate between subjective and objective culture, social action and social roles. Equally, he saw how the increased complexity of highly differentiated societies frustrates the integrative potential of lifestyles, thus confronting social actors with the task of achieving the integration of social structure and social action yet without recourse to pre-established guidelines. The inquiries into the social and cultural conflicts of modernity highlighted the difficulty of aligning social action and social structure. Indeed, Simmel treated this as the central theoretical question of sociology (GSG 11: 41). The issue of ‘social validity’ (soziale Geltung), viz. ‘social legitimacy’ (soziale Legitimität) was born. Moreover, this aspect became the core of Simmel’s and later Weber’s sociological research. It was necessary to found sociological epistemology to understand and explain how the two dimensions of social reality come together. This was the only way to trace the modalities that permit social integration within fluid and highly differentiated societies. Simmel followed up the study of this problematic with his sociological theory building efforts that culminated 1908

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in Sociology (GSG 11). The systematic steps of his ‘sociological research programme’ (cf. Schluchter 2015: 9) can be summarised as follows: 1. The methodological dismantling of social ontology. 2. The introduction of the concept of ‘social interplay’ (Soziale Wechselwirkung) as the pivotal analytical category of sociology. 3. The methodological distinction between form and content of social reality. 4. The reconstruction of the mechanisms allowing social groups to persist. 5. The foundation of sociological epistemology on the ‘a priori of social action’. Simmel’s whole enterprise from 1890 to 1908 is dedicated to the achievement of this sociological research programme, even if its accurate formulation was unclear at the beginning. It was developed more as work in progress. Various external incentives were necessary to finalise the programme in the first chapter of Sociology (GSG 11: 13–62). Above all, the polemical exchange about psychologism and the foundation of social science with Émile Durkheim played a central role in enhancing the definitive version of Simmel’s sociological epistemology.

2.1 The dismantling of social ontology In the introduction to The Philosophy of Money, Simmel provided the differentiating classification of sociological epistemology, positive social science and social ethics (GSG 6: 9–14). As a positive science, sociology must reconstruct observable social regularities and establish their typologies. To do so, it relies on axiomatic assumptions about social reality that are not its main focus. They constitute the object of a particular kind of epistemology that approaches specific social science topics as distinct from those of the natural sciences. The results of the sociological enquiry into social reality then point to several questions that cannot be answered from the analytical–descriptive standpoint of a positive science. Rather, they become topics for normative assessment. These matters relate to the domain of social ethics that Simmel treated separately from sociology. He groups them into distinctive studies such as that on the ‘individual law’ (GSG 12: 417–470). In keeping with this differentiation of the assessment of social reality in three parts, namely, as sociological epistemology, positive social science and social ethics, Simmel gives an introduction to epistemological questions in the opening chapter of each of his major sociological works. On Social Differentiation – Simmel’s first sociological work, published in 1890 – makes the decisive contribution to the dismantling of hypostatised categories, which are compiled from societal self-interpretation and become accepted within social science. This applies primarily to the concepts of individual and society, yet also to related notions of ‘national character’ (Volksgeist), ‘collective consciousness’ (Conscience collective) or ‘collective responsibility’ (Kollektivverantwortlichkeit). Such concepts were commonplace within the social sciences in the late 19th century (GSG 2: 115–138). As a positive science, for Simmel, sociology can progress only if it is differentiated from the ongoing self-description of society. The latter is usually formulated in terms of social ontology that endows abstract entities like societies, states, churches, classes or political parties with the character of social actors. Yet, then as now, there is a tendency in the social

Sociological epistemology 47 sciences to uncritically adopt the customary concepts of social ontology by treating them as analytical categories for scientific study. This fosters the reproduction of societal self-interpretation in different guises. Sociology offers analytical and critical knowledge about pre-existing significant contexts which were shaped within social interaction. It is, therefore, a science that operates on pre-existing concepts – Simmel says a ‘science of second power’ – based on a methodological approach that critically dismantles societal self-description and allows a reconstruction of the mechanisms that give rise to social reality. The first step to founding sociology as a positive science emerges as a critique of the hypostatised concept of society. Simmel therefore rejects the methodology of sociological holism that defines social structures or systems as autonomous agencies with the character of subjects. Yet Simmel’s approach in On Social Differentiation is also a criticism of sociological individualism that leads all societal phenomena back to the action of the single individual (GSG 2: 126 f.). In the normative perspective of modern political theory, society’s existence is traced back to the individuals who supposedly participate in the social contract. Yet extending this methodological approach to sociology is problematic insofar as the concept of the individual also constitutes an abstract idea. This notion hypostatises the complex flow of contradictory motives shaping individual life to an ontological category. Furthermore, sociology cannot transfer the assessment of the processes, which found social structure, to a theoretical point in time when they first emerged. Instead, it relies on a reconstruction of the ongoing social praxis that creates, enforces or dismantles social bonds. Accordingly, to grant sociology the dignity of a positive science, Simmel must found its methodology on a paradigm that goes beyond both the classical approaches of social and political theory. The sociological research focus can be based on neither society nor the individual. It has to be redirected on the ‘interplay between social actors’ (Soziale Wechselwirkung) that is located between the two ontological extremes of social reality. The unity of the research object (Gegenstand) in social science must be considered as the result of the dynamic relationship between its parts (GSG 2: 129). Society is treated as the sum of reciprocal actions among individuals and social groups, so that sociology’s task becomes to assess their dynamic regularities and establish the typologies of their recurring forms. Accordingly, not every social interaction becomes a matter for sociology, which incorporates only the interrelations shown to persist beyond the participation of the single individuals concerned. Simmel’s early approach to establishing sociology as a positive science allows for sketching out a typology of social forms. Moreover, it seems primarily to give a contribution on the theory of social structure. Nevertheless, the third chapter of On Social Differentiation presents an analysis of the parallel differentiation processes of the social group and the individual personality (GSG 2: 169 ff.). Simmel can show that social agency, too, is the result of an interplay between the diverse facets of personality related to the various social circles in which the individual participates (GSG 2: 237 ff.). This epistemological approach, which combines differentiation and individualisation theory, gives scope for the dismantling of the

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customary ontological concepts of individual and society in terms of relations of reciprocal action (Wechselwirkungsbeziehungen) by linking these to the overarching process of social differentiation. The task of differentiating sociology from societal self-interpretation requires a methodologically driven affinity for the dismantling of the ontological and normative outcomes of natural language, so that these cannot be uncritically appropriated in social science. Simmel expresses this point of view in his 1896 review of Stammler’s book on historical materialism (GSG 1: 363–377). Theoretical assumptions about the objective validity of normative principles, which are typical for ethics or jurisprudence, cannot be adopted in sociology. This discipline must explain the social mechanisms whereby behavioural regularities are endowed with the character of obligation. Accordingly, sociology must develop a methodology to explain how social action matches social structure to clarify how social actors become the bearers (Träger) of social regularities that crystallise into lasting social forms. This approach is an explicit criticism of any attempt to found sociology on the axiomatic assumption of ‘social emergence’ that postulates the existence of self-sufficient social structures, because they are regarded as such in the pre-scientific social ontology. Even if sociology observes the autonomisation of social structures, it cannot assume their duration as a matter of course. Its focus must be to shed light on the ways and mechanisms in which this process develops. Simmel’s critique of natural language is a pivotal element for his research programme to establish social science beyond the ontologism and normativism of societal self-interpretation. The advantages of the deontologisation and the normative neutralisation of sociological categories become clear by comparing Simmel’s approach with the systematisation of the grounding concepts of sociology in Tönnies’ Community and Society (1887). The forms of social structure and the typologies of individuality, which characterise premodern and modern societies, become variations of the interplay between the respective elements in more or less differentiated social environments. Thus, it becomes scarcely possible to force sociological categories into a relationship of normative opposition between good and evil, so that they cannot so easily mutate into the object of political ideologies, as happened with Tönnies’ substantial concepts of community and society in the 1920s. By taking into account the dynamic and relational aspect of social reality, Simmel’s sociology makes the processes of ‘reciprocal action’ (Soziale Wechselwirkung) its object instead of adopting reified ontological concepts from ongoing social self-description. Sociology can trace back the normative orders of society to their founding social relationships and position them on a development axis that ranges from undifferentiated to highly differentiated social groups. On Social Differentiation adopts a methodological approach of dismantling the customary substantial sociological categories into relational concepts. This dimension of Simmel’s research programme eventually flows into the foundation of sociology based on the processual concept of ‘sociation’ (Vergesellschaftung) which characterises Sociology in 1908 (GSG 11). Different methodological assumptions were called for to fulfil this aim, which we examine below.

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2.2 The object of sociology In 1894, Simmel started to develop the epistemological fundamentals for his sociological research programme. He published the German essay on ‘The Problem of Sociology’ (GSG 5: 52–61). To publicise his programmatic intent, Simmel set about circulating translations of his study concerning the aims of sociology. The French translation even appeared two months earlier than the German essay of 1894 (GSG 19: 27–35). The English translation appeared in 1895 (GSG 18: 27–37), while the Italian version included some important extensions and was released in 1899 (GSG 19: 107–116). Simmel carried on working on the text until 1908, when he published a definitive version as the first chapter of Sociology (GSG 11: 13–41; Simmel 2009: 19–40). Simmel’s main problem with the early sociology was that, for obvious historical reasons which were associated with the rise of the social question during the 19th century, the forces of society became the central interest for all humanities disciplines. Nonetheless, this situation no longer permitted others clearly to determine the precise object of social science. The questions that once concerned philosophical anthropology, ethics and political theory were now crucial to sociology. This development was largely due to the epistemological triumph of Darwin’s concept of the evolution of species (Darwin 1859), so that the social sciences searched for the causes of social phenomena throughout the history of humanity as a biological species. The related holistic approach, which traced back single issues to the development of humanity as a whole, offered a highly efficient method of explanation. Yet, it did not allow for the development of an independent social science with a specific study focus. Sociology merely became a new name for the humanities in general. There was no methodology available to distinguish between the objective results of research and speculation, so that no demarcation could be established between social science and societal self-interpretation. Considering the historical genesis of sociology, the project of grounding it as a positive science, instead of simply hypostatising a research method to a science, required a definition of sociology in a narrower sense. For Simmel, this was only possible by determining what the object (Gegenstand) of sociology is (GSG 5: 53). Every science rests on a process of abstraction, selecting from the totality of the world those aspects that are relevant from the point of view of a specific perspective of inquiry (GSG 11: 16). An analysis of the concept of society drawing through social reality a distinction between its content and its form (Inhalt und Form) allows Simmel to achieve the goal of founding sociology as a science. By such means, he applies to social science’s manifold material the primary distinction of modern epistemology after the Copernican turn such as Kant had formulated it in his Critique of Pure Reason (Kant 1998; Kuhn 2003). Yet to side-step every quarrel about substantial categorial definitions, Simmel chose the widest possible concept of society as the starting point for his analysis. In other words, he considers society to exist wherever more individuals engage in ‘reciprocal action’ (Wechselwirkung) (GSG 11: 17 f.). As soon as a ‘being together’, ‘for’, or ‘against each other’ takes place, human beings influence one another. Thus, empirical unities of reciprocal action arise

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from the simultaneity of social actors who randomly meet as the bearers of disparate urges and purposes. Here, Simmel generalises about the analysis of the rise of money as a social institution, which he had formulated already in 1889 in his early study titled ‘The Psychology of Money’ (GSG 2: 49–65), by extending it to the multiplicity of social interaction forms. Sociology’s specific sphere of study is settled by describing the most diverse unities of reciprocal action, which are present in society, as processes of ‘sociation’ (Vergesellschaftungsprozesse). Hence, the cornerstone for relational sociology is established. From a common promenade to the work procedures of a ministerial bureaucracy, sociation can have widely divergent degrees of aggregation. However, all of them – from the simplest to the most meticulously regulated forms of social interaction – can be assessed as modalities of sociation. The same number of individuals could thus be ‘more or less society’, depending on the quantity of sociation processes which they mutually entertain (GSG 11: 24). The results of the theory of social differentiation can thus be translated into Simmel’s sociological research programme: both undifferentiated as well as highly differentiated social groups can be assessed as constellations of different ‘forms of sociation’ (Formen der Vergesellschaftung). To delimitate the research field of sociology to the ‘specific societal moment’ of social reality, the forms assumed by the processes of sociation must remain at the forefront of analysis (GSG 7: 54). Sociology must assess the typologies of observable empirical unities of reciprocal social action, i.e. of the recurring forms of sociation. The methodological operation of formal sociology is carried out by setting aside all the interests and contents, which are put into effect through and by virtue of sociation processes, and by exclusively concentrating on the form of such processes. The manifold interests, drives and purposes of social action, i.e. its entire motivational sphere, must be considered as the content matter of social reality. This is not yet sociation, and nor does it belong to the field of sociology. Moreover, the motivational sphere of social action establishes the body and material of social reality only if the random simultaneity of social actors assumes specific forms of interconnection, solidarity or conflict, which can last and reproduce themselves. Consequently, sociology has to enucleate the regularities of social interaction by assessing their forms independently of the manifold and diverse interests, drives and purposes of the actors. The forms of sociation constitute the ‘switch stands’ that permit the articulation and fulfilment of the material interests of social action in stable and reproducible terms, and thus constitute the research domain of sociology (GSG 11: 19). Empirically, social reality appears in a state of amalgamation between social forms and contents. However, analytically the two dimensions must be distinguished from each other. Nevertheless, the question arises as to whether this approach leads simply to theoretical abstraction. Moreover, if this is not the case, then what are the criteria which objectively legitimate the typological assessment of social forms? Two conditions must be verified on the factual level to grant social forms an objective character. Indeed, sociology isolates these within social reality. The same forms of sociation must be observable in the most diverse material contexts of social interaction by appearing in connection with highly

Sociological epistemology 51 differentiated content as well as purposes of social action (GSG 7: 54). The same interest is to be detected in extremely disparate forms of sociation, thus ensuring that the social form remains independent of any particular motivation settings of social interaction (GSG 11: 20 f.). If such conditions can be observed, this serves as a validation for the objectivity of typologically assessed social forms. Identical economic interests, for instance, can be pursued by market competition, in a planned economy or within the traditional terms of solidarity. Similarly, relations based on superiority and subordination can be found in armies and political parties as well as in companies, churches or families. In other words, the respective sociation forms can be considered independently of the specific interests and goals, which they serve, as vehicles of fulfilment in a specific empirical setting. Furthermore, a process of autonomisation of social forms can be observed. After an initial emergent phase, such forms attain an objective status and develop independently of the motivations that induce social actors to relate to each other with these means. In the following chapters, we will show how Simmel’s sociological epistemology deals with issues of emergence, reproduction and validity or the legitimation of social forms. Sociology inquiries into concrete historical phenomena that cannot be subsumed under universal laws in the same manner as the laws of natural sciences foresee, which are considered (with the exception of relativity theory) as being valid in every space and time point. So, we can assume that wherever Newton was or somebody else will be on earth the apple falls on his head and not vice versa. Conversely, the topics of sociology must be treated as ‘historical individualities’ in the sense of Weber’s essay on the objectivity of the social sciences (Weber 1988: 185–190). Nevertheless, within the actual historical context of social reality an analytical distinction can be made between the motivational sphere and forms of social action coordination that lead to the compilation of a systematic typology of social action. This assumption marks the starting point for Simmel’s sociological research programme. To explain the approach, he employs the analogy of the study of physical reality in geometry that exclusively concentrates on the spatial form of material objects. However, sociological formalism uses more clearly defined spatiotemporal limits than the geometrical approach because sociology necessarily reconstructs the empirical actuality of social phenomena in their historical and cultural variations (GSG 11: 25). Typological abstraction is a familiar technique for the historical sciences. The modern entrepreneur, the industrial worker, the French Revolution, industrialisation and so forth are as many concepts that describe empirical historical reality in typological terms. As a positive science, sociology’s approach would be no different: it releases the specific societal aspect, that is, the sociation processes, from the totality of the historical material and regroups them in typologies (GSG 7: 57). In this respect, Simmel devises a conception avant la lettre of ‘sociological ideal types’ that reveals important similarities and differences with Weber’s formulation of this methodology (Weber 1988: 190 f.). Simmel asserts that sociology’s first foray into assessing social reality must be a diachronic study. Reconstructing the temporal development axis of social phenomena is a precursor to understanding

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the nature of processes that establish social forms. The formal characteristics of the single historical individualities can thus be elaborated typologically. This leads onto the second, comparative approach: namely, an assessment of the development histories of different social phenomena. Inductive analysis is used here to determine which social constellations arise in the distinctive spatial and temporal settings and the nature of their similarities and differences. This approach nudges sociological theory building in the direction of ‘societal–systematic analysis’; moreover, it differentiates it from ‘societal–historic’ based paradigms. The aim of founding sociology as a positive science is therefore to establish a corpus of analytical categories that are adapted to examining different historical and cultural fields of social reality. A crucial methodological step transposes sociological theory from an historical–typological to a formal–typological analysis. This reminds us of the relationship between Weber’s religious–sociological studies and his ideal–typical theory building for the texts that Marianne Weber collected posthumously in the volume Economy and Society (Schluchter 1989). In contrast to Weber, however, Simmel decidedly embraces the formal–typological, theory building research slant. Furthermore, he views historical–typological inquiries as its preparatory step. Yet for Simmel as well as for Weber, the typologies of sociation forms that sociology assesses remain analytical categories for examining social reality and have the heuristic character of sociological ideal types (GSG 11: 28). Conventional social sciences work by distinguishing among the various subject fields of social reality such as economics, political or administrative sciences, the specific questions of which are allocated in terms of their content. Sociology asserts its competence to examine the reality of society in general. Therefore, in Simmel’s view, it must exclusively concentrate on the forms of sociation. Otherwise, the discipline merely becomes a collective label for the social sciences. Sociology is distinct from the other social sciences not because of its specific content but due to its method that epitomises the nature of its investigations. Society can be considered as the sum of the acting individuals, as a hypostatised ontological entity or as the totality of the relationships that permit individuals to become part of a society, i.e. what Simmel calls the ‘society sensu strictissimo’ (GSG 11: 23). Against the objection that society as a whole has to be considered the cause of all the single forms of sociation, Simmel argues that society of course exists independently from the single sociation processes and survives beyond their failure. However, it would not survive their ultimate breakdown. The hypostatised concept of society does not subsist empirically. Rather, it must be considered as a metaphor to describe the multitude of sociation processes taking place within certain spatiotemporal limits. In practice, the various forms of sociation constituting social reality represent what is abstractly called society. Sociology’s mission is to treat such forms as its focus of research (GSG 7: 55). Similar to biology, which evolved as a discipline from a speculative observation of life to the development of cellular and molecular biology, sociology must proceed towards the observation of the mechanisms that constitute social reality. Simmel’s early research programme is a blueprint to devise a sociology of social forms which highlights how sociation functions establish what natural

Sociological epistemology 53 language calls society (GSG 7: 61). The object of sociology is determined based on a clearly defined methodology, so that an autonomous science of society can emerge and not merely an approach to the disparate societal factors of phenomena within the boundaries of other sciences. Simmel’s 1894 preliminary research programme clearly addresses social structure. His formal sociology seems to pursue a line of enquiry that closely aligns with Durkheim’s sociology of social facts which he introduced in Les règles de la methode sociologique (Durkheim 1895a/2014). This apparent similarity is among the reasons for the two contemporaries’ collaboration on L’Année Sociologique (Rammstedt 1998). Nevertheless, the question arises whether Simmel’s early research scheme was simple structural sociology that excluded the matter of social action and its motivational sphere from inquiry. These elements were to form a central aspect of Weber’s sociological methodology in the ‘sociological basic concept’ (Soziologische Grundbegriffe) (Weber 1921/2013: 147 ff.). Until 1908, the further refinement of Simmel’s sociology shows that he developed a multilevel sociological research programme that also incorporated the dimensions of social action and social validity. Yet he provided a ‘formal theory’ of the interplay of social action and social structure, namely, a sociological theory of social validity. This maintained the analytical approach of differentiating between the form and content of social reality. The theory building process that was necessary to achieve this goal relied on different steps. The first step was Simmel’s examination of the social mechanisms that permit the selfpreservation of social groups. Thereby he started to distance his work from purely structural sociology. Further confirmation of this is that the essay, which appeared in French translation as ‘Comment les formes sociales se maintiennent’ (GSG 19: 66–106), was the underlying reason for the breakdown of cooperation between Durkheim and Simmel in 1898.

2.3 Enquiry into social mechanisms Initially, Simmel developed his enquiry into social mechanisms for the study that he wrote for the first issue of L’Année Sociologique in 1898 (GSG 19: 66–106). Durkheim intervened in the text by shortening it and editing some passages that seemed to him problematic because they were too strongly related to the ongoing polemical debate about the Dreyfus Affair in France (Rammstedt 1998). As a consequence, that same year Simmel decided to publish the complete original text in German (GSG 7: 311–372) and English translation (GSG 18: 83–140). In 1908, the study ‘Die Selbsterhaltung der sozialen Gruppe’, which included three additional excursus, became the eighth chapter of Soziologie (GSG 11: 556–686). Simmel’s idea of developing social science based on the broadest possible concept of society that does not correspond to the idea of the nation state postulated by methodological nationalism meant suggesting that society is present wherever a number of social actors come into ‘reciprocal action’ (Wechselwirkung) (GSG 7: 313). Yet sociology must motivate methodologically, why it can refer to unities of social action or social forms over and above the existence of their individual elements. The self-preservation of the human person and of the social group are two

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separate issues. The latter cannot be simply traced back to the former. On the one hand, social actors experience social phenomena as the expression of an impersonal entity that confronts them as objective reality. On the other hand, for Simmel, evidently social relationships can only exist if they are present in the mind of the involved social actors. Otherwise, their existence must be postulated in terms of social ontology. This is the basic assumption of his sociological epistemology: social formations do not exist per se, but only as long as the social actors enforce them. Hence, in the context of a study on social mechanisms, the pivotal question remains the nature of the correlation between the objective logic of social forms and the subjective logic of their bearers. Sociology must explain in terms of these premises how the ‘supra-individual’ (überindividuell) character of social formations, that is, their objectivity and autonomy, are possible. Accordingly, based on the methodological framework of formal sociology and given the established social forms in a particular domain, what needs to be explained is how such forms are preserved and maintained. Social structures are not simply established in phases of social effervescence and then reproduced by rituals as Durkheim assumes. Instead, they are the product of a continuous process of enforcement and actualisation which sociology must reconstruct. Hence, Simmel moves on a decisive step from a static conception of sociology as a science of social statuses to a dynamic sociology of social processes. Society is seen primarily as fluid material that under certain conditions and within specific spatiotemporal boundaries consolidates social structures whose validity must later be constantly reinforced by social action. Consequently, to understand the self-preservation of the macrosocial formations, sociology has to decompose them analytically in their dynamic components by reconstructing the microsocial processes that grant the everyday empirical reproduction of the social forms. The study on ‘The Persistence of Social Groups’ confronts the reader with the full gamut of comparative historical knowledge and the analytical creativity that formal sociology can mobilise by developing a complex morphology of social self-preservation (GSG 18: 83–140). There is no pretence to an exhaustive analysis. Rather, the most relevant insights are highlighted that the methodology of formal sociology attains by abstracting the forms of sociation that grant the persistence of social groups from the complexity of social reality (GSG 7: 371). The study is characterised by its specific research objective: Simmel understands his research programme as an enquiry into the mechanisms which assure the persistence of social formations through the critical transition phases of their subsistence. ‘Social reciprocal action’ (soziale Wechselwirkung) not only occurs simultaneously, or ‘within space’, but also as a relationship between social actors who become the bearers of social forms at different points in time. The comparison between the spatial and the temporal orders of the social group, however, reveals that the reciprocal action in space is consistent, whereas for the temporal dimension there is only one causal direction of influence from past to present. Consequently, the temporal unity of social formations needs to be strengthened by different processes of institutionalisation. Simmel’s morphology of the mechanisms that restore the structurally absent temporal continuity of social groups is

Sociological epistemology 55 articulated in a certain number of types from less to more complex. Moreover, it takes into account the temporal, spatial and social aspects of the question summarised as the persistence of social groups (GSG 7: 317 ff.). The simplest way for social formations to ensure their persistence over time is to rely vicariously on spatial consistence. The spatial boundaries of social groups are always highly sensitive and have crucial symbolic meaning that becomes the object of rituals, thus enforcing their legitimacy. To some extent, this is also the reason for the rise of social ontology. The appearance of a social formation is hypostatised to a persistent entity, occupying a clearly identified social space. At the same time, it obscures the fact that its members are constantly changing. Consequently, space sociology that looks into the spatiality, locality and territoriality of social forms becomes a central concern for Simmel’s research programme (GSG 11: 687–790). The spatiality of social formations is closely associated with their intertwining with the physiological reproduction of human groups in the context of families and clans. Kinship structures allow for the relative cohesion of members from different generations and so assure the persistence of the social group. This reproductive mechanism is most effective when closely connected with territorial sedentariness. However, it also emerges in the diaspora, as Simmel shows with reference to the history of the Jewish people. In a more indirect way, the physiological cohesion of social groups is assured by co-opting external individuals who become full members of the social group through a process of initiation and training. This situation also characterises the reproduction of formal organisations where personal relationships are still decisive for recruitment, such as churches, political parties, schools of thought and, to some extent, modern universities. The reason for the success of all these reproduction mechanisms lies in the highly gradual nature of their procedures, or in other words their slow reactive characteristics, which decelerate the processes leading to full membership in the social group. On the one hand, formally regulated physiological reproduction assures that the senior members of the group always form the majority compared with newcomers by gradually substituting lost members for new ones and so giving the appearance of group identity and continuity. A steady and gradual turnover is therefore to be considered as the most efficient social mechanism underpinning social formations in critical transition phases. Where direct physiological reproduction in formal organisations is excluded by a matter of rule, as is the case e.g. for the catholic clergy and also for bureaucracy and academia, the decelerating pace of turnover processes means longer apprenticeships for the next generation of decision-makers. Hence, co-opting becomes a time-shifted procedure. The slower the tempo of change, the stronger the social group’s capacity to maintain its form, even if slowly but surely its members and contents inevitably become completely different. Migration phenomena seriously undermine the steady and gradual nature of these reproduction strategies by accelerating the turnover and profoundly influencing the self-representation of the social host groups. Generally, however, the reproduction issue is the most urgent problem for every social group. This is particularly true if the group’s existence is related to

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the leadership of a single person as is the case for kings, prophets, demagogues or party leaders (GSG 7: 322 f.). In this respect, Simmel’s analysis of leadership closely resembles Weber’s typology of the routine aspect of charisma (MWG I/22–4: 481–535; Weber 1978: 1121 ff.). If a single person is made the exclusive holder of public power as, for instance, was the case for the medieval German emperor, his passing away seriously compromises the persistence of the political body. Only the institutionalisation and so objectivation of the king’s function (based on the formula that ‘the king cannot die’) makes the king’s persona a simple bearer of an objective social form. On this structural basis, initially the continuity of the social group can be associated with the physiological reproduction of the reigning family. The next step in the development depends on providing impersonal bearers for the continuity of the social group by relating the dignity of command to the possession of objects that embody the sacred tradition of power, like crowns, sceptres and similar things. The strength emitting from such impersonal symbols of the group’s endurance, even if these are materially absent, can be illustrated with reference to the aftermath of the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans. On the one hand, the nostalgia for the lost symbols of national and religious affiliation allowed the Jewish people to hold together and resist the power of assimilation in the diaspora. On the other hand, it permitted the disentanglement of Pauline Christianity from the Jewish religion and its spread throughout the Roman Empire. Alternatively, analysis of the medieval institution of the Mortmain, thus making the property of religious organisations and corporations indivisible and inalienable to grant their survival for generations of deacons and masters, may serve to illustrate the aggregate power of immaterial entities and their importance for the reproduction of social groups (GSG 7: 326 ff.). Another sort of mechanism that enforces the persistence of social groups more directly addresses the issue of the essential intertwining between social action and social structure. The behavioural mechanism of honour provides the classic example (GSG 7: 330 ff.). For Simmel, morality, honour and criminal law represent three different degrees of social regulation based on a different logic. Morality rests on personal self-consciousness discriminating between actions to be adopted or rejected. By contrast, criminal law operates through external constraint. Honour ranks in between these extremes because it commences with the spontaneous intent of the social actor, so requiring him to defend his identity and position. However, in doing so the actor immediately protects the integrity of the entire social circle that he belongs to as a member. By requiring individuals to preserve their honour, the social group grants itself the expedient behaviour of its members. The individual is urged on a subjective basis to do what in the end is good for the perpetuation of the social group. Honour has no age or gender limitation because it marks an individual’s membership to a specific social circle that is sanctioned by specific rules. Accordingly, there is the honour of the child, husband and wife, officer and professor, a Member of Parliament and footballer and, of course, a gangster and prostitute whatever their gender and sexual orientation. The social group dimension nonetheless presents a major obstacle for honour to be treated as a mechanism to grant cohesion, so the feeling of honour may be seen

Sociological epistemology 57 as a typical phenomenon for small or midsized social circles. The ethical attitudes of fidelity and gratitude play a similar role to facilitate and confirm microsocial relations, as Simmel describes in Sociology (GSG 11: 652–670). Yet wider social groups also deserve the creation of institutions to grant their continued existence (GSG 7: 333 ff.). At the outset, the group’s organs are a product of the advanced division of labour and step between the individual social actors as intermediaries for their reciprocal action. The emergence of work-sharing social organisations has the advantage of making social groups more flexible, so enforcing their preservation. Moreover, institutionalisation helps to offer conciliation in situations of conflict and makes dispassionate behaviour, objectivity and scientific knowledge the means of governance. However, institutions gradually become autonomous formations, which constitute the social structure that holds groups together, yet by making the social actors subservient to their requirements. The autonomisation process of social institutions characterises all highly differentiated social groups and conceals the risk of generating conflict between the preservation of the group as a whole and its institutional bodies. In this respect, Simmel delivers one of the first classical critiques of modern bureaucratisation processes that he identifies in the administrative machinery of government, justice and the military (GSG 7: 345 ff.). In other respects, the persistence of highly differentiated societies is strictly related to a particular social dynamics that offers an incentive for the rise, autonomisation and fall of social institutions. To understand the life cycles of social structures, Simmel subjects social groups as a whole to a functional examination (GSG 7: 351 f.). This final investigation shows the outcome of what formal sociology can contribute on a macro-sociological level of analysis, without reintroducing the ontological category of society. In typological terms, for Simmel, social groups tend to adopt two opposing strategies to cope with the issue of institutional change: namely, a profoundly rigid approach or one with the greatest degree of flexibility. Any sort of institutional rigidity must be classified as a sign of weakening social energies that compel social groups to restrict the morphological variations that could compromise their internal balance of power. By contrast, an important social dynamics and significant structural articulation in different social classes is a sign of stronger resilience. Historically, as shown by the examples of the Sinti, the Roma and the Jews, the highest tendency for social groups to adaptation is observed in the case of so-called pariah peoples in Weber’s sense (GSG 7: 357; MWG I/22–2: 255–258). Yet, certain adaptive skills notably characterise the middle classes, whose flexibility implies that their members are to some extent adapted to the challenges of upward as well as downward social mobility. The circulation between social positions and the rapid transformation of social structures are an essential condition for maintaining highly differentiated social groups which cannot rest on predesignated harmony between social actors’ capabilities and social positions (GSG 7: 362). The conflicted divergence between the creativity of social action and the logic of the social structure is, therefore, to be seen as an essential problem for the existence of modern complex societies.

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According to Simmel, a constant circulation flow between the various social classes is a decisive factor for the preservation of highly differentiated societies. Only adequate social dynamics can successfully and repeatedly bring together the action creativity and structure logic, so making the rhythmic relationship between societal change and social mobility a pivotal mechanism of societal integration. Yet, the harmonisation between social action and social structure in complex societies, allowing for the rapprochement of individuals and social positions, remains an exceptional case and therefore constitutes a central problem for sociological theory. The preservation of social groups demands the flexibility and change of their social forms which can assume different empirical shapes depending on the specific degree of stratification and social mobility in a society. Furthermore, the variability of the social groups maintains a specific relationship to the particular degree of division of labour that generates group members whose skills are more or less adapted to the requirements of social differentiation. If the middle classes therefore seem more adaptable to modern societal change than the more rigid status of the gentry or the working class, then the convergence issue of social action and social structure logics applies to society at large. The variability of living conditions and advanced social differentiation in modern societies is compensated for through the reciprocal action of their temporal and spatial dynamics, which hold together the social groups. This fluctuating relationship can be seen as the widest possible mechanism of social persistence. There is complementarity between the division of labour and flexibility of social groups. Highly variable living conditions such as those that characterise the modern middle classes and permanently lead to a risk of downward social mobility can contribute to destabilising phenomena and uproot lives in modern metropoles. Yet under certain conditions, the division of labour, which makes individual social actors much more dependent on each other in modern societies, has the potential to absorb this dynamic. Consequently, a precarious equilibrium is often associated with the potential for social conflicts. The outcome of the rhythmic change between peace and conflict among different elements of the social group turns out to be a robust mechanism of societal preservation. The antagonisms between elements of a social group and mainly class struggles and market competition emerge as typical modern social phenomena. These have to be seen as social mechanisms that permit the maintenance of the social group under particular conditions. Sociology’s role is to determine such conditions empirically (GSG 7: 369). This explains the development of significant conflict sociology within the body of formal sociology. Simmel presented these ideas in different preprints and in the fourth chapter of his 1908 Sociology as well as in a prior English translation of 1904 (GSG 11: 284–382; GSG 18: 288–354). Simmel’s bid to describe the possible reciprocal integration between social variability and social differentiation concludes his enquiry into social mechanisms. Within the analytical framework of formal sociology, the unity of society as a whole is given by many different social mechanisms of persistence, cooperating and competing with each other, so that no single line of enquiry can be hypostasised and elevated to the rank of a decisive factor. Yet, the major

Sociological epistemology 59 theoretical problem emerging from Simmel’s analysis of social mechanisms is the conflict-fraught interplay between the stability of social structure and the creativity of social action. Thanks to a decennial process of sociological theory building, Simmel eventually provided an answer to the question. His pivotal argument in sociological epistemology was outlined in the first chapter of Sociology in 1908, namely in the excursus on ‘How Is Society Possible’ (GSG 11: 42–61) that was also circulated in English translation in 1910 (GSG 18: 498–518).

2.4 Coordinating social structure and social action or ‘social validity’ The central concept of Simmel’s sociology is ‘sociation’ (Vergesellschaftung), and this is defined as a process of ‘reciprocal social action’ (Soziale Wechselwirkung) that relates two or more actors to each other and takes place in the most manifold forms (GSG 11: 19). Therefore, Simmel’s opus magnum, published in 1908, is titled Sociology. Inquiries into the Forms of Sociation (Soziologie. Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung) (GSG 11; Simmel 2009). The focus is an investigation of the different domains of social reality and a presentation of a typological reconstruction of the social forms that establish their core. Yet, the unique aspect of Simmel’s sociology is its research programme’s specific perspective. Traditional sociology concentrates on macrosocial formations, which already have the status of autonomous structures, so that societal self-interpretation reifies them to ontological entities. Macrosocial organs and systems like states, churches, parties, unions, statuses or classes, however, constitute neither the whole nor the most specific component of social reality. Countless microsocial, apparently negligible forms of relationship and interactions persist between social actors, which make the existence of macrosocial formations possible. Using a metaphorical analogy with modern biology, Simmel points out in this regard that sociology deserves more than a mere descriptive morphology of the organs of society. Indeed, sociology must enquire into the ‘societal connecting tissues’ holding macrosocial formations together and so preventing society from breaking apart into a multiplicity of discontinuous systems (GSG 11: 33). This methodological perspective tackles the problem that generally the microsocial formations are not already consolidated into supra-individual formations visible to the naked eye. Rather, they call for a distinct methodological approach. Conversely, the inquiry into such formations reveals society ‘in status nascens’, that is, in its day-to-day building process whereby sociation ties are constantly established, loosened and substituted by new ones (ibid.). Simmel’s sociological approach makes this processual moment of sociation its central research focus. The historical beginnings of the social formations are not the main point of interest, but rather the relentless dynamics producing the fine elements of sociation which grant the considerable flexibility of highly differentiated societies. Simmel’s sociological epistemology answers the question of how coordination is possible between social structure and social action by outlining different consecutive methodological steps. Firstly, it distinguishes between the matter and

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form of social reality by filtering out of the manifold social phenomena the persistent forms of sociation and so establishing their typology. Formal sociology then establishes a morphology of the preservation mechanisms of social groups by showing how social forms reproduce themselves. Subsequently, by founding sociology on a definite processual conception of sociation, Simmel traces back macrosocial formations to the microsocial strands of sociation by permitting their everyday existence. Finally, this analytical procedure leads formal sociology to formulate a further and decisive question. This question characterises the supplementary sections of Simmel’s Sociology of 1908, the ‘excurses’ that he wrote to bring together in a coherent treatise the many sociological studies that he had published since 1898. Sociology must examine the ‘conditions of the possibility’ of sociation that allow the social actors to become the bearers of the macrosocial formations by ‘holding in their hands’ the fine strands of sociation, which they entertain in the most diverse social circles. The crucial requirement for a theoretical account of how social action and social structure can converge empirically, or of the matter of ‘social validity’, thus leads to the heart of sociological epistemology. Simmel gives an exposition of this in his excursus in Sociology on ‘How Is Society Possible?’ (GSG 11: 42–61; English: GSG 18: 498–518). This text is the final product and the most significant effort of theoretical synthesis in Simmel’s whole sociological research programme. It provides the basis for his entire subsequent work on sociology of culture and sociological anthropology that the secondary literature usually misconstrues as turning away from sociology. In the excursus, the various themes are intertwined of parallel social differentiation of the social group and personality, the role of social actors as crossing points of social circles and the function of social action creativity for the subsistence of social structure. However, Simmel remains true to his strict formal analysis, which places in parentheses the motivation sphere of social action and omits it from the sociological analysis of reality. One could argue here that Simmel fails to compile a sociological theory of validity, or at least of the legitimation of macrosocial formations through social action. In contrast to Weber’s understanding of sociology, formal sociology does not concentrate on the motivational sphere of social action (Weber 1921/2013). However, this observation is misleading. The uniqueness of Simmel’s sociological epistemology lies precisely in its grounding a theory of validity by maintaining the methodological focus of sociology exclusively on the forms of sociation and by setting aside the manifold motivations and goals that influence social action. In this way, sociological methodology responds to the question concerning the convergence of social action and social structure by going beyond the conventional approach of moral sociology which concentrates on the motivational sphere of social action. By contrast, Simmel poses the question in strict epistemological terms about the ‘conditions of possibility’ that allow the social actors to become bearers of their social relationships. This methodological approach differentiates Simmel’s sociological research programme from those of Durkheim and Weber because it represents a critical extension of Kant’s epistemology – and not an application of Kantian moral philosophy to the domain of society. The histories of sociology with a ‘theoretical

Sociological epistemology 61 purpose’ do not give an assessment of Simmel’s research programme because of their chief assumption that a science of society is only possible as moral sociology (Cf. Schluchter 2015). However, in terms of sociological epistemology, the focus of inquiry is not on the motivational sphere of social action, but on the forms of consciousness granting the existence of the specific domain of experience, which is called society. Simmel’s approach thus provides an important alternative to the classical sociological theories of validity, by applying mutatis mutandis Kant’s questioning on ‘how is nature possible’ to the domain of society. Firstly, the persistence of macrosocial formations is traced back to the microsocial formations that make them possible. In a second step, these minor forms of reciprocal action are explained in terms of their empirical validity by determining the ‘forms of consciousness’ (Bewusstseinsformen) that permit the social actors to become bearers of the multiplicity of social relationships which they keep in different societal domains. The epistemological reason for excluding from the inquiry the specific individual or collective motivations, goals or value orientations that accompany the sociation process is that they are too variable to explain the persistence of the social forms. This approach to the analysis of social reality is in line with Kant’s epistemological method of setting aside everything that is contingent to shed light on the conditions of existence of the phenomena that have to be explained. The methodological problem here is that the object of sociology is characterised by particularities that make a simple extension of Kant’s approach impossible and demand a distinct foundation of sociological epistemology. The aim of Simmel’s sociological epistemology is to trace the ‘categories of consciousness’ that allow for the convergence of social action and social structure in the everyday praxis of social actors. This methodological approach could be easily misunderstood as a research programme that refers social relationships back to individual psychology. Indeed, this was precisely Durkheim’s objection to Simmel’s formal sociology. In the first chapter of Sociology, however, Simmel decisively argues against all attempts to gain scientific knowledge about social reality through individual psychology, thus negating the possibility of founding social and historical sciences on a hermeneutics of mental processes (GSG 11: 35 f.). This part of his argument has to be seen as critical positioning towards the acquiescence on this point with regard to the foundation of a ‘science of society and history’ by Dilthey, his teacher and adversary at Berlin University (Dilthey 1883). For Simmel, all societal processes indeed take place ‘in the mind’ of the social actors, thus intertwining their motivations and goals in social action. If this were not the case, society would look like a lifeless puppet show. All the same, the analytical perspective of sociological epistemology is not compelled to concentrate on the psychological layer of the motivation of social action. Sociology aims not at discovering the rules of the psychological processes accompanying social interaction, but rather at seizing the formal configurations of consciousness which characterise the knowledge of being involved in social relationships: a consciousness that allows social actors to become and remain their bearers. To develop this research programme, sociological epistemology needs a clearly defined methodology. Simmel can provide it, thanks to his expertise in

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the modern, primarily Kantian epistemology that was the subject of his prized second professorial dissertation Das Wesen der Materie nach Kant’s Physischer Monadologie (GSG 1: 9–41) and his 1904 lectures on Kant. Sechzehn Vorlesungen gehalten an der Berliner Universität (GSG 9: 7–226). Simmel applies Kant’s so-called regressive method as a founding gesture of sociological epistemology to examine the ‘conditions of the possibility’ of social reality (Kant 1783: 253–383). From the overall consciousness of ‘being part of social relationships’, sociological epistemology sorts out everything that constitutes the contingent and fluctuating motivation of social action. Thus, Simmel can trace social reality back to formal knowledge structures of its experience in the minds of social actors. Epistemologically, this sets out the ‘conditions of existence’ for the objects of the social world (GSG 11: 37). These formal knowledge structures must be seen as the apriorities of social life because they are proven to exist independently of each specific content with which they are empirically associated. This is demonstrated by applying the regressive analytical method to social reality. Sociological epistemology can work out the social character of formal knowledge structures necessary to permit social reality’s existence because its focus is not the contents of consciousness of single social actors. Instead, it accentuates their reciprocal connection with respect to the category of sociation. Sociological epistemology is thus by no means a variation of subject-philosophy. It poses the question about what happens in the consciousness of social actors when they are engaged in sociation processes with each other. It examines the formal knowledge structures that are necessarily present to make possible the processes of sociation. In summary, the cognitive interest of sociological epistemology focuses on the question of how society is possible as an ‘objective form of subjective consciousnesses’ (GSG 11: 41). Nonetheless, one key problem of applying Kant’s epistemology to the topic of social science is that Kant’s scope of inquiry was developed as a method for understanding nature and therefore for an entirely different context. After the Copernican turn, the natural sciences could no longer assume that nature consists in what the immediate sensory perception of reality communicates to the mind. Human persons still observe the sunrise and sunset, yet science explains these phenomena in terms of the earth turning around the sun. Nature must therefore be understood as a ‘representation of nature’ that the human cognition produces. In the case of society, a similar shifting of the cognitive perspective takes place, although with different premises and results. Epistemologically, society must equally be considered merely as the ‘representation of society’ which is present in the consciousness of the social actors in question. Yet, precisely how such actors build the representation of society deviates profoundly from the knowledge process of nature. For Kant, the ‘representation of nature’ is the product of the individual’s synthetic knowledge activity in relation to the manifold contents of his perception (GSG 11: 42 f.). Natural science per extenso results from the application of the subject’s knowledge categories in relation to its object of inquiry. By contrast, the ‘representation of society’, or rather the consciousness of being part of social relationships,

Sociological epistemology 63 materialises within the context of social interaction, and so on the part of social actors who are the elements of the sociation processes. The overall representation of society accordingly results not from the activity of an inquiring subject who assesses society but rather is already realised within the field of sociological inquiry. Such analysis therefore arises on the basis of the already existing ‘social knowledge’ and constitutes a meta-reflection (Reflexion zweiter Ordnung), so that it must critically account for this factor. Social actors cannot approach social reality as though this were merely an object of perception because they find themselves in relationships of reciprocal action with other subjects of perception. For Simmel, this factor supplies the crucial epistemological problem of sociation and must be regarded as the starting point of sociological inquiry (GSG 11: 45). Accordingly, sociological epistemology must explain the mechanisms that allow social actors to envisage being members of sociation by interacting with each other. With critical regard to Kant’s method, Simmel’s sociological epistemology treats society as a ‘domain of experience’ and traces back its contents to their conditions of possibility, that is, to the forms of consciousness that permit social actors to engage in sociation processes. Nevertheless, the contents of ‘social experience’ differ markedly from those in other realms because the social actors encounter other subjects of experience here; moreover, they build social relationships with them. The central element of social experience is therefore not objects that are constructed through the synthetic activity of cognitive subjects but, rather, the perception of the other subject as a ‘you experience’ (ibid.). As a counterpart in reciprocal action, the ‘you’ constitutes the completely unusual content of experience because it can never be encompassed by the ‘observing or acting subject’ and so remains a factor of contingency. The question concerning ‘how society is possible?’ in such circumstances attains an altogether different meaning than ‘how nature is possible?’ The task for sociological epistemology is therefore to work out the categories of consciousness that constitute the ‘conditions of possibility’ for sociation among independent subjects of social experience. The most essential of these categories, which must be presumed to grant the persistence of every kind of social relationship, establishes the central interest for sociological epistemology. Simmel calls these the ‘a priori of sociology’. Throughout the process of reciprocal cognition between social actors, the other actor can never be fully known as a counterpart. So, it is necessary for the social actor to construct a picture of his counterpart by generalising and to some extent creating a stereotypical view by using the partial information available. The way in which the picture emerges of the social counterpart depends on the degree of social distance between social actors. The process is led by the need to obtain a stable image of the ‘other’ as a reliable partner of social interaction by constructing the same as the ‘consistent type of himself’ (GSG 11: 47). For Simmel, this generalising and stereotyping process between social actors must be seen as the first a priori of sociation. Social actors are subjects of experience; they cannot be reduced to simple objects of perception. In other words, the personality of the other can never be completely grasped. Certain typifications and stylisations intervene to compensate for the insufficient knowledge that social actors have

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about each other. Even in intimate relationships, where social distance is minimal, the other person remains to some degree beyond the domain of knowable experience. In other words, her or his image becomes typified. As for the necessities of sociation, the missing empirical contents of perception are integrated and generalised. In place of the temporal volatility of the fellow social actor steps in the spatial fixation of a coherent image of the other. Hence, reciprocal perception between social actors reifies to establish the stable contents of consciousness that ensure a consistent and valid basis for social relationships. The socially guided perception of the other exercises an exonerating action with regard to sociation processes: the social actors now react in an intuitive, mechanical and often unconscious way to the complexity of the social world. Every actor appears to be the social stereotype of himself, thus fitting into expectations of that social circles in which he is engaged (GSG 11: 48 f.). Beyond every fragmentation of modern social actors in highly differentiated societies, social counterparts thus become stylised to abiding characters that allow the perpetuation of social relationships. This analysis enables Simmel’s sociological epistemology to provide an original response to the classical question of sociological theory which Parsons declared as the ‘double contingency’ problem (Parsons, Shils 1951: 16). Social actors stabilise their social relationships not by referring to mutual normative orientations but rather by constructing stereotypical images of each other and their interrelations. A multiplicity of typologically generalised representations of social reality that are the product of the stereotyping process of social perception delivers the basis for the constructed image of society as the sum of ongoing social relationships. In Simmel’s view, this is the origin of social ontology. Yet given the fact that social reality is seen from an infinite number of alternative viewpoints, social actors are confronted with an array of stereotypical images of themselves and their relationships. They must satisfy the various expectations of the social circles in which they are engaged. The key question is then how social actors can handle the multiplicity of their social identities so that they manage to participate in the sociation processes. On the one hand, the expectations of social circles merge into social role patterns that the social actors must conform to. On the other hand, social structures also provide the actors with the instruments for their self-fulfilment within social reality. The convergence of social structure with social action therefore depends on the creative performance of the social actors that links these aspects together. The development of sociological epistemology also involves another factor. According to Simmel, social actors do not merely coincide with their social roles, but also exist and perform independently of them. This makes them a factor of contingency for sociation processes. Every member of the social group is not only a part of it but must also be seen as an individual who exists for his own sake. The knowledge of this fact forms for Simmel an essential element of the consciousness of being involved in social relationships. Accordingly, he regards the partial externality of social actors from social reality as the second precondition a priori of sociation (GSG 11: 51). However, according to the theory of social differentiation, namely the scheme of the parallel differentiation of social group and the individual personality, it must be noted that the non-socialised domains

Sociological epistemology 65 of the personality do not simply coexist randomly alongside the socialised ones. Moreover, a precondition for participating in the processes of sociation is to maintain a meaningful relationship between both elements, yet without succumbing to alienation or, at the other extreme, falling into blasé social autism. Indeed, modern social complexity makes it increasingly difficult for social actors to achieve this goal. Nevertheless, for Simmel, the fact that some domains of the personality remain non-socialised establishes the positive condition permitting social actors to start and maintain social relationships through the socialised domains of their personality. Thus, for every participant in the sociation processes, ‘not being socialised’ also strongly codetermines their way of being socialised. The characterisation of sociation forms in the sense of ‘being outside’ of the majority of social ties allows Simmel to develop his classical analyses of figures of social exclusion such as the ‘poor’ or the ‘stranger’ (GSG 11: 512–555, 764–771; Simmel 2009: 409–442, 601–605). The same tension-fraught relationship between being socialised and being on one’s own, however, applies to every social relationship. The way social stereotyping affects social actors can be understood at best thanks to an inversion of the perspective of inquiry, i.e. by analysing the process from the point of view of the fellow social actor that becomes its object. While dealing with multiple stereotypical images of themselves in different social circles, social actors are confronted with how to remain consistent beyond the scattered fragments of their social existence. At stake is the extent to which social relationships permit such ‘being something else’ alongside the existing parameters for a successful coordination between established social role patterns and the creativity of social action. Simmel’s analysis of the second a priori of social epistemology shows that social integration is only possible as long as the social actors are not only present in social relationships as a sum of their various stereotypical images, that is, the role expectations which they are confronted with, but can also express the non-socialised aspects of their being. In a nutshell, social integration is only possible as long as the individuals concerned are not completely alienated. The second a priori concerning the partial externality of social actors from social relationships raises a key question about the persistence of society. A mismatch between the logic of acting individuals and that of social structure leads the actor into alienation and provokes the breakup of sociation ties in terms of social structure. This dramatic diagnosis about complex modern society could have led Simmel to turn to one of the different versions of cultural pessimism that characterised the zeitgeist at the turn of the 20th century (Jefferies 2003). Yet he did not embrace this. On the contrary, sociological epistemology was to shed light on the conflict between the logic of social action and social structure as a positive challenge for sociological theory. Taken to their extreme, the results of this tension can lead either to the complete reduction of social actors to the logic of the social structure or to a blasé rejection of sociation. What lies in between is an infinite variety of the dynamic forms of sociation that hold together social reality. As long as the social actors are able to endure sociation processes in a way that is somehow acceptable for them, then the network of social relationships which they entertain can also persist.

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Simmel’s epistemological theory building concerning the integration between the socialised and non-socialised facets of the social actor’s consciousness introduces us to his sociological theory of validity. Its main assumption is that each social actor is the point of intersection and the bearer of a network of sociation processes that contributes to society’s persistence. Yet, individuals are not only part and function of society. There is an essential line of tension and conflict which characterises all sociation processes and affects the personality of the individual social actors. Not only must they contend with the fragmentation of their personality in highly differentiated societies, but they must also deal with the antagonism between its socialised and non-socialised domains. Consequently, in order to integrate complex societies, a repeated creative performance is required of the individual social actors to overcome the conflict between the different domains of consciousness, or in the terms of cultural sociology between objective and subjective culture. Simmel’s sociological epistemology shows that this performance cannot be taken for granted as the outcome of a habit or custom, which social actors acquire during primary and secondary socialisation and then continue to supervise all sociation processes. Instead, the creative performance that relies on the socialised and non-socialised domains of the personality occurs on a different basis every day. This circumstance constitutes the decisive challenge for social life in rapidly changing and highly differentiated modern societies. The creative performance of social action is not automatism. Rather, it is founded on the capacity of the consciousness to relate its different socialised and non-socialised flows of experience in a synthesis that makes sense for the social actors. This performance, which produces social meaning, can receive the most varied existential, ethical, political or religious validations. According to Simmel’s methodology, however, sociological epistemology focuses exclusively on the formal structure which characterises the creative performance of social action, that is, on the competence of social actors’ consciousness in relating the socialised and non-socialised realms of life experience in whatever meaningful synthesis. This formal structure, which founds the consciousness of being engaged in sociation processes, constitutes the third condition a priori for the existence of social relationships (GSG 11: 58 f.). Only on this basis can social actors become the bearers of the network of sociation processes that they are involved in, because they can deliver the creative performance to shape the social meaning that holds them together. In epistemological terms, every social actor per se is a unitary centre of consciousness. The fact of social interaction, however, confronts him or her with the dual task of getting along with social relationships, on the one hand, while maintaining his autonomy as the independent centre of experience, on the other. Being both a member of social relationships and an autonomous individual means, in terms of Simmel’s sociological epistemology, that the social actor must be able to interconnect the respective streams of consciousness in a meaningful way. Every social actor brings into the sociation processes qualities, relationships and imponderables that are unique and unmistakable and thus constitute a factor of contingency for the objective laws of social structure. Society is an objective order

Sociological epistemology 67 founded on a logic that can prescind from the specific dynamics of the individual personality. Yet the question rises whether the qualities of the objective order can obtain as much an individual character that social actors become their bearers, because the convergence of objective and subjective factors of sociation is the only way in which a synthesis can be achieved that makes society possible. It is therefore a decisive epistemological precondition for the processes of sociation that social actors can join together the contradictory streams of consciousness of being socialised and not socialised. This necessity establishes Simmel’s third a priori of sociology (GSG 11: 59). The sociological preconditions for the merging of social action and social structure are, on the one hand, that social actors are allocated specific positions within social reality because they are endowed with unique qualities and, on the other, that these positions exist in social reality. Accordingly, Simmel argues that the classic example of a successful realisation of the third a priori is related to the modern Western idea of vocation in the sense of ‘calling’, as Weber phrased this in his essays on the ‘Protestant Ethic’ (Weber 1904/1905). A professional vocation offers the individual a possibility for selffulfilment in society thanks to the personal skills which he can deploy in carrying out his social functions. The objective structure of society offers social actors anonymous positions that could be arbitrarily filled by many different individuals. However, the individual person aspires to take up a particular position because of such an inner calling. In epistemological terms, the precondition for this convergence of the objective structure of society and the subjective calling sensed by individuals lies in the capacity of social actors to be conscious of a meaningful interconnection between the socialised and non-socialised domains of their lives. Simmel’s conception of the sociological a priori ends with a theory of the socially determined cultural work that social actors must perform to be part of society. Therefore, he embeds the culture theory of The Philosophy of Money in his later sociological epistemology. Culture becomes a grounding category of sociology. The cultural accomplishments of the social actors are recognised as the performance that coordinates social action and social structure. Simmel’s answer to the theoretical question of sociological validity makes culture a binding force of society. Accordingly, culture can be conceived as a reflex or consequence of neither the economic relations of production (Marx), nor of social relationships (Durkheim). Instead, culture must be seen as a structural factor of society that grants its stability, plasticity and change within the everyday process of building the social fabric. This approach to the sociological theory of validity, which Simmel developed in his Sociology of 1908 under the auspices of the ‘sociological a priori’, represents a culmination and synthesis of his previous studies. Moreover, it is a linchpin for his later sociological research programme. If the cultural work done by social actors represents the decisive factor for enabling highly differentiated societies to hold together, develop and change, then the sociological inquiry into the manifold cultural expressions that characterise modernity becomes an absolute priority of every research agenda. The issue of modernity or the matter of what is to be considered ‘modern’, or up to date, must be clarified in terms of a sociological assessment of the different ways in which social actors deliver

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their cultural performance so as to facilitate the integration of complex societies. Fashion, art, literature, music and later cinema (with Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer) become as many more objects of inquiry for sociological theory because they show how cultural work combines the imperatives of social structure and social action. After 1908, Simmel’s endeavours focus on the manifold cultural expressions of modernity. He shows how the logic of the sociological a priori can be applied to the different domains of culture, a topic for further discussion in Chapter 3. However, first it is important to mention at least two other domains of Simmel’s sociological inquiry in his Sociology of 1908, for these had an important influence on American sociology. They therefore contributed decisively to the international circulation of his ideas.

2.5 Space and social closure Each chapter of Sociology presents an application to a different topic of the epistemological approach based on the sociological a priori which Simmel developed in the excursus ‘How Is Society Possible?’ (GSG 11: 42–61; English: GSG 18: 498–518). Yet, the most influential sections covered social conflict (GSG 11: 284–382; Simmel 2009: 227–305) and social space (GSG 11: 687–790; Simmel 2009: 543–620). Simmel’s investigation of conflict appeared in the American Journal of Sociology in English translation by Albion Small as a series of articles titled ‘The Sociology of Conflict’ (GSG 18: 288–354; 521 f., 531 f.). The American reception of these studies was later promoted thanks to the critical study of Lewis Coser (1956). Simmel’s work also played a significant role in developing what became known as the Chicago School of Sociology. Robert Ezra Park attended Simmel’s lecture on sociology in Berlin in 1899/1900, and his lecture notes now appear in Simmel’s collected works edition (GSG 21: 281–344). Since 1914, Park researched at the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago, where he made a decisive contribution to the development of urban sociology. Park, Ernest Burgess and Louis Wirth were heavily influenced by Simmel’s sociology in their studies on urban ecology and ethnic relationships (Park, Burgess 1922; Park, Burgess, MacKenzie 1925; Wirth 1928). Simmel’s sociology of space can be regarded as a direct continuation of his analysis of the sociological a priori. The main purpose is understanding the reciprocal relationship between social and spatial distance among social actors. The ‘sociology of the senses’ is the starting point for the systematic examination (GSG 11: 722–742). If the intrinsic link of social action and social structure depends on individual social actors’ cultural performance, then sociology must include a study of the most basic level where this takes place. When social actors interact, they do so thanks to their sensory perception, which must be examined in terms of its sociological characteristics. Simmel subdivides the senses into classes depending on their capacity to translate spatial distance into social distance. The social organ of perception par excellence is the eye whose function is purely reciprocal. The eye can modulate the social distance between actors in very different ways.

Sociological epistemology 69 Nobody can look somebody else straight in the eye without an impression of intimacy. Eye contact is an immensely powerful tool of sociation because it establishes a direct relationship between interlocutors, insofar as here every gesture of taking is also an act of giving. The visual aptitude for reciprocity makes the eye a vehicle for the modulation of the intensity and limits of reciprocal action, thus re-establishing social distance. The eye can open and shut; it can watch directly and indirectly; equally, it may be piercing or elusive and so introduce social distance in cases where spatial distance is lacking. Conversely, our vision may reduce social distance in cases of excessive spatial distance. The eye can also determine the individual aspects of the other by perceiving the other being as a person, or by generalising the other to a representative of a species through the production of social stereotypes. Sight is therefore the most immediate and efficient instrument for the empirical realisation of the first a priori of social interaction. By contrast, the ear tolerates much less distance between social actors. It has a passive and non-reciprocal structure, so that it becomes the instrument for a different kind of sociation processes, as the etymology of the German word Hörigkeit (subservience) illustrates. The contents of audio perception cannot be modulated or generalised, and therefore they become more emphatically imprinted on the memory. To achieve reciprocity, the ear must integrate the voice and establish a dialectical link between the two organs, constructing a fresh relationship and establishing social distance. The olfactory organ lacks the most distance in perception. It produces extremely subjective reactions to the immediate environment. No allowances are made for a modulation of perception. The nose is the sensory organ that characterises the most intimate relationships. In the meantime, it is the most dissociating sense and divides the world into things that one can tolerate from those that one cannot smell. Re-establishing social distance in the case of the olfactory organ is only possible by adopting artificial means that conceal the impact of bodily odour. The complex cultural history of perfume testifies to the role that ‘olfactory suits’ have for enforcing the fluidity of social interaction. Yet, they also establish a social divide between, for instance, pleasantly perfumed members of the privileged classes at leisure and the working classes. The olfactory organ also plays a pivotal role in the sociological study of the development of racism, as Simmel observes with respect to the discrimination of Afro-Americans in the U.S. and anti-Semitism in Germany (GSG 11: 733). The lowest level of social distance mediated by sensual perception is attained through the question of sexuality. The dialectics of attraction and personal as well as social distance is mediated by the ensemble of the senses, whereas the closest spatial proximity counts among the preconditions of sensuality. Distance and proximity between the genders are a socially sensitive topic, so that all societies develop codes regulating gender-relationships, which provide an order of social distance between the genders and also the ritual procedures to overcome this. The tense relationship between spatial and social distance also underlies one of Simmel’s best-known sociological inquiries, namely, his analysis of the stranger as a figure of social exclusion (GSG 11: 764–771). Here, the stranger’s exclusion

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is based on two circumstances. On the one hand, as a foreigner, guest, merchant or visitor, the stranger is still part of the social group. Yet on the other hand, this is only possible because he is excluded from access to a series of resources that the indigenous population enjoys as a matter of course. As ‘the excluded’, the stranger can perform crucial functions that the social group is unable to. However, these are only possible on the condition that he is virtually excluded from the host community. The precarious balance between the two aspects of the social position of the stranger must be continuously reconciled. Otherwise, a relationship of hostility can rapidly develop that only allows the existence of the figure of the enemy who becomes debarred from the social group. A complex dialectic between inclusion and exclusion is characteristic for the social relationships of the stranger who in Simmel’s portrayal ‘comes today and stays tomorrow’ (GSG 11: 764). The figure of the stranger supports a juxtaposition of spatial and social distance degrees that are otherwise kept apart. Appearance, dress, nutritional behaviour, traditions, culture and religion characterise the stranger as the ideal–typical expression of the possibly broadest social distance to the local population. Therefore, following the logic of the first sociological a priori, a stranger is perceived in a most stereotypical manner. Given that he comes to stay and live together with the social group for an indefinite period, however, the stranger reduces to a minimum the spatial distance between him and the host community. The related contradiction between high social and low spatial distance results in a continuous source of potential conflicts because it negates the conventional flow of social interaction that slowly integrates lower spatial distance with lesser social distance. Moreover, the stranger appears as somebody who has not completely given up wandering and is still related to another country or people, so his loyalty to the host social group remains uncertain in the eyes of the local people. The capacity to subtly mediate these tensions through everyday social interaction is one of the essential skills of the successful stranger who adapts to the idiosyncrasies of the host population. Thanks to such talent, the stranger can pursue a career of relating the social group to the external world by organising economic exchanges abroad and by delivering services that are not provided within the group. Moreover, he can play the role of an independent judge or negotiator in the internal quarrels of the host social group because he is considered as less tied to existing conflict parties than anybody else. Simmel dedicates a similar inquiry to the social exclusion figure of ‘the poor’ (GSG 11: 512–555; Simmel 2009: 409–442). In every social group, there is a conception of the reciprocal action between the rights and the duties of its different members. This also concerns the relationship between the wealthy and the poor. The impoverished individual is excluded because he cannot access the material resources of the group. However, this characteristic of being excluded is also what makes him a member of the group: at some level, he has an acknowledged right to be supported. Hence, the poor individual shows some structural similarities with the figure of the stranger. Historically, the relationship between the poor and the wealthy was more direct and often took the ritual form of the beggar, who has a duty of the believer in different world religions. In modern times, in contrast, the

Sociological epistemology 71 direct relationship between the advantaged and disadvantaged members of social groups gives way to a process of tertiarisation, according to which it is no longer the individual but rather the social group as a whole that has to make helping the poor its goal. Simmel reconstructs early 19th-century social legislation in the UK and Germany and traces a first sociological assessment of the development of welfare systems. Assisting the poor becomes an obligation, which is a matter for the public authorities, so the right to relief for those who slipped into poverty through no fault of their own becomes legally codified. Nevertheless, there is no provision for those concerned to take legal proceedings against their situation. Society only accepts the responsibility for ensuring that its dialectic with the poor as a figure of social exclusion, who nonetheless still belongs to the social group, does not mutate to the social relationship of reciprocal hostility between the social group and the thief who is completely excluded from the group. Moving by degrees from the micro- to the meso- and macro-sociological level of analysis, Simmel’s space sociology provides a typological evaluation of the relationship of reciprocal action between social forms and their spatial shaping (GSG 11: 687 ff.). Here, Simmel delivers an assessment of the structuring of geographical territories under the influence of political groups, starting with the clans in segmentary differentiated societies and ending with the specific form of the modern nation state, which he identifies as meeting the claim of uniformly ruling an entire territory. These characteristics give modern states a structural similarity with the universalist pretention of the Catholic Church, although limited to the rule of one national entity. In contradiction to this homogeneous political shaping of social space, there is the fragmentation of territories that characterises the ruling posture of smaller social groups and produces several spatial borders. For Simmel, these represent a key social institution, i.e. a social fact, which shapes itself spatially (GSG 11: 696 f.). Accordingly, a long historical transformation process was needed to overcome the multifariousness of social borders characterising ancient society. Urbanisation, centralisation, the renunciation of nomadic forms of life, the rise of markets and kingdoms, the substitution of the organic relationships characterising kinship networks with the rather mechanical social relationships of modern capitalism and the extension of political domination from persons to territories are the development steps of the process that Simmel works out. Despite territorial uniformity, however, ‘social delimitation’ concerning the person continues to exist within modern nation states (GSG 11: 698–702). The abstract conception of overall territorial borders becomes a means of social closure and of discriminating between different people from the same territory. Membership in territorially organised social groups is defined in terms of a stereotypical construction of the other who does not enjoy the same rights. Hence, following the logic of the first sociological a priori, the role models of ‘full-, half- and quarter-members’ of the territorially organised social group come to the fore (GSG 11: 699). By partial admission to the social group, the border of social exclusion traverses the conscience of the social actor and strengthens the part of the personality that is involved in social ties at the expense of the ‘excluded parts’, as the second a priori shows. Inequality concerning the rights and duties of partial

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membership in the social group eventually results in social schizophrenia between different domains of personality which ‘the outsider’ only overcomes by achieving full membership. The reciprocal action between the social forms and space has several different aspects that Simmel meticulously reconstructs with a typological fresco. This starts with the impact of the spatial forms on the social forms. Ships, rendezvous, religious groups in the diaspora, the systematisation of space thanks to roads and urban planning and many other topics comprise the subject matter of space sociology (GSG 11: 705–722). The discussion extends to the issue of sensorial proximity and social distance in situations of intensified interaction in the large city (GSG 11: 718). It also refers to the spatial fixation of temporally precarious social contents (GSG 11: 705 f.), as we have already seen in other contexts (Chapter 2.3). In the final part of his space sociology, Simmel then provides some of the analyses that influenced the development of migration sociology through the reception of the Chicago School. The first issue at stake is the reciprocal action between large social groups and conspicuous ethnic minorities which organise around common interests (GSG 11: 744 f.). The dynamic relationship between the host and guest social group shows that dispersed minorities have less power and are compelled to adapt more, whereas the concentration in autonomous territorial unities increases the power of the minority group. Simmel refers in this context to the history of the Jewish diaspora. He discusses the advantages and disadvantages of life in the ghetto, addressing topics that Wirth developed later in his classic monograph (Wirth 1928). The further emancipation of ethnic minorities eventually leads to renewed dispersal in the territory beyond the ghetto, albeit with better conditions of membership within the wider social group. The second topic, which Simmel groups under migration issues, is the contradiction between sedentariness and nomadism (GSG 11: 748 ff.). If the main thrust of the sociological analysis moves from the study of static spatial coexistence to that of the spatial mobility of social groups, then the crucial issues are no longer distance, borders or neighbourhood relationships, but rather movement, relocation and wandering. The question is which forms of sociation develop within migrating groups in contrast to spatially fixed groups and, above all, which differences emerge when part of the social group is nomadic and the other is not. The typology of such phenomena includes nomadism, migration and the historical exceptional case of the complete overrunning of the sedentary society within the Roman Empire by the so-called barbarian invasions. For Simmel, nomadism is a circular movement pushing the social group to take the same steps cyclically between certain locations in space, whereas migration must be seen as an intermediary stage between two successive states of sedentariness of the ‘stranger social group’. Both phenomena imply a liquefaction of existing social structures and regression of the internal differentiation of the vagrant social group. As a rule, it can thus be assumed that wandering in the social space and social differentiation manifest a relationship of reciprocal opposition. Because of their precarious situation, members of wandering social groups are strongly dependent on each other. The organisational form of the nomadic or migrating group often involves

Sociological epistemology 73 a despotic authority where a single male person rules by exerting patriarchal oppression over women and children. The only advantage of this characteristic way of life for mobile social groups is a social constellation that defines them as the ideal–typical polar opposite of the stranger. Members of such groups then perform functions that are beyond the reach of the sedentary population. Simmel illustrates this with a digression about the medieval mendicant monks who had the right to hear the confession of anyone everywhere. ‘The mendicant monks came today and left tomorrow’, and this permitted them to be the receptacle for confessions that nobody liked to share with the local priesthood who remained on site (GSG 11: 754 f.). Mobile social groups can live in a symbiotic social relationship with sedentary social groups, and they can deliver services that the latter cannot afford. However, the resulting balance between the two contrasting ways of life is utterly precarious. In general, there is a highly ambivalent relationship between the phenomenon of wandering and the sedentary social groups. Sedentary societies are distinguished by the uniformity of their objective culture, their social differentiation and the centralisation of their functional structures. In direct contrast, the social practice of wandering contributes to the unification of social groups, which may lack structuration and differentiation. Historically, the nomadic lifestyle was therefore often sacralised regarding its contribution to the functional unity of social groups. As a rule, wandering is always related to greater poverty within the social group. Societies which do not get poverty under control have to deal with the disruption of sedentary ways of life. The fact that part of the social group has to wander and the rest not acts as a lever that magnifies existing social conflicts (GSG 11: 760). If individuals with a roaming lifestyle already arouse hostile reactions in the sedentary population, then the wandering social groups experience this a fortiori because of diffused fears of competition for scarce resources that the local population resents. For Simmel, there is a specific reason for this social tension. In the case of strong trends for a nomadic existence or migration flows, society overall is confronted with a conflict between two opposing forms of dominating the social space: on the one hand, wandering of perforce less differentiated social groups and, on the other hand, sedentary dwelling of more differentiated social groups (GSG 11: 771).

2.6 Conflict Relationships based on superiority and subordination, social disclosure and secrecy, loyalty, fidelity and gratitude, as well as social exclusion, represent numerous modalities of sociation which must be explained in terms of the epistemological premises of social life that Simmel explores in the excursus ‘How Is Society Possible?’ (GSG 11: 42–61). Thus, every chapter of Sociology offers insights into the processes structuring a different domain of social reality. Yet Simmel’s conflict sociology is so unique because it concentrates on an active contradiction between material interests or normative orientations as the start of the analysis of the sociation processes which are fashioned by the conflict situation. Simmel’s theory is that merely because individuals and social groups act

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against each other, they become integrated in an overlapping social fabric that holds them together, albeit this in a hostile relationship. Here, Simmel develops a methodological approach of formal sociology that at best reveals how sociation processes integrate social groups, even if there are no common interests or value orientations to back up cohesion. By this means, Simmel’s conflict sociology offers a consistent theoretical alternative to the normative conception of social integration that characterises Durkheim’s founding of moral sociology (Durkheim 1893/2014). This position explains the relevance of Simmel’s sociological programme in the 21st century. In Sociology, Simmel refers to the conflict situation as ‘the quarrel’ (der Streit) (GSG 11: 284–382). Yet the final version of the series of English articles (translated by Albion Small) on this topic in the American Journal of Sociology of 1904 adopts the title ‘The Sociology of Conflict’ (GSG 18: 288–354, 521 f., 531 f.; cf. also GSG 11: 896). This title theme contributed decisively to the circulation of Simmel’s ideas in American sociology and established his reputation as the founding father of this discipline. Simmel planned to publish a separate monograph on the sociology of conflict, yet he did not achieve the project (GSG 7: 356). As for the domain of social conflict, during Simmel’s lifetime there was already scientific consensus that the reality of ‘conflict’ (Kampf) had to be analysed sociologically. This prompted the examination of the potential for conflict to advance a community of interests and organisation on both sides by treating it as a vector of sociation. Yet the underlying question here concerned whether conflict amounts to a process of sociation even between social actors and groups that explicitly act to oppose each other. In Community and Society, Tönnies vehemently rejected this possibility (Tönnies 1887: 3). Simmel’s approach was different, and this earned him the accolade as the founder of conflict sociology. Simmel proposes an analytical understanding of conflict situations. He reconstructs systematically the theoretical bricks to understand how these may foster relationships even between hostile parties. If the causes of conflicts must be treated as matters of dissociation, conflicts per se can be understood as a remedial measure to counteract the tendency for dualism within the social group (GSG 11: 284). By engaging in conflict, social actors keep the social relationships alive. Otherwise, these are at risk of breaking apart completely in the case of the refusal to fight in opposition to each other. It is a question of ‘acting together’ despite the lack of common interests and value orientations. In other words, sociology’s task is to explain which forms of relationship are still shared here by the social actors. Conventionally, social and political theory argue that in the aftermath of conflict it is feasible to reinstate the unity of the social group thanks only to reconciliation or the annihilation of one of the conflict parties. By contrast, conflict offers a third way to maintain the cohesion of the social group ‘in form of a fight’ whose implication must be taken into account by sociology. The ‘will to conflict’, however, does not mean triviality of the kind expressed by Cicero’s classical motto: si vis pacem para bellum. The implication of conflict is the dismantling of the absolute in favour of the relative tension of the opposing parties. Openly antagonistic behaviour clarifies, stipulates and defines social relationships by making latent

Sociological epistemology 75 conflicts explicit and so transforming them into patterns of reciprocal action. Conversely, a refusal to fight does not simply suggest ‘indifference’ but rather negates the social relationship and leads to a weakening of the ongoing processes of sociation and ultimately their breakup. The ‘positive moment’ of the fight therefore lies in the fact that it connects the parties engaged in dispute in specific social forms of ‘acting against each other’. Simmel’s argument about the positive output of social conflicts as a modality of reciprocal social action is based on a formal examination of social processes. Programmatically, these include affirmative as well as negative relations. Moreover, this can be seen as a veiled critique of Tönnies’ exclusion of conflict from sociology (GSG 11: 285). Methodologically, as long as sociology concentrates on macrosocial issues such as, for example, community and society, the societal phenomenon of antagonistic relations finds no place in its inquiries. Yet, if the unity of society is examined as a compound of the processes of sociation, then the concept of conflict becomes a crucial category for sociology. Moreover, in line with the third a priori of sociological epistemology, the status of the social actors within social reality has to be considered in turn as the product of a tensionfraught relationship between ‘being in’ and ‘outside’ society. Hence, sociologically speaking, the harmony between the elements of society as well as within the individual personality is always a marginal case, or rather the product of an enduring striving for compatibility. To explain his conception of the necessity of conflicts for making societal relationships work, Simmel’s humanist education (GSG 1: 91–177) led him to propose an interesting comparison between Dante’s ‘Society of the Saints in Paradise’ in the Divine Comedy and Raphael’s fresco about the ‘Disputation of the Holy Sacrament’ in the Vatican Rooms (GSG 11: 285 f.). He highlights the following point: whereas the first scenario reached perfection, although it is static and cannot produce any transformation or development, the second shows the complex conflict dynamics of the different theological points of view that characterise the vitality and the organic cohesion of the Church. Thoroughly harmonious and conflict-free sociation would lead the development of the religious social group to complete stagnation. Diremptions within society, therefore, suggest not merely ‘social liabilities’ that have to be excluded from sociological survey, but rather constitute a dialectic that serves to hold society together. Accordingly, Simmel endeavours to give a typological account of the different societal conflict scenarios from the simpler to the more complex. Furthermore, he intends to show how their dynamics structures social reality. Marriage, the Indian caste system, modern class struggle, life in the metropolis thus become as many steps of an inquiry into the structuration of social reality through conflict (GSG 11: 286–290). From a theoretical perspective, Simmel’s typology of conflict allows the following final assessment. Neither solidarity nor conflict alone could generate sustainable social relationships. The fact that social conflicts are played out means that they slowly shed their utterly violent character to become part of ritualised and organised procedures. Division and fight therefore carry less costs for the social group. At the symbolic endpoint

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of the evolution, for instance in a modern legal trial, disputes develop within regulated and clearly defined procedures around a delimited matter of interest. They still allow for antagonistic fight, yet they presuppose the common subjection of the conflict parties under the rule of the legal order. They therefore compel the acceptance of the final judgement of the court (GSG 11: 306). The recognition of the binding force of the law thus grants, on the one hand, the highest possible degree of diremption, while on the other hand it establishes a form of sociation ‘against each other’, so connecting the quarrelling parties in an overlapping social relationship. The development of controlled conflicts leads to the establishment of institutional structures that are able to absorb their backlash on the social fabric and allow social groups a higher degree of plasticity. A similar process of objectivation characterised the development of the social question in Europe during the 19th century. According to Simmel, this occurred in Germany through the influence of Marx’s work and in England thanks to the development of the trade unions. The intensity of the class struggle did not diminish in this context, yet the historical development of the social question induced its transformation into institutionalised conflict procedures, so governing industrial relations and permitting the parties to reach compromises with fewer social costs. Beyond the logic of compromise, a further decisive step of objectivation in conflict dynamics occurs through so-called tertiarisation. This step applies when the basic fight against each other for scarce resources becomes a relationship of competition to win the favour of a third party. Competition builds an indirect form of conflict which allows even stronger formalisation. It no longer suffices to beat the opponent because the goal of the conflict is to obtain the consensus of the remaining members of the social group which are not involved in the conflicts. This kind of arrangement is typical for modern forms of competition on the commodities market or for political competition that characterises modern democracies. Yet, ‘tertiarisation’ of the conflict direction presupposes an objectivation of conflict means and opens new perspectives for the development of the sociation processes. The disruption here becomes even more formal by defining the contents and means of conflict in a better way and by increasing the organisational performance of the fighting parties (GSG 11: 324). The systematic outcome of competition is then that the defeated party also profits from the fight because it strengthens its forces instead of destroying them. A victory in the context of competition’s relations must therefore be seen as the realisation of goals that go beyond the logic of the fight and prove not to be a success within it. This is because competition develops social relationships between the fighting parties and third groups whose favour the competitors strive to win. Transforming the initially purely economic concept of competition into a sociological category allows Simmel to overcome Hobbes’ political ideal type of the ‘fight of all against all’ (Hobbes 1651) as the grounding dimension of politics because it can be showed that competition meanwhile constitutes a ‘fight of all for all’, thus bolstering social relationships (GSG 11: 328). The concept of modern society as a conflict-biased form of living together can be rehabilitated beyond every cultural criticism by analysing competition as the functional substitute of

Sociological epistemology 77 the relationships of mechanic solidarity that characterise less complex societies. Accordingly, different social circles can be classed typologically depending on the degree of competition that they tolerate. Inquiring into this topic, Simmel seems to engage in an implicit reflection about Durkheim’s theory of organic solidarity (Durkheim 1893/2014). Bigger social groups seem to allow more conflict-driven disruption than smaller ones because they are grounded on deeper relationships of organic solidarity that hold them together (GSG 11: 332). This is for Simmel also the reason why the modern state, established on the monopoly of the legitimate use of force, is better equipped to withstand the type of political conflicts that led the ancient polis or medieval cities to the complete exhaustion of their powers and even to annihilation. Developing his analysis further and referring to the most attenuated forms of conflict, Simmel comes to two concluding considerations. On the one hand, he develops a typology of the modalities that even permits a reduction of the dynamics of competition and distinguishes between its inter-individual and supra-individual delimitation. Competitors can establish an agreement curbing the intensity of their competition in the form of a market cartel. However, the same result can also be achieved by the intervention of legislation or by moral suasion and ethical principles (GSG 11: 348). A complete subordination of economic relationships under normative rules would, however, lead to the establishment of a corporative order, as was the case in the medieval guild. On the other hand, Simmel provides a typology of the procedures that terminate conflicts. The direct motivations to give up fighting fluctuate between the generic need for freedom, the fatigue of the fight and the desire for change, for which there are indirect reasons like the exhaustion of energies or the loss of interest for the object of contention. The most simple and radical way to reconcile conflicts is, of course, victory. Yet, the most diffused way to overcome these are compromises which introduce negotiation and the establishment of legal frameworks to conclude contracts between the contesting parties. The action framework that leads from the will to reach compromises through to negotiation and contracts therefore constitutes one of the greatest inventions in human history in Simmel’s view. This is because it has the capacity to transpose the social actors from open conflict to objective forms of sociation through competition that characterises societies with a higher degree of social differentiation. Simmel’s conflict sociology allows relations involving fight or competition to be regarded as modalities of social integration by analysing from sociology’s formal point of view their contribution to stabilising the social fabric and linking social actors into civilised relationships of ‘acting against each other’. Historically, legal trials, industrial relations and democratic political elections became increasingly institutionalised into social relationships, allowing the greatest intensity of conflict without provoking the annihilation of the adversary. The fact that modern highly differentiated societies constitute themselves in different domains as regulated conflict processes, permits making these explicit, thus naming and addressing latent tensions and transforming hostilities in ordered and ritualised social relationships that hold the social fabric together. The competition relationships characterising the modern commodity market as well as democratic

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elections elevate ‘the favour of third’ to the key figure of social integration without making a convergence of interests or a common normative orientation necessary to integrate complex societies (Fitzi 2015: 25–59). Drawing attention to this particularity of modern societal development beyond the integrative power of normative consensus among social actors constitutes one major achievement of Simmel’s sociological research programme and is the polar opposite of Durkheim’s moral sociology. This aspect is perhaps the most profound reason for the difficulties that characterised the personal and scientific relationships between the two founders of sociology.

2.7 Simmel and Durkheim Émile Durkheim and Georg Simmel were contemporaries. Born in 1858, they witnessed an age of dramatic societal change between the Franco–Prussian War of 1870/71 and World War I. Both passed away before the end of the conflict – Durkheim on 15 November 1917 and Simmel on 26 September 1918. Durkheim lost his son at war in December 1915 and never recovered from this experience (Fournier 2013: 696 ff.). Simmel’s son Hans, who was a physician, survived the war, became professor in Jena and emigrated through Switzerland to England and then to the U.S. in 1939 after a professional ban and an imprisonment in Dachau, as Arnold Simmel relates (Simmel 2008: 145 f.). Durkheim’s and Simmel’s lifeworks were consecrated to founding sociology as an autonomous science. Durkheim provided a methodology for the investigation of ‘social facts’ and Simmel for the inquiry into ‘social forms’. Yet, the convergence of the two sociological research programmes proved superficial. At Célestin Bouglé’s initial suggestion in 1896, Durkheim started the editorial enterprise of L’Année Sociologique (Besnard 1979: 8). His intention was to work with a notable representative of German social sciences. Bouglé, who was a pupil of both, knew that Durkheim and Simmel shared a common interest in founding sociology as an autonomous discipline by granting it an objective status of research, although he was aware of the points of divergence between the two foundation programmes (Bouglé 1896: 160, 1897). For the sake of the common enterprise, however, he decided to bring Simmel and Durkheim together (cf. Fitzi 2017a). In 1894, two of Simmel’s sociological papers had already been published in French: ‘Le problème de la sociologie’, translated by Bouglé, in the Revue de métaphysique et de morale (GSG 19: 9–26), and ‘La différenciation sociale’ in the Revue internationale de sociologie (GSG 19: 27–35), the journal of René Worms’ Institut international de Sociologie. Bouglé supported the introduction of Simmel’s approach to the scientific community in France with his study ‘Les sciences sociales en Allemagne: G. Simmel’, which appeared 1894 in the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (Bouglé 1894). The report of his study visit in Germany, Notes d’un étudiant français, which Bouglé published in 1895, albeit under the pseudonym of Jean Breton, eventually dedicated a few pages to Simmel’s methodology of differentiating social forms and social contents (Breton 1895: 129 f.). Furthermore, in 1895 Simmel became advising editor of the American

Sociological epistemology 79 Journal of Sociology.1 This backdrop must have persuaded Durkheim to ask Simmel for a collaboration with L’Année Sociologique. In a letter to Bouglé from December 1896, he relates that Simmel accepted the invitation and proposed to write one article of 40 to 50 pages with the title ‘Die Selbsterhaltung der Gesellschaft’ (Durkheim 1975: 394). Durkheim was concerned with differentiating his sociological approach from the other trends of sociology in the French-speaking world, especially from George Tarde’s sociopsychology and René Worms’ biology-inspired organicisms, which founded sociology on other sciences, depriving it of the necessary scientific autonomy. Simmel’s foundation programme for a ‘science of social forms’ seemed thus to strengthen Durkheim’s conception of a ‘sociology of social facts’. Yet, as Simmel submitted his study on the ‘self-preservation of society’, the divergence between the respective sociological approaches came to the fore. At first, the paper presented formal problems because it was about twice the length of the agreed contribution. Durkheim requested Bouglé, who already had some experience in the matter, to translate Simmel’s texts into French (Durkheim 1975: 408). According to Bouglé’s suggestion, the title was changed to ‘Comment les formes sociales se maintiennent’ (Durkheim 1975: 407). Furthermore, Durkheim asked Simmel to shorten the text by removing, in particular, the passages where he analysed the issues of honour and Zionism.2 As Rammstedt shows, this step has to be seen as a consequence of the particular political situation in France during the Dreyfus Affair. Durkheim engaged in the battle for the restoration of the injured honour of the French officer Dreyfus, who had been unjustly condemned for high treason and like him was of Jewish origins. This context may have compelled Durkheim to want the passages of Simmel’s study removed as they could have become the object of a political attack by the anti-Dreyfusards. Durkheim was persuaded that he could succeed in establishing sociology as an academic discipline in France only if all suspicions were overcome that his scientific stance might be influenced by a political Weltanschauung, including Zionism (Durkheim 1976: 169). Durkheim personally provided the translation of a second text version by shortening it and deleting the passage about honour, as he wrote to Bouglé on 25 October 1897 (Durkheim 1975: 413). Yet, before the final publication, Durkheim seems not to have asked Simmel for an authorisation of the final editorial revisions (GSG 19: 66–106).3 After that, a breakdown of the cooperation was inevitable (Fournier 2013: 271). The debate between Simmel and Durkheim nevertheless did not stop completely. On the one hand, Durkheim went on reviewing The Philosophy of Money as well as some preprints of the chapters of Simmel’s Sociology (Durkheim 1901, 1902, 1904a, 1904b), even if he did it out of a sort of resentful narrow-mindedness. On the other hand, in the following years Durkheim and Simmel went on positioning themselves with regard to each other’s research programme on neutral terrain by publishing the respective studies in Italian sociological journals. The reconstruction of this dialogue from afar allows above all an understanding of Simmel’s reception of Durkheim’s reproach of ‘individualistic psychologism’. A measured reflection on this point was crucial for the further development of

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Simmel’s theoretical approach, which flowed into the introduction chapter of Soziologie as well as in the excursus on ‘How Is Society Possible?’ (GSG 11: 42–61; English: GSG 18: 498–518). The divergence between Durkheim and Simmel took on the character of a dispute about the epistemological foundation of sociology. Four different sources allow an understanding of the main points of disagreement. 1. Durkheim’s correspondence with Bouglé on the ‘case of Simmel’ during the preparation of the first volume of L’Année Sociologique 1896–1898. 2. Durkheim’s formulation of the difference between collective and individual representations in the homonymous study appearing in 1898, shortly after publication of the first volume of L’Année Sociologique, in the Revue de métaphysique et de morale (Durkheim 1898). 3. Simmel’s extended version of his programmatic study on the problem of sociology in the Italian essay ‘Il problema della sociologia’, published 1899 in La riforma sociale (GSG 19: 107–116). 4. Durkheim’s reply to Simmel’s Italian essay in ‘La sociologia e il suo dominio scientifico’, published in 1900 in the Rivista italiana di sociologia (Durkheim 1900). From the very beginning of L’Année Sociologique, Durkheim struggled to persuade the members of the editorial team to adopt his sociological position. Bouglé was the most inclined to embrace Simmel’s methodology in reconstructing the individual stances which make possible the persistence of social institutions.4 Suspecting that a reduction of sociology to individual psychology would take place, Durkheim held a different opinion, as he had already written in a letter commenting on Bouglé’s Les sciences sociales en Allemagne on 14 December 1895 (Durkheim 1976: 166). Durkheim’s concern was above all to distinguish sociology as the study of ‘collective psychology’ from every individual psychology. An unequivocal assignment of Simmel’s sociology of social forms to the field of Durkheim’s collective psychology was, however, impossible. That unsettled Durkheim, as he explained in a further letter to Bouglé of 6 July 1897 during the hectic editorial work for the first issue of L’Année Sociologique. Sociology had to be established as a collective psychology capable of being completely independent from every individual psychology, and Simmel’s approach would not support this research programme (Durkheim 1975: 402). To provide a clear formulation of his viewpoint after the intricate work for the first volume of L’Année Sociologique, Durkheim wrote the essay ‘Représentations individuelles et représentations collectives’ (Durkheim 1898). Here, although without referring explicitly to Simmel, Durkheim established the theoretical position urging him to express his criticism towards the analyses included in Comment les formes sociales se maintiennent. According to Durkheim’s thesis, the distinction between individual and collective representations shows that the psychic domain is articulated in two different areas. These were to become the object of two autonomous sciences. Just as it is pointless to reduce individual psychology to the laws of physiology, it is impossible for Durkheim to trace the collective representations back to their background in individual psychology. He would not deny that society is founded on the totality of the associated individuals, but he claims that the system of relationships and representations, which

Sociological epistemology 81 emerges through their interaction, must be regarded as being autonomous from them. Thereby, Durkheim formulates his classical emergence-thesis (cf. Sawyer 2005: 100–124). He aims at demonstrating the independence of social facts by pointing out that collective representations belong to the external world and are not dependent on the psychic processes of single individuals. Accordingly, collective representations for Durkheim constitute social phenomena that impose themselves on the individuals, as laws, moral imperatives and religious creeds show. In short, collective representations are ‘social facts’ according to the definition of Durkheim’s methodology in The Rules of Sociological Method (Durkheim 1895a/2014: chap. 1). Through the theoretical option of emergence, Durkheim clarifies that he is interested neither in issues of legitimacy à la Weber (Weber 1921/2013: 183, 449 f.) nor in issues of praxeology à la Bourdieu (Bourdieu 1972). Furthermore, being grounded on the emergence-thesis, the sociology of social facts could not take into account Simmel’s cognitive interest in explaining the ‘validity foundation’ (Geltungsgrundlage) of social forms within social action. Here, Durkheim simply saw a reconstruction of individual psychological attitudes, which was utterly suspect to him, since it impeded concentrating exclusively on collective representations. Because of this misunderstanding, in Durkheim’s eyes Simmel’s sociology seemed to raise the claim of explaining complex social structures through individual psychology by applying the reductionist programme of modern political theory to sociology. Accordingly, Simmel’s sociological inquiries had to be assigned to the category of ‘individual psychology’. What is striking about this allegation is that Simmel in some way felt concerned by it and developed his analytical distinction between the form and the content of social reality to a critique of psychologism. The evolution of the text for the first chapter of Sociology shows by which means Simmel aimed at founding a sociological theory of the validity of social structure without recurring to individual psychology. In the Italian version of the study on the problem of sociology, which was published in 1899 in La riforma sociale, Simmel presented anew his approach distinguishing between contents and forms of social life (GSG 19: 107–116). In comparison to the article of 1894 (GSG 5: 52–61), the argument was sounder and the text almost completely reworded. It largely corresponds with the text published 1908 in the first chapter of the Sociology (GSG 11: 13–23; cf. Fitzi 1998). What was not included in the Italian article is the discussion of the differentiation between the sociological method of inquiring into action orientation and the psychology of empathy, which Simmel presented in Sociology (GSG 11: 24–42). Only a first and extended footnote of ‘Il problema della sociologia’ returned to the undertaking that was to occupy Simmel for the years ahead. One of the most important and until now quite never tackled tasks would be, [. . .] to find out and discuss the essential prerequisites that have to lie on the ground of our consciousness, so that a social science can be established, and that quasi constitute the forms a priori of its empirical content. (GSG 19: 112. Author’s translation)

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This methodological approach constitutes the basis of Simmel’s sociological epistemology as he formulated it in the excursus on ‘How Is Society Possible?’ (GSG 11: 42–61). A letter to Bouglé of 13 December 1899 relates how Simmel sent his ‘Il problema della sociologia’ (GSG 22: 342). In other words, Durkheim would have been informed about the publication, which incidentally appeared in the same journal as his 1895 publication of ‘Lo stato attuale degli studi sociologici in Francia’ (Durkheim 1895b). He must have perceived the study as a challenge, because soon afterwards he reacted with his ‘La sociologia e il suo dominio scientifico’, in which he directly referred to Simmel (Durkheim 1900/1975). The essay is an important record about the disagreement between the two founders of sociology because it sheds light on the perspective from which Durkheim read and criticised Simmel’s sociology. In his article, Durkheim remarks in a specific way about Simmel’s methodology of grounding sociology on the distinction between the form and the content of social reality. He acknowledges that Simmel takes an important step in establishing a scientific domain of research for sociology, focusing on what ‘makes society into society’ by abstracting the social forms from the whole of social reality. In Durkheim’s eyes, however, Simmel’s method is based on the assumption that there are, on the one hand, the ‘contents’ of societal phenomena and, on the other hand, the ‘processes of sociation’ (Vergesellschaftungen) as – so Durkheim’s interpretation – the ‘receptacle’ (le contenant) of those phenomena. Social forms represent for Simmel the only social reality in a proper sense, so that sociology has to become the science of the process of sociation in abstracto. Sociology is therefore to isolate pure forms – analogous to the method of geometry – from the miscellany of societal phenomena. By these means, however, for Durkheim only the appearance of scientific objectivity is established because sociology is actually abandoned to the individual speculation of the observer. The abstractions, which Simmel seeks, therefore remain according to Durkheim’s criticism, the result of his subjective Weltanschauung, instead of founding sociology as a science. Now, for Durkheim too, sociology needs procedures of abstraction, thus extracting its objects from the empirical material of society. Yet, these have to describe the facts following their ‘natural features’; otherwise, they produce ‘imaginary representations’. Accordingly, Durkheim arrives at the conclusion that Simmel’s distinction between the form and content of social reality, viz. the distinction between ‘le contenant et le contenu’ as Durkheim understood it, has to be arbitrary because it is not based on any material findings. It is quite striking to observe that Durkheim neither realised nor reflected even for a minute on the fact that Simmel was applying Kant’s methodology of regressive analysis to the research matter of sociology. Instead, Durkheim seems to address Simmel’s approach from a quite naïve positivistic point of view. This circumstance calls into question Schluchter’s definition of Durkheim’s sociological research programme as a ‘Kantian sociology’. Even if Schluchter’s claim is appropriate, it must be restricted solely to Durkheim’s essay of continuing Kant’s moral philosophy by sociological means through the grounding of a moral sociology, yet it must exclude the assumption that Durkheim’s research programme is grounded on Kant’s epistemology (Schluchter 2015: 107 ff.).

Sociological epistemology 83 Based on his presentation of Simmel’s sociological methodology, in the second part of ‘La sociologia e il suo dominio scientifico’, Durkheim went on to expose the advantages of his ‘sociology of social facts’ (cf. Durkheim 1895a/2014). The latter would not lead to abstract or imaginary representations, because its definition of social facts as ‘compulsory collective representations’ would allow for their clear distinction from all other social phenomena. Following these criteria, the forms of social relations would build not only the object of sociology, but also the traditions and the uses of religion, law and economy, thus the totality of the action-leading phenomena produced ‘by society’. These have the common trait of being produced by human groups who constitute their substrate. Sociology has therefore to concentrate on the latter and develop a ‘social morphology’ that allows for the reconstruction of the ‘material form’ of society. Having established this grounding knowledge, according to Durkheim, nobody would confuse sociology with psychology any longer. For Simmel, Durkheim’s critique could not go unanswered. The issue at stake was the foundation of a sociological methodology to enquire into the empirical validity and legitimacy of social structures. Due to the rapidly changing rhythm of modern sociation processes, the emergence of social forms per se does not allow for their reproductions. Sociology has to explain which processes enforce collective action orientations in everyday societal life. This concern was the incentive for Simmel’s implicit reply to Durkheim’s allegations. Its outcome is set out in the new section of the introductory chapter of Sociology (GSG 11: 24–42), which developed and amended the previous versions of the study on the ‘problem of sociology’ (GSG 5: 52–61; GSG 18: 27–37; GSG 19: 27–35, as well as GSG 19: 107–116). Up to the middle section of page 23 in the current edition of Simmel’s collected works (GSG 11: p. 23, r. 26), the text of chapter one in Sociology is largely equivalent to the Italian study of 1899 (GSG 19: 107–116). From this point onwards, however, apart from two further passages of the Italian study that were incorporated in the text in modified form, Simmel developed an entirely new introductory argument for the book format. He devised this contribution to ground the autonomy of social science, especially with regard to psychology. Similar to the 1894 article on the ‘problem of sociology’, the concept of form remained central, but it acquired further meaning, engaging in a debate with the competing grounding programmes of sociology. Without mentioning names, which was typical for the scientific prose of the day, Simmel compared his method with those of Durkheim and Weber (Durkheim 1895a/2014; Weber 1904). In contrast to Weber’s methodological concept of the ideal type, for Simmel social forms are not pure ‘historical individualities’. The same forms are to be found in different historical contexts. On the other hand, however, the theoretical elaboration of social forms cannot be developed on a purely abstract level but demands the application of the ‘interpretive understanding’ (Verstehen) of the historical material. Even if Simmel thus simply alludes to ‘a special training of the glance’, which allows for the recognition of the difference between form and content within the material of social interaction, and not a metaphysical intuition, he states, ‘one has to take the odium upon himself, to speak of the intuitive

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method’ (GSG 11: 29). It is difficult to assume that this remark was not intended as a veiled reference to Durkheim’s charge of ‘individual psychologism’. Yet the argument expounded in 1908 pursues the strategy of differentiating the methodology of sociology both from the natural sciences and from psychology. Sociological inquiries must introduce a certain number of empirical examples, the analysis of which leads to the development of sociological concepts. This methodological procedure, however, has to be followed until its final goal and cannot be interrupted in medias res, as Durkheim did, by criticising its intermediate results (GSG 11: 30). Furthermore, sociology has to take into account that the ‘sociological basic concept’ (der soziologische Grundbegriff) obtained thanks to interpretive understanding cannot be grounded on the principle of the general laws used in natural sciences (ibid.). The characteristics of the social forms have to be reconstructed analytically by comparing their implementation in the single empirical cases. In Sociology, Simmel dedicated himself to this task by typologically classifying the empirical multiplicity of the social forms instead of establishing a theoretical and hierarchically organised table of sociological basic concepts as Weber did in his posthumously published Soziologische Grundbegriffe (Weber 1921/2013: 147 ff.). Unlike Durkheim’s inquiry into the ascertainment of ‘collective representations with constraint character’, Simmel’s foundation of social science in chapter one of Sociology takes the shape of a ‘sociological theory of validity’, focusing on the issue of the ‘bearers of social forms’. This move has to be regarded as a reasoned reaction to Durkheim’s criticism of Simmel’s analysis of social reality in the essay on ‘Comment les formes sociales se maintiennent’ (GSG 19: 66–106). The object of sociology cannot consist in some abstract frameworks of action, which can be formulated in a constructivist manner or described statistically, but has to be attained through a methodologically led observation of the reciprocal action taking place (hin- und hergehend) between the socialised individuals (GSG 11: 31). The dynamic and intermittent character of sociation processes on the microsocial level, the sum of which according to Simmel holds society together, comes into focus. This assumption is an explicit criticism of Durkheim’s theory of social emergence and applies to all its subsequent variations, including the theories of social systems. The established macrosocial formations can only subsist under the condition that their bearers repeatedly enforce and reproduce their action frames of reference. Accordingly, the core problem of sociological theory building becomes the issue of social validity or the ‘legitimation of social orders’, as Weber calls it (Weber 1921/2013: 183). Simmel engages in an inquiry into the relationship between social action and social structure, i.e. into the micro– macro problematic, without setting it apart via an axiomatic assumption about the emergence of macrosocial formations. The ‘connective tissue’ that holds society together and prevents it from ‘breaking apart in discontinuous systems’ has to form the main object of sociological research (GSG 11: 33). Here, Simmel’s critical discussion of Durkheim’s allegation of individual psychologism is openly expressed. An application of the understanding method to the processes of individual psychology is necessary to develop the sociological theory of validity,

Sociological epistemology 85 because only in this way is it possible to make accessible to analysis the reciprocal actions between the atoms of society, which carry the fabric of society (ibid.). The study of the psychological material of reciprocal action allows for a demonstration of the microsocial sociation processes, which remain invisible for the macro-sociological observation. However, this must be carried out in the specific way that is characteristic for sociological understanding. For the subjective sense of the reciprocal, social action needs to be understood as building and maintaining social forms and not as an individual psychological process (GSG 11: 35). Simmel is aware that this methodological move of Soziologie exposes him to the allegation of psychologism. ‘The here planned investigations seem to become nothing else than chapters of psychology, at best of social psychology’ (ibid.). Therefore, and by implicitly alluding to Durkheim, he specifies what defines the methodological approach of his sociology. There ‘is indeed no doubt that all societal activities and instincts are based in minds, that sociation is a psychological phenomenon’ (ibid.). Societal reality would be merely a ‘puppet play’, if the motivations and the goals of social action were not to be taken into consideration for its explanation. Yet the sociological inquiry into the consciousness flow of the bearers of social relationships avoids leaning on individual psychology. The primary distinction for grounding sociology, therefore, is not Durkheim’s opposition between individual and collective psychology, but the distinction between a foundation of humanities on psychology and the methodology of sociological understanding. Thus, Simmel deliberately distances himself from Dilthey’s research programme by showing that the answer to the issue of cultural and social sciences is not given by the development of a hermeneutics grounded on descriptive psychology (Dilthey 1883). It is methodologically decisive for the development of social science that the ‘scientific treatment of mental facts by no means has to be psychology’ (GSG 11: 36). The understanding methodology is not compelled to focus on ‘the law of the mental processes’ that carry a specific content of consciousness because it can concentrate instead on that ‘content and its configuration’ (ibid.). This assumption builds the cornerstone for Simmel’s sociology of culture. The introductory chapter of Sociology deploys the programme for an understanding of sociology as Simmel and Weber developed it in their work. A postpositivist research project takes shape, overcoming both Dilthey’s hermeneutics and Durkheim’s structuralist methodology of inquiring into ‘collective representations with compulsive character’. It focuses on the forms of consciousness which guide the reciprocal social action of the individuals by bracketing the psychic processes accompanying it (GSG 11: 38). In opposition to Durkheim Règles (Durkheim 1895a/2014), Simmel’s sociological methodology does not withdraw into a psychology of collective representations; rather, it develops a cultural–sociological approach to the contents of consciousness in order to determine their meaning for the formation and the reproduction of social relationships. Thanks to these results, the inquiry of the opening chapter of Sociology not only paved the way for the further development of understanding sociology in the work of Max Weber but also gave impetus to the latter evolution of the sociology of knowledge. The

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epistemological foundation of Simmel’s understanding sociology is spelled out in the concluding excursus of chapter one of Sociology (GSG 11, 42–62), without any grounding on individual or collective psychology (cf. Chapter 2.4). Simmel provides a sociological research programme that does not arise from Kant’s moral philosophy but from a critical assessment of his epistemology. Hence, Simmel’s sociology decidedly deviates from the positions of his contemporary Durkheim. Yet, without the latter’s allegation of ‘individual psychologism’, Simmel’s theory building in the Sociology of 1908 would probably not have reached its final clarity. Although he mentioned no names, Simmel formulated a criticism of Durkheim’s foundation of sociology on collective psychology in the excursus on social psychology in Sociology, which can be read as final positioning toward his competitor Durkheim (GSG 11: 625–632).5 The excursus is included in the eighth chapter of Sociology, where the extended German version of the article on the ‘Selbsterhaltung der sozialen Gruppe’ is published, which provoked Durkheim’s criticism (GSG 11: 556–686; GSG 5: 311–372), so that the excursus can be regarded as a reflection about this subject. Simmel opens his examination with a defensive remark. All the inquiries presented in the chapter are substantially psychological in character; therefore, here sociology seems to become another name for social psychology (GSG 11: 625). Yet, Simmel rejects the presumed criticism with direct reference to the 1908 devised counter-argument that he developed with effect from page 35 of chapter one of Sociology. Accordingly, the delimitation between sociology and psychology is to be treated as well grounded, while the meaning of ‘social psychology’ is still to be clarified. For if one does not want to ‘designate individual psychology as the place of sociology’, there is a risk of mistaking sociology and social psychology (ibid.). This claim looks like a counter-allegation aimed at Durkheim’s sociology of social facts as ‘collective representations with compulsive character’. In order to complete the separation of the two sciences, for Simmel a dividing line has to be drawn between sociology and social psychology. Evidence of the divide between sociology and psychology shall be achieved, on the one hand, by showing that collective social psychology is not at all independent from individual psychology; and, on the other hand, by explaining the reasons for the emergence of the social psychology approach. Language, state, law, religion and custom are supra-individual formations, so that the research of their producer may give rise to the fallacious conclusion that a supra-individual subject is involved. By the action of such a subject, social psychology could intend to identify its specific domain (GSG 11: 626). This approach was adopted by the representatives of the so-called Völkerpsychologie, who like Moritz Lazarus in Berlin and Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig were among Durkheim’s and Simmel’s academic teachers (Laucken 1998). According to Simmel, however, among the duties of sociology is overcoming the ‘mysticism’ of this transposing ‘mental processes outside of the mind’ (GSG 11: 626). Sociology has methodologically to distinguish between the concrete mental processes from which law and custom, language and culture, religion and life forms arise and their respective ideal contents. It is futile to discuss whether general cultural formations are the product of individual or ‘social minds’ because they are of a third type that

Sociological epistemology 87 overcomes this dichotomy. As the excursus of the first chapter of Sociology on ‘How Is Society Possible?’ shows, they are ‘objective forms of subjective consciousnesses’ (GSG 11: 41). However, for Simmel it is comprehensible that there is an objective methodological difficulty for inquiring into the duality of social reality and that this produces the mystification, which presumes the existence of collective subjects. The insurmountable lack of insight into the mental activity of social actors leads to connecting together the different individual psychological actions into an ‘indifferent mass’, building ‘the unity of a psychic subject’ that appears to be their bearer (GSG 11: 628). Accordingly, the most relevant methodological risk for sociological research is the tendency to hypostatisation and the consequent production of social ontology in the sense of the pre-scientific societal self-interpretation. Yet, the origin of the idea of ‘collective social subjects’ is to be found within individual psychology. Their emergence requires the existence of a plurality of psychic unities interacting with each other. Nevertheless, sociology has to enquire into the reciprocal action of the social actors to show how the collective formations come into being instead of hypostatising their apparent unity. At this point, the criticism of Durkheim’s theory of social facts becomes explicit (Durkheim 1895a/2014: chap. 1). Simmel addresses what he considers an abdication of the scientific method in the face of the classical ontological speculation and thereby reverses the argument Durkheim used against his inquiries in 1897. ‘Here occurs the big misunderstanding: the uniform external result of many subjective psychological processes is interpreted as the result of a uniform psychological process – namely a process in the collective soul’ (GSG 11: 628). The apparent unity of the result is mistaken for the unity of its cause. This is the fundamental criticism Simmel formulates against collective psychology. Yet the speciousness of this conclusion, whereon the whole collective psychology in its general difference to individual psychology grounds, is obvious: the unity of the collective actions that only lies on the side of the apparent result, is obtained surreptitiously on the side of the inner cause, of the subjective bearer. (GSG 11: 628 f.) The same verdict applies for Simmel to the so-called mass psychology (Le Bon 1895). The action of a collective subject seems to take shape in crowd behaviour, but in reality, it is only a question of ‘the quality of action by individuals, who are influenced by the fact that the single is surrounded by others’ (GSG 11: 629). Moreover, the same criticism applies to the psychic phenomena that are observed statistically. Their frequency – including the frequency of suicide rates – cannot be confounded with the presence of a collective subject (GSG 11: 630). These social types are the product of the synoptic scrutiny of the researchers and are not social subjects. Therefore, describing them statistically does not suffice to explain their incidence. The latter has to be reconstructed on the basis of the interaction between the social actors involved and cannot be obtained surreptitiously through the hypostasis of a collective subject causality.

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Insofar as long as the methodology building ‘social facts’ does not take into account the mechanisms of interaction between social actors, it has nothing to do with sociology. This conclusion led Simmel to fortify his specific methodological approach to what can be called the classical sociological ‘micro–macro problem’ (cf. Coleman 1990). Max Weber proposed a solution to the problem by methodologically developing a multilevel sociological theory of social action, social orders and social organisations (Weber 1921/2013: 147 ff.). Even if it grounds the methodology of understanding sociology, Simmel’s approach constitutes an alternative to Weber’s paradigm. It proceeds from a strict social actor perspective and founds a multilevel theory of social action and social forms based on a critical Neo-Kantian theory of the consciousness requirements a priori, which are necessary to enable social actors to take part in social relationships. Thus, Simmel’s sociological research project strictly differentiates itself from both individual and collective psychology and adopts a position that is the polar opposition to Durkheim’s sociology. Historically, nonetheless, if Durkheim had not raised his objection about individual psychology at the early stage of its exposition, Simmel’s sociological epistemology may never have developed into its accomplished form.

Notes 1 Cf. G. Simmel, Letter to C. Bouglé of 22. 06. 1895, Fonds Bouglé, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, now in GSG 22, p. 149 f. Cf. also ‘Editorischer Bericht’ in GSG 18, pp. 518–534, p. 526. 2 Cf. O. Rammstedt, ‘Editorischer Bericht’, in: GSG 11, pp. 877–905, p. 885. Cf. also E. Durkheim, letter to C. Bouglé of 18. 09. 1897, in: E. Durkheim, 1975, pp. 407–409. G. Simmel, letter to C. Bouglé of 11. 10. 1897, Fonds Bouglé, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, now in GSG 22, pp. 258 and E. Durkheim, letter to C. Bouglé of 25. 10. 1897, in: Durkheim, 1975, pp. 412–413. 3 Cf. O. Rammstedt, ‘Editorischer Bericht’, in: G. Simmel, Soziologie, GSG 11, pp. 877–905, p. 889 f. Simmel published his complete study in German entitled: ‘Die Selbsterhaltung der socialen Gruppe. Sociologische Studie’, in: Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft in Deutschen Reich, ed. G. Schmoller, 22nd Year, 1898, 2nd Vol., pp. 589–640 (now in GSG 5: 311–372). Later on, Simmel included the text as the eighth chapter in the Sociology, cf. GSG 11 pp. 556–686. 4 One may say that Durkheim’s position eventually prevailed. For Bouglé, however, the issue of the relationship between sociology and psychology remained a central concern, so that in 1935 the opening chapter of his Bilan de la sociologie française contemporaine was still dedicated to it (Bouglé 1935: 1–30). 5 The text had already appeared in Weber’s Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik a few months before (GSG 8: 355–362).

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Simmel’s pivotal achievement in the Soziologie of 1908 is his foundation of sociological epistemology on the a priori of sociation. Social reality is regarded as the domain of ‘life experience’ (Lebenserfahrung), which is related to social interaction and can be explained by reconstructing the conditions of its possibilities within the consciousness of social actors. Simmel derives the method to reconstruct the a priori of sociation by developing and adapting the so-called regressive analytical method of Kant’s epistemology to the field of social reality (GSG 11: 42–61; English: GSG 18: 498–518). Sociological epistemology thus gives an answer to the basic question of the cultural sciences as Dilthey formulated this in his pioneering ‘Introduction to the Humanities’ (Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften) (Dilthey 1883). Yet, Simmel achieves this result without recourse to hermeneutics based on individual psychology. A science of the complex plurality of ‘human activity’ (menschliche Tätigkeit), which is not restricted to the knowledge of the sciences of nature (as was Kant’s epistemology), has to move from the awareness that no cultural science is possible in complex societies without taking into account the social relationships of acting individuals (GSG 11: 13 f.). Consequently, in modernity no philosophical anthropology in the classical sense is possible any longer, unless this is sociology. The foundation of a ‘science of society and history’ in Dilthey’s sense can only be given on the basis of sociological epistemology, i.e. by taking into account the fact that society is an ‘objective form of subjective consciousnesses’ and is therefore in a state of constant tension and mutual adaptation of both dimensions of social reality (GSG 11: 41). The effort of establishing a relationship between the objective logic of social structure and the subjective logic of social action therefore represents the core of the never-ending production process of society. According to Simmel’s sociological epistemology, this performance is of cultural character because it produces, in whatever way, a ‘meaning’ relating the objective needs of social structure with the subjective motivation of the social actors, becoming their bearer (third a priori, GSG 11: 58 f.). Hence, from the epistemological perspective of a theory of the participant in social interaction, Simmel’s third a priori of sociation addresses the key issue of sociological theory, which Weber later conceptualised from the point of view of the observer of social reality with the category of the ‘meaning of social action’ (Weber 1921/2013).

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Consequently, culture cannot be considered as a secondary result of economic or social action, as Marx and Durkheim argue, but has to be explained as the constitutive performance holding society together by relating the logic of social structure and social action to each other. The concept of culture thus becomes the grounding category of sociology, so that culture sociology cannot count as a special sociology among others, but rather becomes the central pillar of sociological theory. Following the logic of the third a priori of sociology, meaning or sense must be considered as the cohesive material of social reality that allows for the steady production, reproduction and change of the social fabric. Accordingly, sociology must enquire into the mechanisms that permit these processes by reconstructing the everyday cultural work that interrelates social action and social structure. Furthermore, the approach of sociological epistemology allows for an extension of the cone of light from the theory of the sociological a priori that analyses the production of social meaning in abstracto to the manifold ways that cultural performance is delivered in the different fields of modern highly differentiated societies. Besides the domain of life experience, which is strictly related to social interaction, various other spheres become the focus of a similar inquiry that is based on Simmel’s regressive method and works out the a priori of consciousness that forms the premise for their existence. Cultural work of highly diverse quality constitutes the object of sociological inquiry because it grants the production of meaning as the material that knits together society. The conflict-fraught relationship between objective and subjective culture, which Simmel described in The Philosophy of Money (GSG 6: 617–654), thus becomes the object of the research programme developed by Simmel from 1908 about the different domains of culture. Given that modern societies tend to be differentiated as objective fields led by autonomous logic, the methodology that Simmel developed to explain the everyday settlement of social structure and social action can be applied to the enquiry into the manifold ways that objective and subjective culture integrate with each other in the various societal fields. This approach promotes the study of cultural work that holds together social reality. It takes into account that in highly differentiated societies there is a need to combine such disparate contents of objectified culture that cultural work threatens to stagnate, so jeopardising social integration. Modern societies fall into various spheres, which are structured according to different logics. The extension of the methodological approach of sociological epistemology to each of these allows the working out of the a priori of consciousness that govern the different kinds of socially mediated life experience and give rise to the existence of the manifold spheres of society. Accordingly, the economy, politics, law, religion, science, art and so forth are seen as the product of the different logic sets of cultural work. They become the object of a unitary research programme that examines which a priori of social experience must be presupposed to permit their respective existence. By applying the methodology of sociological epistemology to the different domains of modern society, Simmel reconstructs the specific cultural performance that links social action and

Sociology of culture 91 social structure and carries out the dialectical interchange between subjective and objective culture within each societal field. Seen from the viewpoint of sociological theory, sociological epistemology therefore promotes an original approach to analyse the tension-fraught relationship between micro- and macrosocial dynamics, which reorganises the hierarchy of the grounding sociological concepts in a completely innovative way. Not society but rather culture becomes the superordinate category of sociology because the different kinds of cultural work are seen as constituting the basic integrative performance of society (third a priori, GSG 11: 58 f.). On the one hand, social interaction stricto sensu counts as one domain of experience among the others, since it relies on the imperative of cultural work. On the other hand, however, every domain of culture is seen as a product of the sociation processes that relate subjective and objective culture in the everyday struggle for the integration of social action and social structure. Hence, ‘the societal’ (das Soziale) represents the grounding dimension of social reality in that it deploys the means of cultural work that is necessary to integrate society in its various fields, as the three a priori of sociation show. Yet, cultural work follows distinctive logics within the different domains of society with the result that sociology must reconstruct this in all its complexity.

3.1 Qualitative societal differentiation Under the influence of Parsons, contemporary sociology refers to functional differentiation as the modern form of social differentiation (Parsons 1951). The idea is that society develops different domains that are specialised in delivering a particular performance to the rest of society, so that each societal sphere can be assigned to a specific ‘function of society’ as a whole. Society is seen as a living organism that consists of a number of organs that cooperate in assuring the life and wealth of the whole, as was already argued by the biology-inspired sociology of the 19th century (Schäffle 1875–1878; Spencer 1876/1882–1885). In the later ‘radicalised functionalism’ (Schluchter 2015: 535–561), the relationship between the different societal domains is considered as being of secondary importance, so the focus of study necessarily highlights the ‘internal functionality’ of the cultural spheres as social systems (Luhmann 1984/2005). Classical sociologists like Durkheim, Simmel or Weber had a quite different understanding of modern societal differentiation. Their attention remains focused on the fact that highly differentiated societies tend to give rise to societal domains that follow an autonomous logic and do not accept the leading function of any particular domain. The process is regarded as a contingent societal phenomenon that does not follow any natural law, including the laws of evolutionary biology. Furthermore, classical sociologists make no axiomatic assumptions about the relationships between the different societal domains; they refuse to subordinate sociological research to precast metaphors borrowed from other scientific domains. Neither the biological– functional character of society as a living being, nor a predetermined harmony between societal domains, nor conflict, nor the prevalence of one domain, like religion, politics or economy over and above the other, can be turned into the

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unscrutinised axiomatic premise of sociological theory. Whatever relationships persist between the different societal spheres is a question that must be cleared on an empirical level of inquiry. Such relationships can be those of cooperation and exchange, competition, colonisation or of reciprocal disregard, but this can only be determined a posteriori. Hence, classical sociological theories are theories of ‘qualitative societal differentiation’ but not of functional differentiation. The particular aspect of Simmel’s theory is given by the fact that he always develops a theory of the parallel differentiation of social structure and social action by questioning their relationship in a similar vein as that of the sociological a priori. Weber gave his classical assessment of qualitative societal differentiation as a commentary on the degrees and directions of the religious denial of the world in his ‘intermediate reflection’ (Zwischenbetrachtung) of the Economic Ethics of the World Religions that he first published as an article in 1915 (MWG I/19: 479–522; Weber 2004). The rationalisation of religion provoked by the rise of redemption prophecies in the axial age differentiated them, on the one hand, from the influence of the mundane spheres of reality such as economy and politics, and let religion assert the claim of subordinating the world to its ethics of fraternity. On the other hand, the self-differentiation of the other societal domains, following an intrinsic objective logic, inspired their growing resistance against every attempt of external regulation, especially by religious ethics. Due to the qualitative differentiation of societies, religion was thus caught in a reciprocal relationship of conflict with the secular orders and powers of the world that established their autonomy. After a longer historical development, modern societies are differentiated in terms of the autonomous spheres of the economy, politics, law, art, science, sexuality and so on. These domains are characterised by a relationship of continuous competition for leadership on social action. Social actors must come to terms with the substantial ‘polytheism of values’, i.e. with the perpetual conflict between different action orders in qualitatively differentiated societies (MWG I/17: 99). Hence, Weber’s assessment of the issue of social differentiation focuses first on the structural element of competition between action orders; then, he analyses the consequences for action orientation, i.e. for the individual conduct of life. In contrast to Weber, as the reader of Über sociale Differenzierung expects (GSG 2: 109–295), Simmel undertakes an analysis of the parallel qualitative differentiation of societal structure and of the individual personality in complex societies by strongly accentuating the creative potential of social action. Interestingly, Simmel also develops his analysis of qualitative social differentiation in the context of a study on religion, i.e. in Die Religion, which he wrote in 1906 at the request of his pupil Martin Buber for the series Die Gesellschaft (GSG 10: 39–118, 409–414; Simmel 1941/1942–2008: 61). In highly differentiated societies, as Simmel’s theory of culture shows (GSG 5: 560–582), social life is subordinated to a number of external powers. The result is a wide fragmentation of the personality of social actors, whose different spheres are led by the autonomous logic of respective social circles. Apparently, and this was the result of the analysis in The Philosophy of Money, there is no escape from the modern fragmentation of the social actor (GSG 6: 446 ff.), so that Simmel still writes

Sociology of culture 93 about the ‘Fragmentary Character of Life’ in August 1916 (GSG 13: 202–216). From a different perspective of analysis, however, Simmel shows that the creativity of social action has the potential to overcome the modern human condition by regrouping all the content of life experience in the context of a particular approach to the world. This attitude, which aims to make sense of life experience, is also an expression of the cultural work that is addressed by the third a priori of sociation. Furthermore, this approach does not grant an automatic reversal of the fragmentation of modern life, although it can overcome it under specific conditions. According to Simmel, social actors can choose a ‘predominant logic’ for governing their social action, so that the fragmented content of social reality is reordered under the particular perspective of art, religion, economy, politics and so on (GSG 10: 42). The grasp of social action from the point of view of a specific logic represents a modality for realising the third a priori of sociation with consequences that also influence the order of social structure because the intersection of the different social circles, where the social actor is active, acquires a completely different meaning. Consequently, the number of social actors who orient towards a specific logic of action also mainly determines the way in which society is structured. In Die Religion, Simmel focuses on the perspective that religion casts on world and action, yet a similar assessment applies to each qualitative differentiated domain of modern society. The allocation of the totality of the world fragments to a particular perspective depends on the subjective logic of social action. According to the analysis of the third a priori of sociation, the mind constitutes the connecting force that relates to each other the disparate contents of consciousness that characterise life experience within complex societies. Following the most diverse impulses, emotions and choices, social actors let a specific qualitative nuance of consciousness predominate and paint life contents with a specific colour. Hence, not only the objectified logics of the qualitative differentiated domains in complex societies attempt to draw their specific complexion over the totality of social reality, but also the subjective nuances of consciousness that motivate the social actors. The logics of social structure and social action enter into a reciprocally determined relationship on the level of qualitative societal differentiation. Accordingly, if in the perspective of the social actor religion, art, politics or the economy constitute the keynote of existence, the different domains of society, i.e. their disparate contents, organise around it. However, this approach to social action does not lead to the sole reign of one qualitative differentiated logic over the whole of qualitative differentiated social reality. Rather, it simply points to the expression of all its possible contents ‘through its language’. Qualitative societal differentiation persists, but it is subjectively subsumed under a predominant logic of social action. This applies notably to religion that conveys all world contents through its language, even if its oddest result is a ‘negation’ of the secular world orders (GSG 10: 46). Yet, the same dynamics involves the logic and language of every societal domain, if it becomes the overall focus of social action. Thanks to a particular approach to life experience, all the disparate contents of the world come to expression under

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its control by relating the manifold domains of social action under a common point of view. Different meaningful ‘stances to world and life’ (Attitüden zu Welt und Leben) immediately fall into a relationship of competition claiming the same right of shaping all the disparate contents of qualitative differentiated societies. Yet, which approach prevails on social action depends on the attitude of the single actors, who decide which logic will lead their cultural work, so relating together the world fragments by following the logic of the third a priori of sociation. According to the naïve stance towards the world, as Simmel underlines, only one reality seems to exist, that of everyday practical life experience. Yet, examining the shaping of reality through art, religion, theoretical speculation and science, as well as through the feeling of love, produces the awareness that ‘practical reality’ is equally only one possibility among others. The same contents of life experience can be ordered through the stances of art, religion, law, politics, economy, science and so on. In contrast to Schutz’s phenomenology of social life, therefore, according to Simmel the everyday lifeworld does not constitute a paramount reality in highly differentiated societies (Schutz 1972: 237–298). The practical order of reality is of course the most appropriate to achieve the goals of the fight for the survival of the species, yet it constitutes merely one order among others in qualitative differentiated societies. By contrast to less complex societies, here, the consciousness of the social actors is free to order the world contents following different principles and so produce a world that is shaped according to different logics of social action. The qualitative differentiation of social reality therefore has its roots within the manifold logic of social action which gives shape to world contents within social interaction. The task of sociology is to reconstruct how social action produces its different logics, and how these become autonomous by constituting objective domains of social structure. For these reasons, Simmel’s cultural sociology provides an action theory based on an explanation of the continuous establishment, depletion and change of qualitative social differentiation in complex societies. Different subjective logics lead social action by producing the objects of different domains of socially determined experience and following the scheme of the sociological a priori. The products of the cultural work then gather to form clusters of the objective culture and develop an intrinsic logic which claims to be followed by the social actors (GSG 5: 560–582). Social action stances, however, can differently relate the objectified contents of social life by following diverse logics. The result is permanent tension between the subjective logic of action creativity and the objective logic of social structure which characterises qualitative differentiated societies and builds the core of Simmel’s sociological theory of culture. Complex societies never develop one static and perennial hypostasised social structure, whose functioning can be traced back to a pre-cast metaphor borrowed from other scientific domains. Rather, they consist of multiple, alternative and competing perspectives about the shaping of social structure that fight for predominance. The dynamics of qualitative societal differentiation, therefore, must be reconstructed empirically and cannot be subsumed under axiomatic assumptions about the relationship between the different societal domains. The goal of Simmel’s middle

Sociology of culture 95 phase of work, starting in around 1908, was to show how the tension-fraught dynamics between the logics of social action and social structure develops in the different cultural spheres.

3.2 Economy and the social realm Simmel formulated his first assessment of the rise of an autonomous sphere of culture in The Philosophy of Money by referring to Kant’s epistemological methodology. The interacting social actors produce certain kinds of objects of experience under the impulse of a determined subjective stance of consciousness. These objects then gather to autonomous societal domains that orient themselves towards an objective logic, so that at the end of the day the social actors must follow the imperatives of reified societal spheres. The task of sociology is to explain how the autonomisation processes develop in the qualitative differentiated domains of society. This also applies to the economy. Simmel’s inquiry into the formation of economic values represents the first example of the application of the methodology which he later refined in the studies for the sociology of 1908. This first occurred in a footnote included in the Italian article on the ‘Problem of Sociology’ (GSG 19: 112), and then in the introductory epistemological excursus of the monograph (GSG 11: 42-61). As usual for Simmel’s sociological epistemology, the analysis of the rise of the qualitative differentiated domain of economy starts with the investigation of economic value as a form of relationship between the acting subject and the items of this particular portion of social action. The economy is examined as a construction of social reality under the principle of subjective volition and therefore as a domain of experience that increases in complexity with the ongoing differentiation of the personality. According to Simmel’s value theory in The Philosophy of Money, the separation of the objects from the acting subject arises through the lack of immediate satisfaction for subjective needs, which supplies the objects of volition with an autonomous value. The objects gain worth because they are not directly attainable. From an epistemological point of view, the reciprocal differentiation of the subject and the object of experience can then be explained by applying Kant’s ‘regressive analytical method’ to the volition mechanism (Kant 1783: 253–383). The reference to Kant in The Philosophy of Money is explicit. Simmel writes that the conditions of possibility for experience are, ‘as Kant once says’, the conditions of possibility for the objects of experience (GSG 6: 34). Accordingly, the same assessment applies to the conditions of possibility for the objects of volition which enable the rise of autonomous values. The precondition for the existence of a ‘world of values’ is given by the circumstance that through the negation of the immediate satisfaction of subjective needs the object and subject of volition are differentiated from each other. The objects constitute themselves by gaining distance to the subject. Moreover, they are perceived as values because volition has to overcome a given spatiotemporal distance to satisfy its goals (ibid.). Simmel sees the rise of the economic dimension of society as being the product of a multiplication of the spatiotemporal distance between the volition and

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its object, thus making the latter independent from the social actors. Neither the subject nor the object of the volition processes, however, stay at the centre of Simmel’s theory. Instead, the third aspect of the process comes to the fore, i.e. the objective claim to recognition arising from the objects of volition, as soon as they are not immediately attainable. This third category defines the status of the objects of volition as values. Consequently, the more the subjective needs of the social actors specialise through the development of the personality in the course of social differentiation and equally the more specific the objects become that can satisfy their needs. The refinement of the personality therefore goes hand in hand with the objectification of a manifold world of economic values. In short, the origins of the process of producing economic values are to be found in the reciprocal action between subjects and objects of volition, and above all in the increment of the spatiotemporal distance between both of these due to the ongoing social differentiation and gain in complexity of social reality. The investigation into the dynamics of the volition processes shows that values arise through the interaction between subjects and objects, and thus they have no ontological but relational character. The objectivity of the values results from the social process making the objects of volition independent from its subject. Accordingly, the assessment of the question of ‘what values are’ in their modern, economic shape consists of investigating the processes which lead to the autonomisation of the objective world of economic goods. The relationships of reciprocal action on the market play the key role in this respect. The exchange partners establish a combination of need and renouncement, thus conferring an objective reciprocal value to the objects to be acquired or alienated which they would never have on their own. By being exchanged for each other, the values of the commodities merge in a comparison between objective values, so that each one gains the measure of its value in terms of the other (GSG 6: 52). The act of economic exchange produces the reciprocal objective valuation of the exchanged commodities, thus mutually determining their value, so that the objects of the economic realm become completely independent form subjective volition. The social relationship of exchange creates a world of objects of experience that exist as economic values independently of their owners and gain objective validity through their potential exchangeability. The rise of money as the central integrating institution of market societies multiplies and automises the processes that objectify the value of commodities, so that social actors are no longer aware of the social origin of economic values. The ‘commodities fetishism’ thus becomes an essential phenomenon of qualitative differentiated societies. A world of substances and forces arises that determine themselves reciprocally through their own qualities, whether or not they correspond to the needs of the social actors (GSG 6: 48). An inversion emerges of the initial direction of the causal chain of volition. The economic values become supra-individual through the exchange process and relegate the social actors to a merely passive position. Subjective volition is no longer the master of needs, but rather must choose from the objective offer of the market. Subjective consciousness, which is the general source of valuation, distances itself from its objects of desire so

Sociology of culture 97 that they can measure their objective meanings against each other without any recourse to it. In the original volition processes, social actors provide the objects to be exchanged with a subjective quantum of value. Later, they are delivered to the objective mechanisms of exchange which impersonally and objectively determine the reciprocal values of the commodities. Due to the quality and quantity of the exchange acts which characterise developed monetary economies, a uniform and autonomous sphere of economic values finally arises that remains in an objective relation among each other (GSG 6: 53). A compact sphere of independent economic values confronts the social actors with its claims to recognition. Thus, the societal domain of economic values eventually becomes independent and, like an alien power, opposes the creativity of social action. In the early analysis of the rise of the economic sphere, Simmel applies Kant’s epistemological approach, which is grounded on the assumption that the conditions of possibility for experience are equally the conditions of the possibility for objects of experience (GSG 6: 34). Methodologically and in a much more reflected way, Simmel then reconstructs, as we have seen (Chapter 2.4), the conditions of possibility of sociation by asking how society is possible as an ‘objective form of subjective consciousnesses’ (GSG 11: 42–61). The main difference characterising Simmel’s analysis of social reality is that he does not reconstruct its epistemological foundations as a relationship between subject and object, as was the case with the rise of economic values from subjective volition. Sociological epistemology is grounded in observing the circumstance that reciprocal action takes place between different action centres that perceive each other as subjects and dispose of the same capabilities of being aware of their social relationships. According to Simmel, social interaction is in principle dialogic and must be inquired into from this perspective, as he also argued in his ‘Fragment About Love’ (GSG 20: 116–175). It is interesting to note that Buber later developed this theme in a normative context (Buber 1923/2008). From the perspective of sociological epistemology, the ‘other actor’ is no object of perception but rather an ‘acting you’ who can never be known outright, but only estimated in his possible activity as an autonomous centre of social action. Interaction between social actors is therefore dependent on a ‘reciprocal stereotyping’ (GSG 11: 47) and on ‘taking into account the stereotypes’ that the other social partner or different social circles have about oneself (GSG 11: 51). Social stereotypes can be more or less abstract, depending on the social distance between the acting subjects, as the analysis of the figure of stranger shows (GSG 11: 764–771). However, such stereotypes can never be overcome completely, not even in intimate relationships. Therefore, according to Simmel, there is no place for communitarian authenticity in society, even in less differentiated ones. Social actors must come to terms with the manifold stereotypes and expectations that the different social circles nourish by relating them in whatever way with awareness of themselves as unitary beings that exist beyond every social stereotype. This process of producing social meaning is the core of the everyday cultural performance which social actors must deliver and represents the major precondition for maintaining social relationships within qualitative highly differentiated

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societies. The multiplication of the social roles and related fragmentation of the individual personality, however, confront modern social actors with an increasing risk of alienation that affects not only the domain of commodity production but also every domain of social life. The production of social reality as one realm of experience among others in qualitative differentiated societies is therefore characterised by major conflicts and risks that sociology must enquire into. Simmel addresses the central critical dimension of the phenomenon within the analysis of the relationship between objective and subjective culture and characterises it as an opposition between the logic of social action and social structure. Social actors participate in collective representations of society with objective character, yet they do so by starting from their own subjective experience of social relationships (GSG 11: 41). Both dimensions of social reality follow different and at times conflicting logic, so that the everyday effort of the social actors consists in relating them in a meaningful synthesis, which makes the social fabric a contingent product of their cultural work that holds society together (GSG 11: 59). Simmel’s theory of the social world as a sphere of qualitative differentiated societies has some major implications for the debate on theoretical sociology. One such implication is related to the differentiation of sociological epistemology from phenomenological sociology. Through the development of sociological epistemology, Simmel answers ante litteram the question of the rise and validity of intersubjectivity which animated the debate within phenomenological sociology later on (Husserl 1963; Schutz 1972: 174–206). The central question for the phenomenology of intersubjectivity was to explain how two or more social actors can share the certainty that an objective external world endures, can be aware of the existence of other minds, can build a common sense and eventually can develop objective roles for governing the social world. In the fifth Cartesian meditation Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, undertakes the construction of the other ego as well as of the shared external world, starting from the self-awareness of the experiencing ego. The related transcendental deduction leads from the consciousness of the own body to the consciousness of the body of the other ego and to the consciousness of the persistence of the other as a centre of experience (Husserl 1963: 121–177). Yet, as a theorist of society, Schutz, who undertakes a phenomenological foundation of sociological epistemology, proceeds from the opposite point of view. The starting point for analysing social reality is given by ascertaining the existence of a world of meanings that the social actors collectively share. Using Husserl’s term, Schutz calls it the ‘life-world’. This constitutes a reservoir of meaningful contents of experience which are common to the overwhelming majority of the members of a society and therefore constitutes an entity with an intersubjective objective validity. Consequently, Schutz is dissatisfied with Husserl’s tracking back intersubjectivity to the transcendental sense-giving activity of the isolated ego. Intersubjectivity cannot be inferred from the modalities whereby the single ego experiences the world. As a consequence, Schutz turns away from Husserl’s transcendentalism to Scheler’s social ontology and founds his theory of intersubjectivity on the notion of the ‘we-experience’, i.e. of the community to which the social actor belongs by asserting that this experience precedes every

Sociology of culture 99 experience of the ego (Scheler 1913/1916–1966: 469–580). This assumption strengthens the importance of the world of everyday life that, in Schutz’s view, must be made the object of sociological research by inquiring into the ‘invariant meaning structures of the community’ (Schutz 1972: 237–298). Thus, reconstructing an ontology of the lifeworld eventually becomes the core of Schutz’s phenomenological sociology. Yet, seen from the point of view of Simmel’s sociological epistemology, there are no invariant meaning structures of everyday life with ontological character. Social valid meaning is always the contingent product of competing objectivation processes in an ongoing struggle (third a priori) between the logic of social action (second a priori) and of social structure (first a priori). The qualitative different rows of consciousness, which refer to the social actor (subjective culture) or to the community (objective culture), continuously collide with each other and must be recombined in the everyday effort of cultural work. The qualitative differentiation of complex societies then increases the complexity of the sense-giving processes by a multiple and exposes them to the risk of failure. Neither the transcendental foundation of the experience of the social world by the isolated ego, nor the ontological foundation of the allegedly invariant meaning structures of the community suffice to explain how society is possible as an ‘objective form of subjective consciousnesses’ (GSG 11: 41). Simmel’s answer to the question of intersubjectivity is therefore grounded on the transformation of Kant’s transcendental method into sociological epistemology, which is based ab initio on the reconstruction of the relationship between social action centres in a tension field between institutionalised and non-institutionalised contexts of meaning that orient social action.

3.3 Politics One of the many misconceptions about Simmel’s sociological theory is that there is no space for political sociology in his research programme. Of course, there is a difference compared with Max Weber, whose sociological work is thoroughly politically reflected (Fitzi 2004). Yet, unlike Weber, instead of reconstructing the rise of political structures from a systematic point of view and translating the classical questions of political thought into sociological theory, Simmel analyses politics from the underlying methodological perspective of his sociology, i.e. the distinction between the form and content of social life. The similarities of the political forms of social action in different domains of social reality are regrouped and presented typologically (GSG 11: 160–283). The first impression is that of a never-ending description of different variations concerning the most significant schemes of political relationships. However, upon closer inspection a red line becomes apparent. The central pillar of Simmel’s sociological research programme lies in his conception of cultural work that informs the third a priori of sociation (GSG 11: 59). The preconditions for social integration can take the most diverse forms, including a political dimension, so that among other societal domains also a realm of politics arises.

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In his Soziologie of 1908, Simmel dedicates chapter three to politics (GSG 11: 160–283). The title theme, ‘Superiority and Subordination’ (Über- und Unterordnung), is reminiscent of the German preprint of the chapter ‘Soziologie der Über- und Unterordnung’ published in Weber’s Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik in 1907 (GSG 8: 180–257), as well as of Small’s English translation of an early version of the study in 1896 titled ‘Superiority and Subordination as Subject-Matter of Sociology’ (GSG 18: 38–82). This contribution to political sociology was the first in a series of nine articles on different topics that Simmel published up until 1910 in the American Journal of Sociology (GSG 18: 525 ff.). The American article can be regarded as a preliminary formulation of the material that Simmel further developed during the years ahead. Thus, already in the lecture on sociology which he held in 1899, the final part on superiority and subordination had been integrated and reorganised, as Park’s original lecture notes show (GSG 21: 310–344). The distinguishing aspect of Simmel’s political sociology is that from the outset it constitutes an examination of the core issue of ‘domination’ (Herrschaft), which is conceived as a social relationship in the sense of the grounding category of Simmel’s sociological research programme, i.e. of the ‘reciprocity of social action’ (soziale Wechselwirkung). Although domination has to be regarded by definition as the functional relationship between ‘ordering’ (Befehlenden) and ‘obeying’ (Gehorchenden) social actors (GSG 11: 710), it always consists of a relationship with two sides of agency, one of which is active and predominant, the other rather passive and attendant (GSG 11: 161 ff.). By introducing this sociological conception of power as the essential aspect of the political domain, Simmel gave substantial impetus to the development of political sociology, which widely influenced Weber’s definition of the difference between ‘power’ (Macht) and ‘domination’ (Herrschaft) in the ‘Basic Concepts of Sociology’ (MWG I/23: 147–215). Superiority, to put it in Simmel’s terms, is one half of a bi-directional form of social action that always implies a relationship of subordination. If the subordinated social actors, for whatever reason, do not tolerate and sustain the relationship of domination, no political structure can persist because the superordinate side cannot exert any authority. Therefore, according to Simmel, a certain, albeit minimal, degree of spontaneity is always present in every relationship of subordination. This also involves the cruellest subjection as long as there is no open rebellion by the subordinate party. The sociological question to be answered empirically is how much freedom the social actors are permitted by the relationship of subordination. Theoretically, however, sociology must give an account of the cultural work that the creativity of social action carries out to become and remain the bearer of a relationship of political subordination. Simmel analyses political relationships from the point of view of his theory of the parallel differentiation of the social group and the individual personality (GSG 2: 169 ff.). Depending on the degree of social differentiation that characterises social groups, domination assumes very different modes. In less differentiated societies, superiority is limited to individual persons such as the dignitaries who hold rigidly defined positions within the static structure of the social group

Sociology of culture 101 (GSG 11:168). Every relationship to traditionally established dignitaries is highly ritualised and allows for very little variation. Subordination applies to all the rest of the group members and affects the entirety of their person, so that domination is comprehensive and offers scope for a limited degree of individual freedom. With the increasing social differentiation and multiplication of social circles, in which social actors take part, the relationships of subordination are more and more confined to clearly defined aspects of social life and are associated with selected domains of the differentiated individual personality (GSG 2: 237 ff.). A wider scope of freedom becomes possible for the individuals because they are no longer wholly subordinated to the relationship of domination. From a social structural perspective of analysis, this development allows social groups to become much more flexible in reacting and adapting to societal change because their hierarchical structures are no longer so heavily dependent on individual dignitaries. Accordingly, the structure of domination changes by repositioning social actors in a multiplicity of social hierarchies in which they are in the same time super- and subordinated. Eventually, the redistribution of domination roles with limited scope on different levels of subordination makes the existence of modern bureaucracies possible as the modern form of political power (GSG 11: 246). The diversification of the structure of domination implies a process of objectification because it goes hand in hand with the transition from relationships of subordination under a person to subordination under the objective principles of institutionalised social structures (GSG 11: 168 ff.). In terms of its origins, every form of domination is produced by matters of fact. However, for its prolonged existence it needs some sort of ideal justification. The appeal to an abstract legitimation of factual superiority, however, also produces an objectification of the relationship of domination, which is then oriented by the ideal criteria of its justification. The development tends to lead to a complete substitution of the principle of personal superiority with some objective principles of domination. In a first step, the despotism of the dignitary, be it the pater familias or the charismatic leader, is substituted for by acting to conform with custom and habit. In the most developed case, however, an established objective order of law compels a ruler to comply with effective law passed by a legislator, as can be observed in modern democratic political systems (GSG 11: 240 f.). In qualitative differentiated societies, relationships of domination become more diffused and articulated, yet at the same time they concentrate in a particular societal domain that becomes separated from the other. Accordingly, the historical precondition for the rise of domination as a specialised societal domain, in which every social action conforms to the logic of power, lies in the formation of the modern territorial state. In a social structural perspective of analysis, the term ‘domination’, therefore, on the one hand, designates the reciprocal action between rulers and dominated. On the other hand, however, it also implies a space-sociological meaning and denotes the territory within which the process of domination gains its scope of influence (GSG 11: 710). From the perspective of social action, however, the meaning of superiority and subordination concerns the way in which both facets of the individual’s social

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positioning within society matches his personal qualification. In complex societies, the number of people who are qualified for superior tasks is higher than the available positions. Hence, in principle it is impossible for personal qualification and social position to perfectly correspond to each other (GSG 11: 280) – a clear delimitation of the third a priori of sociation (GSG 11: 59). In less differentiated societies, the contradiction between actual superiority and individual qualification is dealt with by the social stratification that separates people into classes and monopolises access to particular positions for restricted groups of persons. Superiority is achieved by usurpation without consideration for the competence of social actors, so that many people hold positions for which they are not qualified. At the other end of the typological scale, superiority is granted by conceding to the holder of a specific office an automatic dignity of qualification from the day that he enters office, as happens in the case of the Catholic priesthood (GSG 11: 282), i.e. based on ‘office charisma’ (Amtscharisma) as Weber argues (MWG I/22–4: 526–530). In all the remaining cases, the coordination of factual superiority or subordination with individual qualification remains an open question that the social actors must solve on their own by performing a political variation of the cultural work which is presupposed by the third a priori of sociation. The tension-fraught relationship between individual qualification and positioning within societal hierarchy highlights the political variation of the fundamental epistemological problem of society. To understand how society can exist as an ‘objective form of subjective consciousnesses’ (GSG 11: 41) in political terms, it is important for sociology to explain how a political body capable of action can emerge from a multitude of social actors. Simmel addresses here the most classical issue of political theory since its formulation in Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651). In contrast to Weber’s political–sociological approach, which focuses on the monopoly of the legitimate use of force in Hobbes’s sense and proposes a sociological theory of sovereignty, Simmel develops his political sociology by applying the theory of the coordination a priori between social action and social structure (GSG 11: 42–61). The political body exists due to the implicit establishment of procedures that combine the disparate wills of social actors into their unitary, collective will. More than the rise of an irresistible sovereignty of one social actor or committee, it is thus the establishment of the practices which characterise parliamentary systems and democratic elections that can ensure the existence of the political bodies. In this respect, Simmel’s sociological research programme offers an assessment of the political sphere that goes beyond the sovereignty models and focuses ab initio on the question of the sociological meaning of democratic majorities. Simmel presents his theory of the rise of political bodies in the excursus in Soziologie on ‘Overruling’ (Überstimmung) (GSG 11: 218–228). The existence of social forms is grounded on the ongoing performance of coordinating the social action of the most disparate subjects within an objective framework of social roles which they must exert. According to Simmel, in the political sphere this process amounts to establishing political bodies based on the development of the ‘majority rule’ principle. This form of political coordination between social action and

Sociology of culture 103 social structure, however, cannot emerge before societies have reached a sufficient degree of qualitative differentiation. Therefore, it has to be seen as the product of a difficult historical development. Simmel devotes a typological reconstruction to the different decision procedures, which were grounded on the opposite principle of ‘unanimity rule’, and characterised the processes of political decisionmaking around Europe during the Middle Ages. The legal precondition for the establishment of the principle of majority rule was the definition of the ruler as the representative of a commonwealth by negating his privilege of becoming the personal owner of the sway (Imperium). This step of objectivation was necessary to move towards the idea that a political body is constituted on a more abstract level as an entity that is independent of every single member of the social group. This procedure of the legal redoubling of political entities beyond the simple sum of their members also concerns the history of the parliaments, which ceased to be the seat of advocacy for the interests of a particular social stratum and became the representative of the people as a whole (GSG 11: 222). Political representation thus emerged with its modern meaning (Shapiro et al. 2010). The building of political entities capable of acting on their own delivers a political solution to the conflict between the individual logic of the social actors and the logic of the social group as a whole. For Simmel, it was Locke who first formulated the idea that everybody entering the social contract also accepts the principle of majority rule and declares himself ready to become the bearer of the incoming political decisions, even if he voted against them. Before entering into the social contract, individuals are completely free and can only decide unanimously to join the association. Afterwards, however, they become social beings and can be outvoted, so that they have to understand themselves as part of their unity whose will is expressed in terms of the will of the majority (GSG 11: 223). Yet, the most typical notion of political development provoked by majority rule is given by Rousseau, who argues that the citizen’s vote contributes to the formation of the volonté générale. Hence, a citizen accepts the result of the election as a binding expression of his own will, even if his personal opinion diverges from it. In this sense, subordination under a majority verdict is simply the logical consequence of membership within the social unity. Thus, the political coordination between social action and social structure, for Simmel, cannot avoid being grounded on a violation of the minority. The underlying divergence between the human being as a social entity and as an individual is projected on a higher level within the constitutive dialectic of the political body. Social actors must advance a view which is not their own. This factor constitutes the fundamental dilemma of the political sphere and becomes the object of the cultural work, which the social actors have to carry out as long as they are members of a political body.

3.4 Religion Simmel’s sociological assessment of the societal spheres of the economy, social life and politics suggests that he is a representative of the theory of social reification in Marx’s sense. The pessimistic tone of the diagnosis of modernity in The

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Philosophy of Money emerges several times, so the idea of the unescapable ‘tragedy of culture’ seems to build the core of Simmel’s sociological theory (GSG 12: 194–223). Social actors are overstrained by the autonomisation of objective culture, thus making the recomposition of the logic of social action with that of social structure only seem possible at the price of a commercialisation of values, constraint of the rule of intersubjectivity and outvoting of political minorities. This negative vision of societal development seems almost to relate Simmel to Weber’s most pessimistic utterings about bureaucratic petrification, the ‘iron cage’ of modern life and the problem of the ‘last man’ (MWG I/18: 488). Yet, in this respect, it must be noted on the one hand that both Simmel and Weber underline the circumstance of an ongoing dialectic within modern society with the outcome that every diagnosis of its trend towards development does not imply an automatism of its evolution. On the other hand, however, Simmel’s sociological assessment of the other societal domains, such as religion, art and eroticism, shows that in his eyes, and regardless of every reification, the creativity of social action has the potential for achieving a transformation of society’s existing structures. During his so-called middle work phase, Simmel dedicated several studies to this topic. Historically, it is of course striking that on the eve of the ‘short twentieth century’ (Hobsbawm 2003), which was centred on the belief that politics would lead to an overcoming of the limits, conflicts and miseries of modernity, Simmel did not share this opinion. However, it is interesting to reconstruct wherein for Simmel consists the creative potential of the cultural spheres that could lead to a reshaping of the structures of modern societies. In accordance with the logic of the third a priori of sociation, if a specific cultural stance becomes the leading orientation of social action, its creativity can overcome the fragmentation of the different domains of life that is provoked by the modern qualitative differentiation of society. As Simmel argues in his 1906 study Die Religion (GSG 10: 39–118), this assumption particularly applies to religion.1 The book proposes an interesting synthesis of the different strands of sociological theory that Simmel developed at the same time as the final formulation of his sociological epistemology by taking into account the issue of qualitative societal differentiation. Moreover, by inquiring into the particular construction of social reality that is realised by religion, Simmel develops his tri-dimensional theory of social action, social structure and their coordination beyond the assumption of an insurmountable alienation of modern life. As a sense-giving principle of life structuration, religion is founded on a relationship of competition with the secular attitudes of action orientation and particularly with politics, the economy, art and eroticism. Each cultural principle can become the dominant approach for shaping life conduct by producing overall semantics that guide social action and express all the contents of the world in its language, including those originating from other domains of qualitatively differentiated societies. This applies to the religious evaluation of political acts, economic enterprise, artistic products or sexual behaviour. In terms of the logic of the third a priori of sociation, the everyday cultural work of social actors unifies the manifold contents of the world under a particular perspective by selecting,

Sociology of culture 105 interpreting and relating them to each other through common semantics, which is of a religious character in this case. Society remains fragmented, as long as the qualitative differentiation of society occurs on the structural level of the autonomisation of different reified societal domains organised around an objective logic. Society’s individual fields appear in an increasing ‘self-referential entropy’ because everyday cultural work does not actualise societal semantics, while their compartments stagnate. Objective and subjective cultures fall apart, and their conflict jeopardises the persistence of the social fabric, as the theory of the social a priori shows (GSG 11: 42–61). Yet, if the creativity of social action relates the disparate objective contents of life experience from the point of view of a particular cultural attitude, reification processes can be overcome by a new shaping of social reality. This particularly applies to the religious stance towards social action, i.e. what Simmel calls ‘religiosity’ (GSG 10: 48). The reshaping of societal semantics occurs in competition between different and at times opposing cultural principles, so the questions concerning how many different attitudes to life and the world strive for objectivation as well as which one seems to prevail can only be answered empirically. Accordingly, the formation of religion, its continuity and underlying change are accompanied by ongoing competition with the semantics of other qualitatively differentiated domains of culture. If specific aspects of practical life are filled with religious feelings and valuations, they attain a completely different meaning and tend to be in contradiction with their further social implications. However, as with every other societal sphere religion also is in a state of tension between the autonomisation of its objective logic in the sense of building up religious institutions and the creativity of social action that constantly reshapes its content. For Simmel, the main difference between the objective shaping of the world, along the lines of the reified logic of the societal domains, and its subjective reshaping through social action, lies in the fact that the first produces a world of cultural fragments, whereas the second unifies them into a coherent totality. The creative potential of social action in qualitative differentiated societies realises the requirements of the third a priori of sociation from the perspective of a particular principle of culture. Thus, it grants everyday cultural work the coordination of social action and social structure. This applies particularly to religion because of its aptitude for instilling meaning in the world by casting existence as a whole in a particular light and by expressing its sense with consistent semantics. The subjective religious attitude to the world represents an indispensable factor of social integration, thus producing social validity in such a way that religion becomes a coveted instrument for granting legitimacy to the institutional structure of different societal domains, including the law and politics. After the conclusion of his introductory analysis of the relationship between religion (first a priori) and religiosity (second a priori), Simmel’s 1906 monograph develops an assessment of the sociological meaning of different facets of religious life (GSG 10: 50–58). Above all, the transposition of the fragmented content of world into a religious context applies to three spheres of life, namely, the relationship to nature, fate and the surrounding human world. In a rationalist,

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enlightened vein, the related religious concepts can be regarded as a generalisation of empirical evidence. As Simmel notes with reference to Kant, the idea of God can be explained as the universalisation of the principle of causality, while godliness appears as the transfigured expression of the feeling of powerlessness that human beings experience in relationship to nature (GSG 9: 165–177). Yet, religious categories obtain proper meaning only if they are subsumed under a religious attitude to the world which ties up the disparate contents of objective culture from a meaningful perspective. According to Simmel, the impulse to subsume the manifold fragments of life that characterise qualitative differentiated societies under a unifying meaning is a basic human need; moreover, it constitutes the grounding condition of the possibility for social interaction, as demonstrated by sociological epistemology. Accordingly, religiosity is a way of being, which cannot be overcome by the scientific rationalism of the Enlightenment because it is grounded on a different attitude to life and the world that establishes an autonomous societal domain with an innate logic that competes with science, so Simmel outlines in his lecture on ethics (GSG 21: 833). The need for a comprehensive meaning of life can assume the institutional shape of religion or exist as a simple longing for meaning without form, i.e. as religiosity. The most obvious way in which religiosity deals with the tensionfraught relationship between the orders of the external world and the subjective logic of social action is given by the religious category of fate. This resolves the dynamics of the third a priori of sociation from a religious perspective. In this respect, the idea of the ‘election by grace’ (Gnadenwahl) operated by God transfigures the contingency of the secular order into a transcendentally granted foundation of the relationship between the individual and society. If the coordination of the creativity of social action with the imperatives of social structure flows into an acceptable synthesis, the religious hope of belonging to the ranks of the elected also seems to be confirmed (GSG 10: 52). Religion operates a symbolic reinterpretation of individual membership within the social group that positions the individual in a state of tension between the need for security and the longing for freedom. Translated into the language of religion, the conflict assumes the form of a demand to grant meaning to individual life, despite the contingency of fate. This aspiration collides with the opposite desire of being included in God’s plan of the world, so that the dignity of individual freedom remains in a relationship of competition with the longing for exoneration through divine providence. Accordingly, religion and the social realm articulate two alternative materialisations of the same existential dualism. The history of religion testifies to the ongoing tension between the tendency for the interconnection of religion with other societal domains, on the one hand, and, on the other, its repeated attempt to differentiate itself and impose its ethical logic on society. If the order of society is still undifferentiated, custom, religion and the state are intertwined within political theocracy, whereas with increasing societal differentiation religion becomes autonomous from the other cultural spheres and establishes its autonomous logic. The importance of religion for enforcing the validity of existing social relationships and norms is grounded on the fact

Sociology of culture 107 that it adds the sense of its august character to their factual constraint. However, to serve as a basis for the normative quality of other societal domains, religion must already exist to some extent as an independent societal field. By contrast, in less differentiated societies religion is characterised as a mere symbolic image of existing social relationships that are elevated to the dignity of an obligation in a classical process of sacralisation (GSG 10: 55). By taking into account the different gradations of religious normativity, Simmel’s conception of sacralisation intersects with the theory of social differentiation and does not lead all religious phenomena back to their elementary forms. This aspect of Simmel’s sociology of religion strongly diverges from Durkheim’s understanding of religion, even if in other respects there are some analogies between the two research programmes. The unique quality of Simmel’s approach above all lies in the theoretical appreciation of the differences between the forms of religious life in undifferentiated and in differentiated societies (GSG 10: 56 f.; Durkheim 1912). With the historical development of the ‘world religions’ (Weltreligionen), which are no longer the expression of a limited local community, the subordination of individuals under a narrow common religious normativity loosens up. However, unlike Weber (MWG I/18–21), Simmel does not engage in an inquiry into the different world religions. Rather, he only comments on the world religion which features in a typological classification at the opposite end of the elementary forms of religious life: Buddhism, the universal religion that breaks in the most coherent way with all the contingent social ties of the individual. It propagates a conception of faith which requires complete renunciation to the living will of the mind, separating religion completely from the individual’s social duty and resulting in the most decided escapism from the world that religion knows. Aiming at the individual’s complete liberation from sufferance without any institutional mediation, Buddhism thus deploys such a strict, individualistic doctrine of salvation that for Simmel it may even be questionable whether it is still a form of religion (GSG 10: 63). According to Simmel, the precondition for the transposition of the logic of being into the logic of duty, as realised by the religious forms of sociation, is given by the circumstance that there is formal parallelism in the individual’s relationship to the social group and of the believer with the deity. In both instances the feeling of being tied to an overall entity that builds a certain expectation and that the social actor depends on establishes the core of subjective action orientation. Consequently, from a sociological perspective the religious worship of God can be understood as a symbolic variation of the deferential fear of the family clan, which can be considered as the original form of every religious community. In typological terms, the religious feeling of faith, which is constituted as a disposition of the soul to an object of belief, represents the form of action orientation that is common to the religious and political domain. Faith not only applies to the deity, but also to secular individuals; moreover, to a certain extent it is resistant to practical deception, as Simmel observes in a counterpoint to Weber’s definition of political charisma (GSG 10: 70–73; MWG I/23: 490 f.). Furthermore, faith represents a means of legitimation of the utmost importance because

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it establishes a ‘value-rationally oriented’ (wertrational) action scheme, which takes place beyond the limits of the ‘instrumental rationality’ (zweckrational) of social action (GSG 10: 74 f.). Yet, the social integration potential of religion can also be encountered on the analytical level of social structure. By ritually eliminating the condition of competition among social actors and by fostering the internal pacification of the social group, religion as a differentiated societal domain delivers a highly efficient instrument of social integration which can support the normativity of other societal domains.

3.5 Art The inquiry into art, including painting, sculpture, literature, poetry and drama, forms a crucial part of Simmel’s work. Two monographs are particularly relevant here: the first on Goethe, dedicated to Marianne Weber and published at the end of 19122 (GSG 15: 7–270), and the second on Rembrandt, which appeared in 1916 (GSG 15: 305–515). In 1911 and 1912, Simmel published eight preliminary studies on Goethe (cf. GSG 15: 520), which he later included in the monograph. Moreover, he dedicated a study to Goethe and Kant in 1906 that was republished in 1916 in an extended edition (GSG 10: 119–166), and in which he incorporated the 1899 essay on Kant and Goethe (GSG 5: 445–478) and the later article on Goethe’s and Kant’s ethics (GSG 8: 416–423). Four preliminary studies on Rembrandt date from 1914/15 when the artist features in the title, as well as six other studies on the philosophy of art that refer to the themes of the Rembrandt book, now published together in GSG 13 (cf. GSG 13: 398 ff.). Simmel also concentrated on a number of other topics related to art, for example, the early studies on ‘Music’ (GSG 1: 45–89), on ‘Dante’s Psychology’ (GSG 1: 91–177) and on ‘Michelangelo as Poet’ (GSG 2: 37–48). Later essays followed on Michelangelo’s metaphysics (GSG 12: 111–136), ‘Böcklin’s Landscapes’ (GSG 5: 96–104), ‘Sociological Aesthetics’ (GSG 5: 197–214) and Stefan George (GSG 5: 287–300 and GSG 7: 21–35). This is not forgetting the trilogy about the Italian art cities of Rome (GSG 5: 301–310), Florence (GSG 8: 69–73) and Venice (GSG 8: 258–263), which establish a counterpoint to the study on the modern metropolis (GSG 7: 116–131; Featherstone, Frisby 1997: 174–185). In his miscellany on ‘Philosophical Culture’ (Philosophische Kultur), Simmel then dedicated a section to aesthetics, comprising the studies on ‘The Handle’, ‘The Ruin’ and ‘The Alps’ (GSG 14: 278–303) and a section on the artistic personalities of Michelangelo and Rodin (GSG 14: 304–348). Simmel’s analyses of Rodin’s sculptures and the movement theme in modern culture (GSG 7: 92–100 and GSG 12: 28–36) were particularly significant because they initiated a relationship of mutual appreciation and motivated Simmel’s visit to Rodin in his Parisian atelier, as Simmel’s son Hans relates in his memoirs (Simmel 1941/1942–2008: 88 f.). The relationship also continued during the war, and Simmel composed Rodin’s epitaph on 27 November 1917, even though the artist had expressed embittered sentiments on Germany at war (GSG 13: 307–312). Art was also a regular topic for Simmel’s lectures (GSG 24: 607 ff.), as we learn from his lecture notebook on the

Sociology of culture 109 ‘Philosophy of Art’ from 1913/14 (GSG 21: 141–222) as well as from various notes by students about his lectures on art such as, for example, in 1902 by Margarete Susman (GSG 21: 940–987), in 1907/08 by Karl Berger (GSG 21: 743–746) and by Adolf Löwe in 1913/14 (GSG 21: 940–987). Last but not least, Simmel was a passionate collector of Chinese pottery; he inspired its initial exhibition in Berlin in 1911 and wrote on the difference between Western and Asian art (GSG 16: 273 f.; Rammstedt 2006; Simmel 1941/1942–2008: 86 f.). Simmel planned to write his own philosophy of art, although he had insufficient time to achieve this project (Simmel 1941/1942–2008: 56). Nevertheless, art theory has a central place in Simmel’s work and merits a separate study. Here, however, the relevance of art relates to the way in which Simmel integrates the societal domain of art within his sociological theory of qualitative differentiated societies. In a similar way to religion, for Simmel, art suggests a recombination of the fragmented content of life experience in modernity, thus allowing for subjective and objective culture to merge in an innovative and meaningful synthesis. The creative power of art permits a new ordering of the world, whose elements are generally maintained in reciprocal indifference or conflicted relationship. The cultural work of art is based on the same logic as the everyday creativity of social action which follows the logic of the third a priori of sociation. For Simmel, however, the synthesis of world elements from the perspective of art manifests a particular quality because the creative work of art becomes an end in itself. Art represents the unifying activity of the consciousness that relates subjective and objective culture in a way that is completely released from its role of a practical means of social integration. Cultural work is carried out for its own sake and contributes to the production of art, thus showing in a concrete sense that even in highly differentiated societies it is possible to accomplish the cycle of culture. Artistic creativity therefore offers a model for innovative cultural work and societal change, which in Simmel’s eyes could transform the imperative of the third a priori of sociation into an instrument of emancipation. However, art can take many different forms, so Simmel discussed several versions of artistic creativity in the course of the extended reflection on this topic. Painting represents the most significant expression of art in Simmel’s analysis because its focus is the visual sphere. The visual dimension is also a pivotal means for the construction of the social world, as manifested in the studies of the a priori of sociation as well as the socially constructed figure of the stranger. The unique quality of painting as an artistic performance lies in the way that it operates with the apparent surface of material objects or of the persons which it represents. The painter provides not merely a copy of perceived reality, but rather selects those elements which in his eyes offer the soundest pictorial effect by synthesising and recombining them in a visually abstract representation that eventually constitutes the painting. In contrast to photography, the artist does not reproduce the material of perception but forms it in the shape of a new creation. This procedure notably characterises portrait painting, as Simmel writes in the ‘Aesthetics of the Portrait’ (GSG 7: 321–332) or in the ‘Problem of the Portrait’ (GSG 13: 370–381). By unifying the overall appearance of the portrayed human in a synthesis of a few

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traits, the painter pushes his perception to its highest level of abstraction. Pictorially, everything beneath the surface of the image does not come to expression. Yet, following Simmel’s arguments about Rembrandt’s self-portraits, the more that merely depicted appearance is detached from the remaining layers of the person, the stronger its immaterial elements are made manifest (GSG 15: 334 ff.). Hence, the artist’s virtuosity consists in this particular expressive performance. Rembrandt must be considered as one of its greatest masters. In the practical world, according to the theory of the social a priori, the appearance of the body serves constantly as an instrument to mediate the possibility of interpreting the other’s mind by forming the stereotypes which structure the image of the partner in a social relationship. As a direct antithesis to this, portrait painting interprets and represents the visual presence of the human person through the impression that the painter has of his personality. Therefore, what emerges is an inversion of the practical attitude to the fellow human in social life. Accordingly, accomplished artistic perception has the capacity to characterise the mind of the portrayed person by using only the visible lineaments of his or her appearance. The artist has achieved his goal of providing a creative synthesis for the fragmented existence of the portrayed person, provided that the portrait communicates no feeling of soullessness, yet rather inspires an impression of soulful presence. Thus, what is called the ‘expression of the soul’ (Seelenausdruck) within the portrait painting can only be found in its visible surface, and yet it pictorially articulates the artist’s understanding of the model (GSG 15: 313–387). Art hereby reverses the common perception context of practical social life, which normally becomes the object of psychology, because for the artist the ‘mental’ sphere represents the means to interpret bodily appearance and not vice versa. Hence, in its domain art has the cultural potential to overcome the fragmentation of the personality in the everyday life of qualitative differentiated societies by producing a new synthesis of its visual appearance. What is fragmented in the practical world can be linked to a unity thanks to the creative transformation of the contents of perception in the logic of art. Consequently, the artist’s world consists in what does not yet appear in reality, though can be seen as a result of the creative performance that produces his representation. Not through its intellectual but rather through sensorial abstraction does art extract the fragments of the perceived bodies or objects and relay them in a new unity that expresses the latent essence of reality, which does not become manifest in its existing shape. This performance makes art, and especially painting, a powerful means for overcoming the reification of social reality, although only within the qualitatively differentiated societal domain of art. Nevertheless, the result of the process has an exemplary character because the procedure of artistic creativity shows the path that can be taken for building unprecedented syntheses out of the fragments of modern life. Thus, it can be made the basis for a new design of social reality in different domains of qualitative differentiated societies. This conclusion exposes the core of Simmel’s conception of the creativity of social action that constitutes the starting point for his late conception of social ethics which he described in the study on ‘Individual Law’ (GSG 12: 417–470).

Sociology of culture 111 Theatre is another sector of art that Simmel particularly highlighted. The art of acting must be considered as a variation of the everyday work of selfrepresentation, which social actors perform, so that in some way everybody ‘plays theatre’ (GSG 21: 167). Professional acting, however, is characterised by a double relationship to existing social reality. On the one hand, the intention of acting is to transpose an everyday situation into a form of art. On the other hand, the drama, which constitutes the starting point of acting, is already an artwork, as stated in the essay ‘On the Philosophy of the Actor’ (GSG 8: 424–432). Hence, the actor’s performance consists in the capacity to make ideal content real again by doing exactly the opposite of what art normally does in painting and literature. The actor’s goal is to turn objective culture into subjective culture in a novel way and thus to contribute to a different segment of the ongoing cycle of culture. Written drama proposes a stylised character, yet not a complete human being. The actor must transfer a one-dimensional figure into the three-dimensionality of the full bodily social actor moving on stage. The actor must not simply reproduce reality because the character which he plays is the product of the creative abstraction of the dramatic author. It is no reality, yet it becomes fully embodied only in the scenic performance. The recital performance as well as painting or sculpture is never identical with reality and amounts to a new ideal shaping of its elements. Only the swindler tries to deliver a performance which copies empirical reality, because this is necessary to hide his real intentions. By contrast, the actor provides a creative performance by producing a credible incarnation of the character that is no imitation of really existing circumstances. Accordingly, for every character there is an infinite number of possible different interpretations. For instance, there is not simply one Hamlet, but a never-ending series of different Hamlets depending on who interprets the role. Of course, the character of Hamlet is the authentic expression of the way in which Shakespeare conceived the individual. However, the stage role is the expression of the way in which the single actor experiences it. No interpretation can lead back to the alleged reality of the writer’s work. This reality exists not merely because the writer did not reproduce existing personalities, but rather because he created his characters by selecting and synthesising elements of reality in a similar way as the painter realises his portrait. Thanks to this assessment of the relationship between drama and acting from the perspective of cultural sociology, Simmel expresses his critique of realism in the theory of literature and theatre. He therefore intervenes in the controversial debate on these topics, thus characterising the contemporary situation, to which he also dedicated the essay ‘On Realism in Art’ (GSG 8: 404–415). The best-known part of Simmel’s art theory is on sculpture. This is probably also because it is strongly oriented to a diagnostic approach and aims at evidencing the reciprocal action between artistic creativity and the societal zeitgeist. This part of the work constitutes the core of what could have become a major contribution to a sociological history of Western civilisation in Simmel’s terms, if only he had been given the time to achieve it (cf. GSG 20: 540 ff.). Classical Greek sculpture expresses, for Simmel, the conception of the being characterising

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antique civilisation. The empirical appearance of the world was then thought of as leaning on the substantial forms of being, such as addressed by Plato’s theory of the ideas. Hence, the ancient sculpture devoted itself to the task of representing what is essential and timeless in the forms of the human body and in nature. As a consequence of the break with the immanent conception of the cosmos, which was provoked by the crisis of the ancient world and the rise of Christianity as the leading cultural paradigm and as the official religion of the Roman Empire, the sculptural representation of the world also changed. The tension between the material substrate of ‘creatural life’ and the afflatus of the soul to leave the terrestrial world to re-join the hyperuranios spheres of God’s spirit was imprinted on the entire Christian outlook and characterises medieval culture and art. Yet, the striving to escape from earthly reality and the related existential pressure underwent a relief with the rediscovery of the pictorial dignity of the body in the culture of the Renaissance. According to Simmel, the culmination of this development is represented by the sculpture of Michelangelo (GSG 12: 111–136). Here, the attraction of the soul to the higher layers of the spirit is symbolised in the dramatic tension of the bodily forms, which illustrate the impossibility for the human being to transcend his position within the material order of the world. The soul can no longer pretend to escape from earthly reality; it can only express its intention to transcend the dungeon of matter. This unresolvable conflict between the two constitutive dimensions of human life attains the most masterful expression in Michelangelo’s sculpture. Notwithstanding this situation, in Simmel’s view, the further evolution of European cultural history lacks a proper incarnation in sculpture. Instead, Rembrandt’s painting brings to expression the new zeitgeist that originated from the Protestant Reformation and the Cartesian turn of philosophy towards subjectivism (GSG 15: 468–476). The interiorisation, solitude, intimacy and to some extent also the disorientation of the modern subject come to the fore in a dramatically expressive way in Rembrandt’s self-portraits, thus bearing witness to a new attitude towards the world and life and deeply struggling with the senselessness of the fraction of time in an alienated world. During the years ahead, the modern subject and his existential distress vanished more and more behind the reified layers of social imperatives, emerging with modern social differentiation and imposing their mechanic rhythm on life. For Simmel, Rodin is the sculptor who best understood how to express the movement theme and tension of modern life in plastic values (GSG 7: 92–100 and GSG 12: 28–36). If ancient sculpture represents the harmony of a platonic substantial world of being and Michelangelo’s sculpture articulates the dramatic form of the unresolved tension between spirit and matter in Christian culture, Rodin is capable of representing the acceleration of the life rhythm that characterises societies based on the modern monetary economy (GSG 6: 696 ff.). According to Simmel, this specific quality makes Rodin the artistic champion of the cultural atmosphere that was typical for the ‘electric years’ of the Belle Époque, where everything seemed to proceed in motion, to accelerate its pace and to become relative (Prochasson 1991). The feeling of modernity, with all its enthusiasm, its excitement and its sexual attraction came to the most perfect

Sociology of culture 113 expression in Rodin’s sculpture. This was why Simmel worshipped Rodin. Yet, the breathtaking rhythm of life in the era of European peace between 1872 and 1914 concealed a pathological evolution of society in the sense of Durkheim’s sociological method (Durkheim 1895a/2014). The periodic creative cycle of culture and art was confronted with an exponential growth of its objective contents provoked by the development of the capitalist economy and by the increasing difficulty of the creativity of social action to relay them in a new synthesis worthy of expression. According to Simmel, this tension within culture eventually flowed into its global crisis, so that the creative forces of society followed the path of a substantial refusal to produce any synthesis of the reified contents of life experience into a new cultural form. The emancipation potential of culture came to a standstill, impeding the further evolution of the social, political and economic forms of society. For Simmel, the most typical artistic expression of this rebellion against modernity, propagandising a rebuttal of every proposal of cultural synthesis, was given by the resigned gesture of the refusal of form and the exaltation of the intimate feelings of the artistic soul in expressionist painting (GSG 16: 190 f.). This pessimistic outlook drew Simmel’s analysis of the diagnostic relevance of art for sociology to a provisional conclusion. Yet, the study could not be continued because he died shortly before the emergence of the Weimar Republic. The enduring legacy of Simmel’s art theory is due to the circumstance that it emphasises the emancipatory potential of art in producing new creative arrangements of reality by making the task of the everyday cultural work of social actors (third a priori, GSG 11: 59) an end in itself. This activity, which takes place in the societal domain, i.e. in the cultural sphere of art, unearths latent societal needs and possibilities of change; it can thus breakthrough the reified structures of the social world. In contradiction to Weber’s pessimistic conception of modernity as petrification (MWG I/18: 488), or Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s apocalyptic conception of the culture industry (1947/2002), Simmel sees art as the pathway for overcoming modern alienation. Empirically, art shows that a different recombination of objective and subjective culture is possible, and respectively a different coordination of social action and social structure. The issue is then how to transfer the creative potential of art from its societal domain to the others. According to Simmel, this is everything but a matter of course. The biography of great artists and poets, like ideal–typically Goethe, can show what kind of reshaping of life can be possible through the approach of art to the world. Yet, this potential can only become a reality on condition that the social actors develop the intention of overcoming alienation. This question will establish a major pole of interest for Simmel’s late social ethics.

3.6 Eroticism As Weber argues in the ‘intermediate reflection’ (Zwischenbetrachtung) of the Economic Ethics of the World Religions (MWG I/19: 479–522; Weber 2004), eroticism is one of the societal spheres that emerge and become autonomous thanks to the progressive qualitative differentiation of modern society. The perception

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of a growing independence of love and sexuality from the control of religion and law was one of the major historical developments of the Belle Époque. Even if the phenomenon was limited to specific milieus, the German-speaking world then witnessed a first wave of the sexual revolution. Weber assisted personally with some spectacular developments of this nature which concerned his former pupil and later lover, Else Jaffé von Richthofen, her sister Frieda, the English author David Herbert Lawrence and the Austrian psychoanalyst Otto Gross as well as some further members of the anarchist community at Monte Verità in Ascona (Green 1986, 1988; Whimster 1999). This historical background became part of the aura surrounding Weber’s intellectual milieu and has been the subject of several contrasting biographical reconstructions (Kaesler 2014; Kaube 2014; Radkau 2013). Simmel was confronted with similar developments because he had a longlasting extramarital relationship with his former pupil Gertrud Kantorowicz, who gave birth to their daughter, Angela, on 21 September 1907 in Bologna (GSG 24: 273 ff.; Paul 1994: 99; Rammstedt 1996). Simmel also studied the massive development of the phenomenon of prostitution in the rapidly growing metropolis Berlin and provided one of its early sociological assessments (GSG 17: 261–273). As a facet of modernity, the change in societal attitudes towards love and sexuality in the early 20th century became the topic of a lively intellectual debate that Simmel engaged with, even if his contribution was only published in the volume of his posthumous writings edited by Gertrud Kantorowicz (GSG 20: 9 ff.). Lou Andreas-Salomé, a youth friend of Friedrich Nietzsche and then a pupil of Sigmund Freud, played a prominent role in the debate on the liberalisation of social etiquette and customs in Germany (Renner 1994). She was an influential author on the literary scene and later became one of the first women to practise the profession of psychoanalyst. Her study The Erotic appeared in 1910 in the series Die Gesellschaft edited by Martin Buber – the same in which Simmel had published his 1906 study on Die Religion. It must therefore be assumed that Simmel knew the book and formulated his ‘Fragment on Love’ (GSG 20: 116–175) to some extent in an ideal exchange with the study of Andreas-Salomé, who was not unknown to Simmel’s circle. On the one hand, this was because she was to be portrayed by the painter Gertrud Kienel, Georg Simmel’s wife (Rammstedt 1994: 153). On the other hand, Lou Andreas-Salomé and Simmel engaged in a correspondence that had lasted since 1896 (GSG 22: 203 f. cf. GSG 24: 897). As Andreas-Salomé noted in her diary in 1912, in the debate on gender issues she felt that Simmel understood her, and she referred to his remarks about her study on ‘The Human as a Woman’ (Andreas-Salomé 1992; Renner 1994: 40). Andreas-Salomé treats eroticism as an attitude resulting from a composition of three different elements: a physical, psychological and social relationship (Andreas-Salomé 1910: 12 f.). In contrast to the current meaning of ‘eroticism’ (Erotik), here the term designates not merely a complex of sexual drives, but the entire ensemble of attitudes that characterise the outlook of the loving person. Of course, the physical aspect of sexuality exerts a major influence on other elements of eroticism, yet it continues in a relationship of reciprocal action with them so

Sociology of culture 115 that love must be considered as the result of different material and ideal impulses. For these reasons, eroticism as passion takes an intermediate position between the two major sentiments of egoism and altruism. Both nourish it, yet in a sort of dialectical movement fuse into the stance of the loving person (Andreas-Salomé 1910: 37 ff.). Thus, for Andreas-Salomé eroticism is not in contradiction to marriage and life as part of a couple. It can flow into passionate sentimentality, yet it usually finds a ‘natural end’ in procreation, which leads the physical and sentimental debauchery of love back to earth and to the concrete presence of an additional person who becomes part of the loving relationship between the parents (Andreas-Salomé 1910: 40 ff.). Women’s capability of donating life represents in Andreas-Salomé’s eyes the root for all the cults of the mother goddess and the Madonna, which draw on the fact that a woman is always nearer to the divine mystery of creation than a man, even if in her mundane life, she has the condition of a prostitute (Andreas-Salomé 1910: 44 ff.). For the Belle Époque period, AndreasSalomé conducted her private and professional life as an extremely emancipated individual, so attracting the sympathy of the woman’s emancipation movement. For her rather traditional positions as well as for having sketched very docile and submissive women characters in her novels, however, she became the focus of attacks by more resolute members of the women’s liberation movement (Dohm 1902; Renner 1994: 40). Nonetheless, Andreas-Salomé personified a central reference for the debate on eroticism in her time and was also important for Simmel. According to Simmel, the dialectical relationship between ‘me’ and ‘you’ represents the core of every human coexistence. However, it gains specific meaning under the influence of the feeling of love (GSG 20: 116). Yet, the fact that rational psychology could classify acting out of love both as altruism and egoism shows that the question concerning love has frequently been posed incorrectly. The analytical reduction of love to some other sentiments as well as to the sexual instinct induces a misconception about its real nature, as if it were a mechanical process. On the contrary, the secret of carnal eroticism is that one not only desires or enjoys the body of the other in an aesthetic sense, but one equally loves it. Love is rather a unitary phenomenon of the human mind; it realises a synthesis between a sensual and an emotional state and appears to individual consciousness as an unbroken internal status that common language simply calls love. Accordingly, loving is an original mental act that cannot be understood by postulating the effect of any further motives (GSG 20: 120 f.). It is a spontaneous attitude of the human mind and, for Simmel, represents one of the great formative categories of existence (GSG 20: 123). Consequently, the importance of love for the sociological theory of the qualitative differentiation of society lies in the fact that this attitude becomes the logic of a specific social and cultural sphere which Weber and Simmel call eroticism. They not only observed its autonomisation as a societal phenomenon of their life and times but were also personally involved in its sudden and irresistible development in the intellectual milieu between Ascona, Berlin and Heidelberg (Sauerland, Treiber 1995). Yet, for Simmel, love not only shapes the contents of life within its specific sphere by its endeavour of the creativity of acting subjects but

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also irradiates into the other societal domains. This particularly applies to religion. Even if Simmel does not address the differences and the relationship between the conceptions of eros and agape, he nonetheless assesses the processes which are shaped by the attitude of love in the societal domain of religion. As Meister Eckhart notes, a beloved God attains a completely different meaning to a simply feared God (GSG 20: 124). For Simmel, this religious experience reveals that love is an uncaused, primary category, which constitutes a condition a priori for life experience that is capable of defining the contents of reality as something beloved. Love and per extenso the entire actions of the lover thus come to the fore as something intrinsically unitary that cannot be inferred by other distinct elements of behaviour. Several essays to reduce love to an epiphenomenon of other moral sentiments or of the sexual instinct therefore seem destined to fail, as Simmel notes in a tone that sounds like a veiled critique of Freud’s theory of sexuality. When the loving attitude focuses on something, the complete constellation of love as a formative category of existence comes to expression, and this applies in formal equipollency to the beloved person as well as to an idea, an object or even God. Hence, the narrower meaning of love on the grounds of sexuality can only be understood as a specification of its overall sense as a human attitude to life and the world (GSG 20: 129). Sexual attraction implies a biological preform of love, yet the human being has a complex and not merely instinctive relationship to this domain of life that leads to the autonomisation of forms of cultural behaviour related to sexuality. In this context, Simmel’s argument relies on the metaphors characterising his late sociological anthropology. Due to an ‘axial rotation’ (Achsendrehung) in the sequence of the original biological process of eroticism, in the related cultural sphere eventually sexuality serves the loving attitude instead of the converse. Life thus produces ‘more than life’ (Mehr-als-Leben) and permits the rise of sociocultural formations that guide the behaviour of social actors. Pure sexual attraction is transformed by the manifold cultural forms of eroticism that become autonomous by developing a distinctive logic and provide the switch stands allowing the actualisation of sexual instincts within the context of social relationships. These processes are of a sociocultural character and, notwithstanding Andreas-Salomé’s position, cannot be brought back to an alleged natural goal that consists in the preservation of the species or in the procreation of a third member within the relationship of the lovers (GSG 20: 135). Sublimation processes which lead to the establishment of culturally mediated forms of love and sexuality therefore have the same ambivalent character as every further social institution. On the one hand, they imply the risk of reification, thus impeding emancipation. On the other hand, they provide effective means for civilising interpersonal relations. According to Simmel, the major examples of the latter phenomenon are given by ‘universal philanthropy’ (Allgemeine Menschenliebe) and ‘Christian love’ (Christliche Liebe) (GSG 20: 145). Universal philanthropy extends the moral sentiment of love to everyone who has human countenance by abstracting from the individual uniqueness of the single person and concentrating on the typological aspects characterising human beings. This

Sociology of culture 117 form of love cannot be considered as a mode of pantheisms because it is delimited to the species and has something of the abstract character of Enlightenment philosophy. Furthermore, it characterises the conception of universal human rights, the universal idea of religion in Deism and Kant’s understanding of moral duty. These expressions of universal rationalism constitute in Simmel’s view a fundamental pillar for modern civilisation, but they maintain an element of distance towards the empirical concreteness of the individual human being. To extend the moral sentiment of love further in the direction of the single individual implies, for Simmel, the development of the idea of Christian love. What makes universal philanthropy abstract is the exclusion from consideration of all empirical differences between human beings. In contrast to this highly abstract shaping of loving sentiment, Christian love does not address the human individual for the things that he shares in common with all others, yet this kind of love accepts him exactly the way he is. Here, there is a much stronger relationship to the principle of individuality. What is beloved is not the typical aspect of the human being, but the fact that he must be considered a child of God, thus making him somebody who is worthy of being loved even if he is absolutely untypical. For the religious sentiment of love, this means that the human individual becomes its object even if he is a sinner and not despite being a sinner. Accordingly, only the idea of Christian love achieves a complete ‘axial rotation’ of love as a moral sentiment because it becomes a dogma, so that the life conduct of the believer must conform to it. As well as artistic creativity, for Simmel, love is one of the great formative categories of existence and has the potential to strongly remodel social reality. It also evidences a dialectic between the creativity of social action and the predominance of reified social structures. This applies to the moral sentiments of universal philanthropy and Christian love to the same degree as to spontaneous loving sentiments emerging in social interaction among human beings.

3.7 Simmel and Weber Simmel and Weber had a complex relationship. They shared a sense of mutual appreciation along with a veiled theoretical dialogue that is obvious to the discerning reader. Yet, with few exceptions, significant research must still be conducted on the reciprocal influence of their sociological research programmes (Kim 2002). The reasons for this lack of scrutiny are historical. The efforts to establish a tradition of a so-called German line of sociology by representatives of the conservative revolution in Germany during the late 1920s and 1930s, in particular, on the part of Hans Freyer, Erik Rothacker and Andreas Walther, excluded Simmel from the discipline’s classical authors because of anti-Semitic and political prejudices (Fitzi 2015: 61–77; Sontheimer 1992: 118 ff.). Weber was counted among the ‘German sociologists’, yet only for his historical works on the sociology of religion. His contribution to the development of the sociological basic concepts was turned down, for this was deemed to have been compromised by Simmel’s sociology as a ‘science of the logos’ (Fitzi 2015: 417–426). Parsons, for his part, decided to exclude Simmel from the sociological pantheon not only for reasons

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of career calculations, with the aim of positioning his research programme as an alternative to the Simmel-inspired sociology of the Chicago school (Levine 1957). Parsons was highly influenced by the formulation of the tasks of sociology in Freyer’s book on sociology as a ‘science of reality’, as he states in the Structure of Social Action (Fitzi 2015: 52–53; Parsons 1949: 762, 774). Through the entirely uncritical later reception of the sociological canon that was established by Parsons as well as through the post-1945 institutionalisation of the sociological schools in Germany, the artificial rift that the conservative revolution engineered between Simmel and Weber has endured until today. By contrast, there are several instances that prove the intensity of the relationship between the two founders of sociology. At least thanks to Marianne Weber’s biographical study Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild (1926) and the joint correspondence, the amicable relations between the two families can be reconstructed (among others GSG 22: 615; 986; GSG 23: 1024). Their contact even survived the death of both sociologists and was carried on between Gertrud Simmel and Marianne Weber (Meurer 2010: 500 ff.). Simmel’s son Hans relates that during his medical studies in Heidelberg he participated several times in Weber’s Sunday jour fixe (Simmel 1941/1942–2008: 109). Professionally, Simmel and Weber were primarily involved in the foundation of the German Sociological Association (Anonymous 1911; Rammstedt 1991; Wiese 1959). Moreover, it can be shown how intensively Weber became engaged to promote Simmel to a full professorship, and not only in Heidelberg in 1908. This attempt failed due to the intervention of the Prussian Ministry of Education under the influence of the anti-Semitic arguments of historian Dietrich Schäfer, even if the faculty had wanted to appoint Simmel (GSG 24: 275–296). Weber commented on Simmel’s methodology (MWG I/23: 147 f.; Weber 1922: 93–98) and later reflected on Simmel’s position within academia and exposed his close and yet distant relationship with him. Eventually, however, Weber decided not to publish his reflections because he was concerned about causing damage to Simmel’s career prospects; his fragment was only published in 1991 in the first volume of the Simmel Newsletter and titled ‘Georg Simmel als Soziologe und Theoretiker der Geldwirtschaft’ (Weber 1991). Weber’s pivotal argument here is that even if, like him, one advocates an antagonistic standpoint that consistently adopts a negative relationship towards Simmel’s sociology, it is nonetheless churlish not to admit the importance of his achievements. Simmel’s style of exposition is bright; his works are bursting with new thoughts and fine observations, while his books eventually count among those that with correct or even erroneous results provide plenty of stimulation for one’s further reflection. If Simmel’s colleagues were thus not completely dull or ruled by their vanity, they had to answer the question about how it was possible that somebody like Simmel, aged 50, still did not have the ‘more than a decade-and-ahalf deserved official recognition through the appointment to a full professorship’ (Weber 1991: 9, author’s translation). However, Weber did not content himself with asking the question; he also spelled out the reasons that explained this circumstance. Firstly, and perhaps decisively, there was the incredible influence of

Sociology of culture 119 ‘Prussian factors’ that prevented Simmel from being offered a university professorship (Simmel 1941/1942–2008: 49, 67f.). Furthermore, there were academic issues. The philosophical schools of the time had a ‘thoroughly sectarian character’. Simmel did not belong to any of them. Finally, an idiosyncratic rejection of Simmel’s sociological assessment of the modern economy prevailed among political economists (Weber 1991: 10). All these factors conspired against Simmel’s admission to the academic milieu, yet they never flowed into a systematic critique of his position. The question arose as to what the central factors for a critique of Simmel’s sociological methodology were and how the nascent science of society could be founded differently. Complaining about Simmel’s use of the analogical method was not sufficient to appreciate his sociology. The use of analogy was necessary for Simmel’s purposes; in fact, it delivered new bundles of knowledge, even if it did not pay the required attention to the causal relationships between social phenomena. Presumably, it was this aspect that most disturbed Weber about Simmel’s approach to social research. Yet, according to Weber, despite all the critique, one should not forget that Simmel did not pursue the aim of reconstructing causal relationships between social evidence but elucidated their ‘cultural meaning’. Furthermore, many social scientists were dubious about Simmel’s methodology because they understood their discipline as an endless commentary on the concept of society. On the contrary, Simmel wanted to dissolve it in the analysis of the relations of reciprocal action between the social actors (Weber 1991: 12). According to Weber, notwithstanding the critical reviews, Simmel’s approach made complete sense from a sociological perspective because it allowed for an assessment of many different social phenomena and, above all, shed light on the relationships of domination that played a central role in Weber’s sociology. Thus, it was important to take Simmel’s methodology into account. How Weber could have been further refining in his assessment of Simmel’s sociology is an open question. His fragmentary reflection breaks off at the remark on domination. The reconstruction of the theoretical relationship between the two sociologists must therefore rely on other sources. Marianne Weber relates in her biography of Max Weber how he read Simmel’s analysis of the modern monetary economy in The Philosophy of Money during his stay in Rome 1900/01 (Weber 1926: 266). It may be assumed that this was one of the books ‘providing plenty of stimulation for the own further thinking’ that Weber wrote about in his fragment on Simmel’s sociology (Weber 1991: 9). The Philosophy of Money played a key role for Weber’s transition from political economy to sociology in the decisive months of recovery, which he spent in Rome, where he devised the concept for his ‘Protestant Ethics’ virtually at the epicentre in the setting of the Roman Catholic way of life (Schmitt 2012). Simmel, for his part, reflected ante litteram on Weber’s central question of the protestant ethics and the ‘spirit of capitalism’ in the essay on ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’ (GSG 7: 116–131; Featherstone, Frisby 1997: 174–185). Then, Simmel implicitly took notice of Weber’s essays in the second edition of The Problems of the Philosophy of History (GSG 7: 119; GSG 9: 405; Weber 1904/1905).

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Nevertheless, it is to be expected that Simmel’s methodology of typologically extracting the forms of sociation from the empirical material of social reality and presenting their manifold variations in a long-lasting series of analytical assessments from the less to the more complex, did not satisfy Weber’s systematic eagerness. Weber wanted to transpose the approach of classical political theory that aimed at giving a systematic appraisal of the existing orders of social reality in sociological terms (Hennis 2000). Moreover, he may have been frustrated with the purely classification-oriented impetus of formal sociology. In this respect, for Weber, Simmel’s Soziologie constituted a formidable preparatory work that had to be integrated into the systematic building of the basic concepts for a three-dimensional sociological theory of social action orientation, social orders (viz. social action coordination) and social structures with compelling character (Schluchter 2015: 234 ff.). Weber’s theoretical stance was related to the importance that he attributed to political domination as the fundamental societal mechanism for assuring the persistence of social orders (Fitzi 2004). Simmel was of a different opinion because he proceeded from an alternative theory of the mechanisms legitimising social orders and permitting the persistence of social structures. In short, Simmel provides a different sociological theory of validity and legitimacy that emerges from his research approach, which is grounded on sociological epistemology from the perspective of the participant in social action. By contrast, Weber’s research programme develops from the perspective of the observer of social reality. For Simmel, the integration between social action and social structure is the result of the cultural work performed by the social actors in the sense of the three a priori of sociation. For Weber, it is the product of the legitimation mechanisms of the political structures that grant the persistence of the social orders. Moreover, there is a different appreciation for the specific role of the individual qualitative differentiated domains of modern society. According to Simmel, every domain contributes to the continuity of the normative orders of society, even if they are all structurally intermittent. Yet, in Weber’s eyes, the social function of political domination and the related persistence of elements of social stratification in qualitative differentiated societies are necessary to grant the maintenance of social orders. Consequently, even if both Simmel and Weber ground their sociological vision of modernity on a conception of the qualitative differentiated society, they provide divergent assessments of the different societal spheres. For Weber, the societal domains tend to have the same morphology, but the political domain still plays a decisive role in granting the stability of the normative framework of society. Conversely, Simmel’s theory of the qualitative differentiated society is based on an assessment of the parallel differentiation of the social structure and the personality of the social actors that ends up in the theory of the sociological a priori. Accordingly, for Simmel some societal domains strengthen the creativity of social action in reshaping the reified social structures, whereas other do not. Religion, art and eroticism, as we have seen, evidence a higher variability potential, whereas social relationships, the economy and politics show a higher tendency to petrification. As a consequence, Weber does not consider plausible

Sociology of culture 121 the transformation of the modern social structures and foresees their irresistible sclerosis, unless an unpredictable dawn of religious or political charismatic movements were to intervene (MWG I/18: 488). Simmel, in turn, admits the possibility of societal transformation that is related to a transposition of the logic of social action, which he observes in the domains of religion, art or eroticism, to the other domains of qualitative differentiated societies, even if he is rather sceptical about the chances of realising this prospect in his life and times because of the blockade in the cultural process (GSG 16: 181–207). The different positions within the theory of qualitative differentiated society thus flow into distinct diagnostics of modernity and into slightly divergent social ethics. For Weber, modern individuality must come to terms with the societal arrangement of complex societies; it must live on the high point of its difficulties, namely, of the prevailing normative fragmentation of the ‘polytheism of values’, by choosing the logic or the ‘daemon’ that it mainly aims to follow, yet without capitulating to the ideologies postulating the flight from modernity (MWG I/17: 99, 111). For Simmel, modern individuality has the resources to overcome the alienation and fragmentation produced by the qualitative differentiation of society, as the praxis of the societal domains of religion, art or eroticism show. Realising this creative potential, however, requires a new pragmatic awareness that can only be developed if individuality undertakes a meaningful reconstruction of its unity beyond modern alienation and fragmentation (GSG 12: 417–470). Notwithstanding every theoretical divergence, Simmel and Weber gave a decisive impetus to sociological theory building by establishing the category of culture with the rank of a grounding concept of social science. The constructive examination of historical materialism convinced both scholars that the critical analysis of the ‘production process of human life’ had to be integrated with the inquiry into the sociocultural forms setting the switch stands that permit or hinder its development. Weber pursued the inquiry in a historical–sociological perspective; he showed how the economic ethics of the world religions influenced the development of different forms of rationalism that had more or less affinity with the conduct of life necessary for the establishment of the modern capitalist system of production. Simmel, for his part, pursued the inquiry into the perspective of sociological epistemology; he showed which kind of cultural work is necessary to permit the existence, reproduction and integration of the modern qualitative differentiated society produced by the establishment of the monetary economy. Assessing modern society from a scientific perspective and not from the speculative point of view of social ontology brought for Simmel and Weber further evidence to the foreground. Instead of observing the existence of one complex of social relationships, such as in the sense of Hegel’s concept of the ‘system of needs’, which can be called ‘society’ or ‘civil society’ (Hegel 1991), sociology ascertained the subsistence of multiple societal domains. These followed different sets of logic; they became more and more autonomous and tended to remain in a conflict-prone relationship to each other. Since a multiplicity of qualitatively different sums of social relationships appeared to constitute social reality, the paramount category of sociology could no longer be the concept of society but rather

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had to become the concept of culture. Different competing logics responding to different attitudes and conducts of life of the social actors oriented social action in complex societies. Accordingly, the economy, law, politics, religion, art, eroticism and the social sphere had to be explained starting with their leading logic and then correlated in a theory of the qualitative differentiation of society. This methodological approach characterises Weber’s ‘understanding sociology’, which is grounded on a ‘multilevel model’ for an action, order and culture theory (Schluchter 2015: 234–272). However, it also applies to Simmel’s sociological epistemology. After the publication of his Soziologie in 1908, Simmel dedicated his research principally to the inquiry into the logic of the relevant domains of qualitative differentiated society emerging in his lifetime. Several studies appeared about the sociological a priori of the different domains of qualitative differentiated societies. Here, the economy, the social realm, politics, religion, literature, acting and art constituted the main fields of research. In contrast to Weber, for historical reasons Simmel did not develop any inquiry into modern science as a separate societal domain. Rather, he only presented a reflection on the relationship between scientific knowledge and life in his last book The View of Life (Lebensanschauung) (GSG 16: 214 ff.). Simmel passed away on 26 September 1918. Therefore, he was not confronted with the anti-scientific views that became a prevailing influence for the younger generation, which had been socialised in the trenches of World War I. Later, Weber went onto dispute such views in his lecture on ‘Science as a Vocation’ (Weber 1917/1919). The main difference between Simmel’s and Weber’s theories of qualitative differentiated societies is that Weber tends to attest to a substantially homomorphic quality of the different domains, whereas Simmel ascertains an opposition between divergent levels of reification and degrees of malleability within different societal domains. For both Simmel and Weber, sociology had to be founded as a multilevel theory of the qualitative differentiation of culture systems, which included the economy and the social realm as two essential domains among others, so that the sociological concept of culture became a grounding category for their research programmes. Yet, for Simmel’s theory building in the participating perspective of the social actors the notion of culture was also decisive in a secondary sense because it considered the everyday cultural work performed by the social actors to coordinate the imperatives of social structure with the creativity of social action as the precondition for the integration of qualitative differentiated societies.

Notes 1 In English Simmel only published the 1905 article ‘A Contribution to the Sociology of Religion’ (GSG 18: 387–404), which goes back to the study ‘Zur Soziologie der Religion’ published in1898 (GSG 5: 266–286). 2 The Goethe monograph was published in December 1912 but appeared with the date of 1913 on the decision of the publishing house (GSG 15: 521).

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The later phase of Simmel’s scientific work has conventionally been explained as a product of his interest in the intellectual vogue of the philosophy of life, which was a cultural phenomenon during the Belle Époque and circulated widely in Paris and as far as Germany (Rickert 1920). Simmel was interested in Schopenhauer’s and Nietzsche’s philosophy of life. In 1907, he wrote a monograph about their philosophical conceptions (GSG 10: 167–408), and he played a decisive role in the introduction of Bergson’s philosophy in Germany by organising an authorised translation of his works (Fitzi 2002: 195 ff.). Simmel’s final book, The View of Life (Lebensanschauung) (GSG 16: 209–425; Simmel 2015), was a contribution to the epistemological paradigm of the philosophy of life. However, it was also designed as a critique of the mono-dimensional orientation of life philosophy that derives all existence from the idea of the eternal flow of the stream of consciousness (Fitzi 2002: 265 ff.). Hence, Simmel’s philosophy of life presented itself as an alternative to Bergson’s conception of durée as being the common denominator between consciousness and the natural world and instead taking as a starting point the historical fact that modernity and modern consciousness could only be explained as ‘solid liquidity’, i.e. as a dialectic between the liquefaction and reification of social structures as well as of the personality of the social actors (Fitzi 2016). From the perspective of sociological theory, however, Simmel’s late reflection has a broader meaning. His sociology of culture provided several case studies about the different a priori of sociation orienting social action in the various domains of culture that characterise modern societies. Specific attitudes to life and the world came to the fore that can potentially shape the entirety of the contents of experience from a particular viewpoint, for instance creating an economic, political, religious, artistic or erotic world. Yet, the domains of culture also evidenced a strong tendency to autonomisation by developing an innate logic, by flowing into reification and imposing their rules on the creativity of social action. This twofold assessment was a stocktaking of the structural tendencies of modern societies which Simmel resumed within the theory of the conflict between objective and subjective culture (GSG 5: 560–582). In direct contrast, however, the theory of the sociological a priori, i.e. of the conditions permitting the coordination of social structure and social action in everyday social life, showed that only by

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handling and overcoming the fragmentation of their personality as well as the reification of the social world can social actors perform the cultural work necessary to integrate complex societies (GSG 11: 42–61). Consequently, the question arose as if social actors have the capabilities to accomplish this task under societal conditions in the modern world. This interest grounded Simmel’s research programme for sociological anthropology. That the human individual fits not simply into the natural existence of the world, like animals, yet tears himself away, facing nature, demanding, violating and being violated – this basic dualism of human nature gives rise to the history of culture, as Simmel formulates this in ‘The Concept and the Tragedy of Culture’ (GSG 12: 194–223). Yet, in modern societies no issue concerning human beings could be answered any longer without taking into account the importance and quantity of social relationships that individuals must maintain to conduct their life (GSG 11: 13 f.). Therefore, no assessment was possible of anthropological issues without developing a theory of society, as Simmel remarked with implicit reference to Marx’s critique of classical German anthropology in the theses on Feuerbach, which were published in 1886 in the appendix of Engels’ book Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie (Engels 1886).1

4.1 The anthropology of social action The theoretical challenge of sociological anthropology was to explain how tough social action could arise in a world of manifold qualitative differentiated societal domains, whose fragmented contents eventually had to be linked again within one meaningful synthesis by the creativity of social action in order to realise the requirements a priori that permit sociation. The ongoing change of modern social reality had to be understood in a contextual way with the processes characterising its condensation in social forms and then explained from the perspective of the specific human approach to the world. Accordingly, it was necessary to develop a theoretical foundation project that was capable of linking together the different theoretical strands that Simmel provided in the sociological epistemology and in the theory of qualitative differentiated society. Because of his premature death, Simmel could not advance his late research project as much as he had intended to, yet The View of Life (Lebensanschauung) (GSG 16: 209–425; Simmel 2015) gives an idea of what it had possibly become, as Kantorowicz writes in the introduction to Fragments from the Estate (1923; GSG 20: 473–479). Since the spring of 1918, Simmel had known that he was seriously ill. He put all his energies into writing the first chapter of his final book, which was to introduce and unite his further studies on the development dynamics of life and culture and on the principles of social ethics. He had already published these between 1910 and 1916 in Logos, the leading journal of the day for the cultural sciences that was edited in Heidelberg by Rickert’s pupils (Kramme 1995). However, he modified and consistently extended them for the monograph (GSG 16: 236, 438). As Simmel argues in his lecture on ‘Logic’ of the summer term 1914 – this provided the first plot for his sociological anthropology – the key to formulating

Sociological anthropology 125 an anthropological concept linking together the different spheres of life, i.e. the human attitudes to the different spheres of culture, lies in the interpretation of the ‘limit character’ (Grenzcharakter) of human life experience (GSG 21: 988–1011). Circumscribing the potentially unlimited scope of human experience of the world represents for Simmel the characteristic anthropological approach to life. This attitude requires significant efforts at shaping the relationship between the opposite principles of reality that consist in becoming and being, transformation and persistence, so that a mixture of formlessness and forming impetus constantly moulds human life. Theoretically, the latter can only be grasped through a category appreciating the dynamics of the ‘limit-setting attitude’ that differentiates human beings from other organisms. Moreover, from a sociological perspective, it can be observed, on the one hand, that individuals, cultures and social forms always undergo development, so that all their contents are temporally relative. On the other hand, it cannot be overlooked that the three dimensions of individual, cultural and societal life lean on the ongoing creation of forms, i.e. conducts of life, cultural contents and styles, as well as institutions, which have temporal persistence and claim legitimacy in binding social action. Accordingly, the reality and specific character of the human attitude to life and the world cannot be identified with the pure flow of ‘experienced temporality’, as Bergson’s concept of durée suggests (Bergson 1889). Sociological anthropology that is aware of the cultural and societal dimension of human life, especially in modernity, must take into account the circumstance that human beings steadily provide portions of the never-ending extension of their ‘experienced temporality’ with sociocultural forms in order to instil them with meaning. This creative shaping attitude is constitutive for human life and cannot be discarded as a simple expression of modern alienation, as Bergson does. From a theoretical perspective, the consequence of this is that, for Simmel, the human impetus to employ the creativity of social action in relation to the formless material of life experience must be examined as the central issue for the development of sociological anthropology. This also concerns the conception of temporality that is the basic category of Bergson’s life philosophy. Human life experience becomes meaningful within certain spatiotemporal and existential limits, whereas without any shaping it remains a meaningless flow of psychic impressions. This is the core of Simmel’s critique of the philosophy of life from the point of view of sociological epistemology, i.e. the conception of the sociological a priori, whose theoretical backdrop lies in the particular way in which he transformed the terms of Kantian epistemology to develop a science of society (Fitzi 2002: 55–129). Social actors are not only confronted with social stereotypes (first a priori) and feel that they do not seize the entirety of their individuality (second a priori), but in order to participate in sociation they also need to recompose both aspects of their life in a synthesis that overcomes their condition of alienation (third a priori). Fleeing from the dynamics of sociation to seek shelter in the intimacy of the deep flow of psychic perception must therefore be considered as a pathology of modernity, along with the blasé attitude, forcing the creativity of social action to capitulate to alienation.

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Consequently, for Simmel the proper ‘motion impulsion’ of human life lies not in experienced temporality but rather in the process of the continuous setting and overcoming of individual sociocultural limits, which structure the amorphous experience flow by bursting through existing and producing new forms. In turn, these prescribe new limits to life experience. Not the unstoppable flow of temporality, but moulding life experience and constantly transgressing every limit confer on human life its motive for motion. According to Simmel, this stance is constitutive for the anthropological difference: in contrast to the reactive, instinct-driven relationship to the environment of the animal, the human being continuously ‘produces his world’ by giving a meaningful shape to portions of life experience. The static completion of the animal’s environment remains unconscious to it, whereas humans are aware of the limit-centred nature of their approach to experience and consequently feel the incentive to overcome the limits which they perceive. Human beings delimit the extension of their perception flow by producing sociocultural forms. However, they cannot rest throughout on single forms because they are conscious of their limiting character and feel the incentive to go beyond them and produce new ones in the never-ending cycle of the creativity of social action. In The View of Life (Lebensanschauung), Simmel aims at founding an integrated theoretical and methodological approach to relate together the different studies, which he developed concerning the specific a priori that mould social action in the different domains of qualitative differentiated societies (GSG 16: 212 ff.). The starting point for this scrutiny is identifying the circumstance that social action constantly develops beyond its particular spatiotemporal shaping, so that the creativity of social action can be understood as a process continuously overcoming its current form. Here, the assessment of the manifold sociocultural a priori, which permits social actors to participate in different societal domains that characterised Simmel’s middle work phase, flows into research about the deeper level of preconditions that permit the rise of their manifold variety. Simmel’s sociological anthropology thus takes the shape of a research project about the ‘a priori of the a priori’ of social action in the different domains of qualitative differentiated societies. If the individual objects of experience can be led back to the specific conditions of the possibility of experience, their sum can revert to the grounding conditions of the possibility for the manifold human experience of the world. This assumption offers Simmel the key for the development of sociological anthropology as a theory linking the different shaping functions of experience in qualitative differentiated societies within a formal structure that is grounded on the concept of the ‘dynamic self-delimitation’ of the human life form. Explaining its unitary, yet equally contradictory nature, producing, dissolving and again producing sociocultural life forms without succumbing to normative dualism between the ‘good’ dynamics of the consciousness flow and the ‘bad’ reified sociocultural forms, as Bergson did, requests consideration of both dimensions as constitutive for sociological anthropology. In order to link the different shaping processes of human life in one theoretical approach, however, it does not suffice to critically

Sociological anthropology 127 assess the results of the positive sciences from the viewpoint of the philosophy of the will, as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Bergson did in Simmel’s opinion. An analysis of the anthropological structure of life experience that makes allowances for the active and social character of human life is necessary, as Marx’s criticism concerning Feuerbach’s anthropology had already pointed out (GSG 11: 13 f.; Engels 1886). Furthermore, starting from sociological anthropology, a general theory of life can be developed that addresses its different manifestations because a similar dynamic of producing, dissolving and again producing life forms can be observed in all domains of life. Hence, in terms of the language of life philosophy, for Simmel, this insight means that life in general must be considered as something that does not simply develop incessantly. Rather, life produces forms that permit it to exist in its manifold variations – from the biological cell to the organism, the meaningful content of consciousness, the cultural product and societal form. Therefore, life in general has an antinomous character because the bearers of life-flow always have an individual form and in themselves are ‘centred entities’ (GSG 16: 222 f.). The unity of life can therefore only be explained as a steady conflict between the principle of the maintenance of form and the struggle of life for overcoming existing form by moving towards a new shaping process. Once the theoretical transition is assured, which allows for a progression from the theory of the sociological a priori in the different domains of the qualitative differentiated society to the sociological anthropology and through it to a comprehensive theory of life, Simmel can unfold his investigation of the manifold human attitudes to the world. As an acting animal, the ‘position’ (Stellung) of the human being towards the world is characterised by the circumstance that in every dimension of his being and behaviour he finds himself caught between two opposing constraints. Accordingly, consciousness orientates itself at a formal structure of existence that is always comprehended between a before and after, back and forth, over and under, better and worse and so on. Two rows of experience flowing in opposite directions depart from every life content, building a system of coordinates for every aspect of life. These delimitations of experience represent the means whereby human beings find their way in the infinite spatiotemporal extension of their experience of the world, so that they have limits always and everywhere and, therefore, also ‘are limit’ (GSG 16: 212). Accordingly, only a dynamic category of ‘limit-building’ permits an understanding of the human way of life as ‘beings of the limit’. Nonetheless, that the human structure of life experience is grounded in its manifold delimitation only determines, in Simmel’s analysis, the first layer in the context of the anthropological limit category and furthermore with a particular dialectic. Human life experience is characterised by its dual nature of having a static and a dynamic modality that are mutually dependent, so that every single action includes a delimiting aspect and its mode of overcoming. If the existence of limits of experience is indispensable for the subsistence of human life, the individual limits are steadily overcome. Yet, every act of overcoming also implies the creation of a new limit, so that its principle is never suspended. Accordingly, the human position towards the world includes a conscious relationship to one’s

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personal existential delimitations. This builds the starting point for overcoming the single limits of experience. In Simmel’s view, this is the deeper anthropological meaning of the human structure of life because it determines its dynamic development, which is the source for the creativity of cultural work and social action. Only because humans are conscious about their condition of being constantly delimited are they capable of overcoming single sociocultural forms that shape their life and, equally, of establishing new forms beyond them. Hence, this anthropological attitude must be considered as the origin for the ‘dialectic of the cultural forms’ which characterise human history (GSG 13: 217–223). To formulate his anthropological conception more precisely, Simmel develops terminology that can be read from the perspective of sociological epistemology. Human life has to be considered, on the one hand, as being ‘more-life’ because the creativity of social action continuously endeavours to break out from its existing limits that are imposed by institutionalised social forms, by shaping social relationships anew. At the same time, however, human life is also ‘more-thanlife’, because to carry out its creativity it needs to establish new social forms whereby it can pursue it goals. Therefore, the unity of human life, which forms the key focus of sociological anthropology, can only continue if it manages to come to terms with the dynamic process of the steady creation, overcoming and renewed creation of sociocultural forms that make social action possible (GSG 16: 232 f.). This process in itself develops as the form of a conflict-prone relationship between the creativity of social action and the claim of social structures of being acted upon by following their autonomous and reified logic. Hence, only the cultural work of those social actors who are involved permits a recomposition in terms of a meaningful unity of their diverging forces as suggested by the third a priori of sociation. On the basis of these theoretical arguments, Simmel could eventually extend the scheme of the sociological a priori to the theoretical paradigm of sociological anthropology and thus also to his critical conception of life philosophy by founding the unitary category of life as a synthesis between the dynamic ideas of ‘more-life’ and ‘more-than-life’.

4.2 The anthropology of social structure A theory of the manifold human approach to the world is called for to relate together the studies that Simmel provided concerning the specific a priori that mould social action in the different domains of qualitative differentiated societies. Accordingly, in The View of Life (Lebensanschauung) Simmel develops a cultural–sociological ‘world-theory’ that addresses the sum of the shaping forms which are capable of collecting the variety of the contents of experience under a single a priori by giving them respectively an economic, political, religious, scientific, artistic or erotic meaning. Thanks to this theoretical approach, Simmel reconstructs the origins of the different spheres of culture, which become autonomous societal domains, by analysing their origination from different stances of human behaviour that lead social action. Building on this reconstruction, he then links the manifold attitudes to the socially mediated contents of experience in an

Sociological anthropology 129 integrated theoretical and methodological approach which assumes the form of a sociological anthropological theory of the manifold human ways of ‘having a world’ (GSG 16: 236 f.). This assessment follows the methodological approach of the theory of the sociological a priori by extending and unifying it into a perspective which accounts for the fragmented reality of qualitative differentiated societies. Simmel offers the summary concept of ‘world’ to understand the result of the cultural work that links the immediate contents of experience within a unity in the sense of the third sociological a priori, and so matching the specific logic of one cultural sphere. As the numerous studies in cultural sociology already showed, there are different competing logics, which are capable in principle of shaping the infinity of possible contents of experience. Yet, sociological anthropology goes one step further: it endeavours to demonstrate that the different logics that produce competing cultural spheres correspond to the ‘leading functions of consciousness’ which organise the human approach to the world. The different worlds emerging through cultural work are closed in themselves; they do not allow for any overlaps because their respective logic is incompatible, albeit each one tends to be capable of expressing the totality of world contents in its language. From the viewpoint of the theory of social structure, the different spheres of culture can thus be conceived of as ‘closed semantic fields’ in a sense that is in some respects close to that of autopoietic social systems. Yet, for Simmel, sociology consists not only in a theory of social structure but also must develop by accounting for the threefold dimensionality of social reality. This was highlighted by the theory of the a priori of sociation: social structure, social action and social validity or legitimacy. The semantic fields of the different cultural spheres are constituted in the form of independent worlds that are subordinated to a specific objective logic. Once the products of the creative process of social action are present, they become autonomous and join the reified domains of objective culture following the same logic. From the viewpoint of the social actors, therefore, not one but many parallel worlds exist in the sense of the various possible ways in which the fragments of sociocultural reality can be related together, along the lines of a unitary logic. Hence, according to its meaning, every content of consciousness ‘belongs’ to a different objective context with which the social actor must come to terms to live in qualitative differentiated societies (GSG 16: 243). Thanks to this insight, Simmel’s sociological anthropology assumes the shape of a theory of human life, which is historically aware of the conditio humana in complex societies and does not take the path of ahistorical anthropological ontology. The fragmentary character of life in highly differentiated societies depends, on the one hand, on the structure of the manifold human attitude towards the world, yet on the other hand, it lies in the fact that the products of human activity gradually become reified as autonomous domains of culture (GSG 13: 202–216). In modern societies, human beings must permanently interchange between different dimensions of experience, each one of which pretends in principle to shape its totality in keeping with its specific formula. However, from the perspective of social actors it only represents a section and a particular interpretation of existence as a whole. Analysing the issue of ‘having a world’ from the structural point

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of view of the culture forms thus compels different conclusions than carrying on with the assessment from the perspective of the social actors. The rift arising here between subjective and objective culture can only be overcome through cultural work that is requested by the third a priori of sociation to grant a meaningful coordination of the two perspectives by the social actors. In The View of Life (Lebensanschauung), Simmel tackles this issue from the standpoint of his late theory of cultural conflict as a struggle between the creativity of social action (das Leben) and the reified forms of social structure (die Formen) (GSG 16: 181–207). The synthetic relationship to world contents, which characterises subjective culture and establishes the basis for the creativity of social action, compels social actors to combine together the world fragments in a meaningful totality, even if their logic is incompatible. Hence, from the viewpoint of the participant in social action, the correlation of world fragments is completely different than if it is looked at from the perspective of the objective logic of the different societal domains. The affiliation of culture contents to different objective worlds appears to be the result of an artificial cutting out of portions of the consciousness flow in the way Bergson underlined in his analyses of experienced temporality. In contrast, the social actors perceive them as ‘their contents’ of consciousness. Sociological anthropology must therefore reconstruct the ways in which culture contents are generated by the meaning-giving activity of social actors. Moreover, it must explain the means whereby they become autonomous from their creators. Sociocultural forms are the expression of the creativity of social action; they build the means for realising human life within social relationships. They cannot be discarded as a defective development of human life. Rather, they must be explained in terms of their genesis and autonomisation process, until they become reified societal structures and claim recognition by further social action. To this end, Simmel develops a theory of the ‘anthropological preforms of culture’ that characterise the human approach to the world. He also assesses the sociocultural mechanisms that lead their transformation into reified cultural forms. The metaphor that he proposes to define this process is ‘axial rotation’ (Achsendrehung) in the relationship between life, i.e. social action, and forms, i.e. social structures (GSG 16: 245). The objective world of culture emerges from cultural preforms, which were originally produced to serve the vital needs of the social actors. Yet, societal dynamics makes them independent to the point where they compel the latter to serve their purposes. The different domains of culture arise thanks to the manifold activity of social actors, so that in its immediacy the individual cultural contents appear in their embryonal form and strongly differ from their manifestation in the reified cultural world. Yet, the cultural functions that social life produces for its purposes gain momentum; they crystallise to autonomous cultural spheres and finally become independent. To be part of it, any further cultural product must therefore conform to the established sociocultural forms of life, so that the creativity of social action must be subordinate to it and serve extraneous purposes. Thanks to the causal bi-directional approach of his sociological anthropology, Simmel provides a theory for the ongoing institutionalisation of the

Sociological anthropology 131 societal world. Yet, he does so by revealing its deep-rootedness within the human approach to life. He presents a theory of the empirical validity of sociocultural forms and follows the classical path of a sociological inquiry into the reciprocal action between social structures and social action. The function of the sociocultural institutions is regarded as being neither positive nor negative in principle, but structurally ambivalent. Human coexistence needs sociocultural forms to subsist; it also needs them for structuring life experience and social action and for making possible individual self-fulfilment within society. On the one hand, sociocultural forms thus represent as many means of self-realisation both for single individuals as well as for the creativity of social action. On the other hand, however, sociocultural forms become a straitjacket for the further development of creative sociocultural forces, so that human coexistence constantly takes the form of latent conflict and an open-ended dialectic between two opposite tendencies of sociocultural life. Reconstructing the individual mechanisms that condition the inversion of the causal relationship between social action and social structure becomes one of the major priorities of Simmel’s research programme in sociological anthropology. In order to play their decisive role in shaping societal life, the cultural forms have to become independent from social action and establish themselves as institutionalised and objective domains of society. A major ‘axial rotation’ of social life must therefore be regarded as a necessary historical development, so making the objective and existing sociocultural forms the dominant aspect of societal development. Accordingly, the task of sociological anthropology is to reconstruct the embryonal preforms that permit the development and then reproduction of the various sociocultural domains such as art, religion, law, science and so on. These domains can be addressed in the different anthropological modalities of social action (GSG 16: 245 f.). The autonomisation of money from a means to an end of social action arises within the societal domain of the economy, and so ultimately constitutes the major institution for integrating complex societies by provoking the emergence of pathological phenomena, which Simmel describes in The Philosophy of Money (GSG 6: 308–336). Furthermore, in every domain of highly differentiated societies the establishment of the objective sociocultural formations leads to an inversion of the causal mechanisms of social action. Thus, its products become autonomous from their initiators and, in their function of social institutions, the cultural forms claim binding validity for all the actors concerned (GSG 16: 247). The different spheres of culture, therefore, are not given ontological domains of social reality. Rather, they are the products of the societal process which emerge from an inversion of the causal relationship between social action and social structure. Understanding the way in which the different domains of culture arise – namely, starting from their preforms within the creativity of social action – permits an explanation not only of how qualitative differentiated societies reproduce themselves, but also of their particular development potential. In this sense, one can say that the reconstruction of the twofold causality of the ‘axial rotation’ of the logic of social action generates the theory of social validity within the context of sociological anthropology.

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4.3 The anthropology of social validity On the basis of the sociological anthropological theory of the relationship between social action and social structure, as outlined in the second chapter of The View of Life (Lebensanschauung), Simmel develops an exemplary assessment of some selected ‘preforms of culture’. These shape social action before the ‘axial rotation’ of life transforms them in reified cultural forms. In this context, science as the cultural domain of society that gains particular relevance in modernity moves to the forefront of the analysis (GSG 16: 256). In contrast to knowledge in general, science is only possible on condition that cognitive activity becomes independent from the immediate needs of human and societal life. Everyday life is pervaded by practical knowledge processes that assure the overwhelming majority of the information, which human beings need, and is directly determined by the pragmatic logic of life. Consequently, even the definition of truth seems to be deeply influenced by the necessities of practical action, so that from a biological perspective every life form appears to generate its own subjective variation of veracity. Only thanks to the autonomisation of an objective domain of scientific knowledge does it come to the enforcement of an antagonistic relationship between cognition and practical action, and so to the establishment of objective truth. The existence of science is grounded on the circumstance that socially recognised methodological procedures exist, so allowing for the establishment of legitimised knowledge with which social action must comply. Therefore, science is the result of a social institutionalisation process that makes possible the overturning of practical mechanisms of knowledge which customarily lead social action (GSG 16: 265). A complete ‘axial rotation’ of the original relationship between knowledge and social action is thus necessary to establish the objective status of truth, so that social life no longer determines subjective knowledge but rather must conform to the legitimised results of scientific research as an autonomous societal domain. That the social actors subordinate their practical knowledge to the imperatives of scientific truth is a matter of legitimacy and is grounded on the cultural work that is delivered in accordance with the third a priori of sociation. Yet, according to Simmel, in modernity there is an increasing difficulty to realise the imperative of subordinating social action to the requirements of scientific knowledge, and this happens for social–anthropological reasons. After the complete ‘axial rotation’ of action logic within the cultural domain of science, the recognition of scientific truth must be brought together with the anthropologically given ‘preforms of knowledge’. The development of technology in modern times, thus enhancing the scope of the human perception of the world beyond its biological limits, conditions a tension-fraught relationship between objective and subjective knowledge and alienates the social actors from their customary relationship to the world. The employment of the technical instruments of knowledge from the microscope to the telescope, to radiology, and today even more technologies, empowers sensorial perception many times over, so that it no longer has any selfevident relationship to the biologically given context of the human experience of the world (GSG 16: 215). Hence, modern science and technology burst the

Sociological anthropology 133 anthropologically determined limits of life experience by enhancing objective legitimised knowledge, yet also by conferring the specific modern nuance of uncertainty on the feeling of life. In The Human Condition, Arendt would later reformulate this viewpoint as the modern conflict between the world as it appears and as it is explained intellectually (1958/1998: 248 f.). The scientific and technological development thus comes into contradiction with the anthropological structure of perception and establishes the backdrop for the modern conflict of culture. A specific sort of cultural work in the sense of the third a priori of sociation must be delivered to grant the coordination of the anthropologically determined attitude to the world with the legitimised contexts of objective scientific knowledge. What stays in the focus of the Lebensanschauung is, once more, the issue of the coordination between the objective dimension of the sociocultural processes that is embodied in social structures and the subjective functioning of social action. Yet, here the approach is to revert to sociological anthropology by concentrating on the tension-fraught relationship between the creativity of social action, which characterises the preforms of culture, and the multiplicity of the institutionalised modalities of ‘owning the world’ (Welthaben) in a qualitative differentiated society. This tension arises not only within the domains of science and technology but also in the remaining sociocultural spheres, including art, which remains in an ideal–typical contrast, in Simmel’s analysis, to the natural sciences that reconstruct the world as absolute continuity, as a restless movement and as a constant flow of the world material (GSG 16: 266). In contrast to this view of the world produced by natural sciences, which informs Bergson’s conception of experienced temporality (Bergson 1889), for Simmel the human attitude towards the world depends on the necessity of shaping the unlimited contents of perception in different forms by creating all the various sorts of sociocultural objects that constitute the subject matter of cultural sociology. According to this acknowledgement, art must be considered as the most significant domain of culture, because thanks to the process of artistic creativity the human attitude towards the world develops to its most advanced degree of perfection and becomes an end in itself. Hence, sociological anthropology that is aware of the specific sociocultural quality of human life must cope with the task of showing which particular ‘preforms of creativity’ give rise to the autonomous societal domain of art. Simmel’s inquiry into the preforms of artistic creativity concentrates on the modalities of the ‘vision of the other’ that develop within reciprocal social action and that provide the embryonal forms of the different established genres of art production. In contrast to the representation of the world in the natural sciences, the ‘practical vision’ of everyday life breaks through the continuity of matter and highlights definite objects from the endless flow of existence (GSG 16: 266 f.). By assessing the modalities of the vision beyond their use in everyday praxis, one comes across the creative work of the fine arts because their performance consists in elevating the content of sensorial perception into a persistent form. Hence, in art it becomes an end in itself to shape and mould the contents of experience. The creative process of the fine arts can thus be regarded as a continuation of the natural vision process, provided that it no longer constitutes a function of the life

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process but rather operates on its own to realise the purposes of artistic creativity. The artist’s vision is distinguished from that of other human beings because it occurs not for the sake of its content, but its form. As artistic shaping of world material, it produces perception contents, albeit only for the purposes of the creative process. Human individuals as ‘sighted beings’ are as much fragmentary artists as they are embryonal scientists because they are subjects of knowledge. Yet, the transition from the vital preforms to the cultural forms occurs in both cases because of the ‘axial rotation’ of the causal relationship between life and forms. In his studies about portrait painting and poetry, Simmel already remarked that the ‘consciousness of the other’ characterising social interaction becomes an autonomous cultural form in art (GSG 5: 287–300; GSG 7: 21–35, 321–332; GSG 13: 370–381). In The View of Life (Lebensanschauung), he adds to this analysis a reconstruction of the inverse causal relationship, so converting cultural forms back into preforms of perception. A comparative assessment of the effect of art not only on the observer of paintings but also on the listeners of poetry, drama and music highlights in which relationships mature cultural forms remain with their respective preforms of human perception (GSG 16: 274 f.). Accordingly, for Simmel the eminent social meaning of art consists in the fact that it performs an intermediary role in the relationship between social action and social structure in both directions of the ‘axial rotation’ of life. It produces objective contents of culture and contributes to their reification as autonomous domains of society. Yet it also allows for their translation anew into preforms of culture by building a bridge to subjective culture in the process of receiving when the observer of fine art, the spectator of drama or the listener of music in some way follows the artist on his creative route. To borrow the terms of Simmel’s The View of Life (Lebensanschauung): the work of art not only incorporates vital energies in itself to reproduce its form, but also operates like a bridge that leads back from the forms to life. This double performance of the arts not only stirs the cycle of culture but also contributes to the integration of society by realising the coordination between the objective cultural forms and the preforms of social creativity in the sense of the third a priori of sociation. The reciprocal action between autonomous cultural forms and its correlated preform characterises poetry and drama in an eminent way. Their vital preforms not only consist in linguistic expression but are also grounded on a specific interior shaping of the vision that permits poetic creativity. In principle, this expression of art operates no differently than the countless acts of consciousness whereby the social actors adapt the aspect of perception to the goals of social life by gaining from its unsteady flow a consistent and reliable image of the world objects and interaction partners. Poetry arises from the generalisation and typification of social reality influenced by the first a priori of sociation. However, it does so by styling fragmentary knowledge of the imagined other into an artistic image of his personality (GSG 16: 279). In his creative work, the poet operates for the sake of perfection of the expressive form and not for the purposes of practical social life. The artistic and literary representation of the fellow human individual find their

Sociological anthropology 135 prototype in social modalities of the perception of the other, yet this can only succeed as art forms if a complete ‘axial rotation’ of the vital expediency in shaping the image of the fellow human individual takes place. This allows for the realisation of the artistic intent of creating a typological human character as an end in itself (GSG 16: 280 f.). During his analyses on sociological anthropology, Simmel underlines that the three a priori of sociation constitute the fundamental preforms for the artistic representation of the other, thus promoting the rise of art as an autonomous domain of qualitative differentiated societies. Sociological epistemology and cultural sociology thus link together in a unitary theory of the sociocultural human life form within the perspective of sociological anthropology. This theory building constitutes Simmel’s final sociological answer to Dilthey’s appeal (1883) for a coherent foundation for the study of society and history (Grundlegung für das Studium der Gesellschaft und der Geschichte), in the form of a sociological anthropological theory of culture in qualitative differentiated societies. The scholarly reception of this last element of Simmel’s research programme was, however, minimal and mostly mistaken because post-1918 the intellectual mainstream in Germany and abroad only read the label of Simmel’s intellectual testament: The View of Life (Lebensanschauung). Accordingly, the book was pigeonholed under ‘life philosophy’ and designated as one of the passing fashions of the Belle Époque. As such, it lost its appeal in the dramatic period of the Weimar Republic, if not in its reinterpretation as a basis for irrational political ideologies. Rickert, who was an objective witness of this development and a good friend of Simmel, came to his defence, albeit from a critical point of view (1920: 64–70). He highlighted the difference between the theoretical project of ‘Lebensanschauung’ and the fashionable streams of philosophical belles-lettres before and after World War I. However, this did not suffice to grant a favourable reception for Simmel’s sociological anthropology. The only exception is Plessner’s research on ‘The Stages of Organic Life and the Human Being’ (Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, 1928/1975). In keeping with scientific prose conventions of the time, Plessner did not explicitly refer to Simmel’s Lebensanschauung as an inspiration for his theory of the human individual’s ‘eccentric positionality’ (Fitzi 2005).

4.4 Individual life and societal form In the second chapter of The View of Life (Lebensanschauung), Simmel analyses the transformation of the relationship between the logic of social action and social structure by detecting the preforms of culture that allow the rise of the institutionalised domains of modern society. Simmel’s assessment of portrait painting and poetry shows that the a priori of sociation play a decisive role in this regard because the preforms of social perception allow for an unfolding of the creative processes in artistic and literary expression. Thanks to this analytical achievement, Simmel integrates sociological epistemology, sociology of culture and sociological anthropology and provides the basis for the reciprocal translatability of these different streams in his sociological theory building. Simmel did not have

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enough time to develop all the possible corollaries of his late theoretical work. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that the ‘forms of sociation’ could become the object of scrutiny from the perspective of the socio-anthropological theory of The View of Life (Lebensanschauung) as a product of the tension-fraught relationship between the preforms and forms of ‘having a social world’, which emerge after the accomplishment of the ‘axial rotation’ between the logics of social action and social structure. This assessment could have supplied a contribution to a sociological– anthropologically based theory of the construction of social reality from the viewpoint of the social actors (life) and their struggle with the constraint of modern reified social structures (forms). The task of sociology in this context could have been to show how the institutional framework of modern qualitatively differentiated societies develops out of the ‘preforms of sociation’ that are given by the sociological a priori and furthermore show how society subsists as an ‘objective content’ of ‘limit-building subjective consciousness’ (cf. GSG 11: 41). In everyday social interaction, social actors apply a number of sociocultural forms of consciousness to the erratic flow of perception in order to overcome contingency and produce constant images of objects, fellow social actors and social relationships. This legitimising activity in the sense of the third a priori represents for Simmel the basis for establishing the consistent forms of social action that then become independent of their initiators and build the institutional framework of qualitatively differentiated societies. The main pillar of Simmel’s approach to an anthropologically informed theory of social interaction in complex societies is the description of social structure as an ongoing stereotypical consolidation of the fluctuating visual appearance of social relationships in the eyes of the social actors. It allows social forms to be treated as one domain of culture among others, and this can be correspondingly examined by a sociology that is founded on a comprehensive concept of culture. The ‘social realm’ can therefore be assessed as the domain of culture that is produced by the axial rotation of social life, which subordinates the logics of social action to those of social structure. In this respect, the ‘social sphere’ constitutes a variation of the overall conflict between the productive forces of cultural life and the established cultural forms on which Simmel focuses in his 1918 essay on the ‘The Conflict of Modern Culture’ (GSG 16: 181–207). The forms of reciprocal action that originally arise to serve the needs of social actors then become reified and exploit social life to reproduce themselves. The theory of social reproduction that Simmel originally develops in The Philosophy of Money thus becomes a pillar of his late sociological anthropology. The institutionalised forms of sociation represent one sphere of objective societal validity within a qualitatively differentiated society; they grant a reservoir of action forms in terms of which human individuals can organise their common societal life. At the same time, however, these forms follow their own reproductive logic and compel social action to subordination. The rise of the institutional network of modern societies, which adopting the approach of the Lebensanschauug can be interpreted as the result of the ‘axial rotation’ within the logic of social life, was already at the heart of Simmel’s

Sociological anthropology 137 interest in his Soziologie of 1908 (GSG 11). Yet, its survey under the perspective of sociological anthropology allows for an understanding of its development from the standpoint of an overall sociological theory of culture. The existence of science, art, politics, economy, religion and law, yet also the forms of sociation, can be explained as a product of the ‘limit-setting attitude’ of human life whose grip on ‘form-giving’ provokes the rise of the different spheres of culture by setting their a priori. Sociological epistemology therefore becomes the instrument of inquiry not only about society but also about all the reified products of the cultural process in qualitatively differentiated societies. This is achieved by assessing the complex reservoir of cultural forms that mould societal life. From the perspective of Simmel’s sociological anthropology, it must be asked what the meaning of his late sociological publication is, namely Grundfragen der Soziologie. Individuum und Gesellschaft of 1917 (GSG 16: 59–149). This book was commissioned by the publishing house Göschen, which circulated Simmel’s Hauptprobleme der Philosophie in 1910 (GSG 14: 7–157). The publisher was positively surprised to have sold more than 30,000 copies. In 1917, the Göschen volume titled Soziologie written by Thomas Achelis, who died in 1909, went out of print. Simmel was invited to contribute a new edition of the popular portrayal of sociology (GSG 16: 432 f.). He decided to accept the proposal and to present a synthesis of his sociological writings. Accordingly, in his Grundfragen der Soziologie, on the one hand, he reissued three texts with some revisions, including a reformulation of the opening chapter of Soziologie on the discipline of sociology (GSG 11: 13–42); the fourth chapter of Sociale Differenzierung on ‘The Social Level’ (GSG 2: 199–236); and the essay on ‘The Sociology of Sociability’, first published in 1911 (GSG 12: 177–193). As a fourth chapter, Simmel then added an unpublished text that only appeared posthumously in an abbreviated form in 1957: Das Individuum und die Freiheit (GSG 20: 249–258). This gave an assessment of the different streams of 19th-century philosophical sociology which he elaborated upon and extended for the book version. By referring to the relationship between the individual and society – the book’s subtitle – Simmel focuses his portrayal of sociology on the tension-fraught relationship between individual social action and collective social structure. This was one of the main topics of his late work phase. The innovative aspect of the book, which Simmel returns to in the first chapter, is that here he considers sociology in a wider sense as he did for developing sociological epistemology, namely, as a cultural tendency of a certain period. Simmel already used this methodological approach in 1911 to introduce his miscellany on Philosophical Culture (Philosophische Kultur) (GSG 14: 162–167), where he gathered a certain number of his contributions on philosophical psychology, gender philosophy, aesthetics, the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of culture. Accordingly, neither one single stream nor one system of thought can represent the overall theoretical richness of an era, so that only the multiplicity of the ‘attitudes to world and life’ can accurately represent it, as they suggest the starting point for philosophical reflection on a certain time. In Simmel’s view, the same order of considerations applies for sociology: its different ways of understanding social reality depend on the specific principles

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according to which the raw material of social science is ordered into conceptual abstractions. As a matter of course, every sociological approach claims to have exclusive objective validity, yet only their totality constitutes the ‘sociological culture’ of a specific historical period. Hence, the historical meaning of social theory depends not on the results obtained by one or the other method, only on the magnitude of different sociological positions that are generated by a specific period. By embracing this methodological approach, Simmel’s appraisal of social theory in the Grundfragen der Soziologie focused on the plurality of different formulations concerning the relationship between the individual and society that characterised 19th-century socio-philosophical culture. In this context, for Simmel, there is equally a place for general sociology, like that of Durkheim, for a formal sociology like his own and for a broader field of philosophical sociology. Yet, the common denominator of all the aforementioned variations of social theory is that they have to be regarded as positions in the debate about the major conflict characterising modern culture, i.e. the tension-fraught relationship between the individual and society. Simmel’s sociological epistemology already observed how society cannot be understood as a static substance. Rather, it must be seen as a continuous process of creation and dissolution of social structures that the analytical stance of the social sciences subdivides into different fields of inquiry. If one reconstructs the development of sociological theory from its beginnings in the mid-19th century, for Simmel, it clearly emerges that there are three founding questions on whose terms social reality was ordered into scientific categories (GSG 16: 122–149). Accordingly, he distinguishes three fundamental tendencies of modern ‘sociological culture’. The first tendency emerges from questioning about the relationship between collective behaviour and the dignity of the individual. The assessment of the differences between the collective and the individual level of societal life tries to understand what in an individual’s life is a product of societal dynamics and what is instead independent of this. The inquiry into the question of the individual and the collective level of social life represents one possible way of examining the social structure of modern societies. It generates the preeminent type of sociology which Simmel names ‘general sociology’. However, a different way to develop sociology is to focus only on social forms, as Simmel achieved through his sociological research programme, by highlighting exclusively the modalities of reciprocal action and by fading out the relationship between the individual and society. This second variation of sociology may be called ‘formal sociology’ because it only abstracts the aspect of sociation from the multiplicity of social phenomena by typologically describing its form. The results of this work are collected in Simmel’s Soziologie of 1908 and then linked together by Simmel’s sociological epistemology, which is contained in the different excurses and instead concentrates on the issue of social validity, i.e. the tension-fraught relationship between social action and social structure. Simmel’s study on sociability may be considered as the most pronounced example of the formal approach to sociological analysis, and it therefore constitutes the third chapter of his Grundfragen der Soziologie (GSG 16: 103–121). Finally,

Sociological anthropology 139 the philosophical view of social facts produces a third modality for assessing the social world. As Simmel already underlined in his introduction to The Philosophy of Money, two philosophical domains always delimit the positive science of society (GSG 6: 9). On the one hand, there is epistemology, which analyses the conditions for the scientific knowledge of social reality, and on the other hand, there is the reflection on ethical issues concerning the different domains of society. The answer to such an order of questions, however, depends on the various versions of Weltanschauung according to which social thinkers develop their approach to social reality. Simmel dedicates the last chapter of his Grundfragen der Soziologie to the reconstruction of the manifold philosophical theories of society in the 19th century (GSG 16: 122–149). Here, he discusses from an ethical viewpoint the relationship between the individual and society as regards the development of social matters in industrial society.

4.5 Simmel and Plessner Simmel underlined the fact that he would die without official heirs (GSG 20: 261). Because of his outsider position in academia, he could not establish a school of scholars whose primary interest was the promotion of his ideas. In addition, some of his most promising pupils died in World War I (GSG 23: 531). Nevertheless, in the 1920s there was a continuation of Simmel’s sociological research programme, even if this was in the rather extreme formalistic style of Alfred Vierkandt (1923) and Leopold von Wiese (1924–1929), as Albion Small remarked (GSG 24: 1050; Levine 1971: xlviii). One further strand of the reception of Simmel’s work leads to the early philosophical anthropology of the 1920s. Helmuth Plessner, who was a very attentive reader of classical sociology, appropriated different aspects of Simmel’s sociological theory to formulate his critique of the emergent ideology of community in Germany (Plessner 1924/1981, 1999). Later on, he derived from this theoretical reflection a foundation of philosophical anthropology that highlights different aspects of Simmel’s sociological anthropology (Fitzi 2015: 339–409). The fact that social relationships become increasingly fluid and formal can be considered a typical trait of modern societies. They thus grant a wider scope of freedom from personal subjugation, yet they also establish growing distance between the social actors that culminates in social indifference. Simmel described the development of modern society by focusing on the issues of progressive social differentiation, monetisation of social life, social conflicts, urbanisation, crisis of culture and fragmentation of individuality. He always underlined the substantial ambivalence of these phenomena that constitute, on the one hand, a means of emancipation, while on the other hand become autonomous and subjugate the social actors. In the period of acute social and economic crisis after World War I, especially in Germany, social cleavages became increasingly dramatic. The experience that capitalism and solidarity remain in a relationship of reciprocal exclusion was then a matter of daily life. In this context the call for community, in terms of the longing for lost human solidarity, pervaded the political debate. Right-wing

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nationalist and racist ideologies, yet also streams of socialist capitalism critique, opposed utopian visions of social life against modernity by playing off the idea of community against the idea of society. Tönnies’ opposing twin categories (1887) were rediscovered after World War I and rapidly ideologised into an extremely successful antithesis between the ‘evil’ of modern society and the ‘good’ of the imagined premodern or utopian future communitarian ways of life. From different viewpoints, modern societal relationships were rejected en bloc as a source of alienation and a way of life that contradicts human nature. Accordingly, in his critique of the communitarian ideology Plessner evaluated to what extent contrasting aspects emerge to question the fact that modern social relationships could be considered as an expression of the basic needs of the human being (1924/1981). Unlike Simmel, who did not evaluate the results of his diagnosis of modernity by comparing them with a normative anthropological benchmark, Plessner questioned those criteria that could differentiate the ambivalent development tendencies of modern society that are suitable for the human form of life from those that are not appropriate. In this way, Plessner led the question of social ethics back to an inquiry into normative anthropology in the vein of traditional philosophical anthropology. The results of Simmel’s diagnosis of modern society as well as of his sociological anthropology constituted an essential point of departure for Plessner’s reflection. Yet they evolved as the elements of a different appreciation that pursued the goal of a normative assessment of the problem of modernity. For Plessner, if Tönnies’ sociological foundation of the categories of community and society could be so easily misunderstood and ideologically reinterpreted, the question must be addressed about what aspects could permit their transformation into political slogans. The thesis of Plessner’s critique of community is that this depends on the implicit anthropological assumptions that Tönnies’ sociological theory makes (Plessner 1924/1981; Fitzi 2015: 339–351). These are grounded on a normative opposition between the logic of cohesion, which is assumed as characteristic for the premodern community, and the logic of merciless competition associated with the idea of the capitalist society. The issue at stake was to understand if modernity consisted exclusively of the latter aspect. By applying the theoretical means of classical sociology in an ingenious way to the inquiry of the anthropological foundation of social relationships, Plessner undertook to verify whether the societal conditions of life were adapted for the ‘human form of life’ or not. The different ideologies of community in the 1920s operated on the assumption that a restless disclosure of the intimate layers of the personality constituted the only way to overcome modern artificiality and to re-establish authenticity in social relationships. This voluntarist transformation of modern social reality would have restored the basis for social solidarity. From a sociological viewpoint, it is highly controversial that the conflicts of modern society could be reduced to this moral and socio-political issue. Furthermore, there were many reasons to doubt that unconditioned openness is compatible with the human attitude to the world, as above all Simmel’s sociological assessment of mental life in the metropolis had shown (GSG 7: 116–131).

Sociological anthropology 141 Plessner legitimised Simmel’s argument for the critical analysis of the communitarian ideologies of the 1920s. To avoid continuous exposure to emotions, human beings need social distance and therefore develop particular forms of social interaction that interpose formality between social actors. Furthermore, given the dynamic structure of the human attitude to the world, no appeal for the complete frankness and disclosure of the intimate layers of the personality would ever attain the ‘last ground’ of the human mind (Plessner 1924/1981: 62). As Simmel’s sociological anthropology shows, the human mind is in a state of continuous setting of and overcoming individual delimitations of the flow of experience so that it can never determine its ‘definitive authentic’ status (GSG 16: 212). Plessner shares with Simmel the assumption that individuality does not consist exclusively in what comes to expression within social relationships. Human beings have socially determined domains of personality in the sense of the second a priori of sociation and, therefore, need protection from indiscriminate exposure in interaction (GSG 11: 51). This fact cannot be considered as a mere effect of the modern neurasthenia or blasé attitude, yet it is a steadfast structure of the human mind that is involved in social interaction (Plessner 1924/1981: 72). For Plessner, the fact that psychic, emotional life cannot function in conditions of continuous exposure constitutes the reason why human beings must lead their lives in a continuous interplay between self-protection through intimacy and affirmation in the public sphere. The human mind needs, on the one hand, to give itself a form and enjoy recognition. Yet, on the other hand, it wants to protect the non-socialised domains of personality and overcome its current form in a neverending process of renewal beyond given appearances (Plessner 1924/1981: 63). Accordingly, social action results in a continuous dialectics between the need for recognition and restraint. Social relationships are dominated by the ambivalence of the human mind, which oscillates between strong individualisation processes and the need for retirement and intimacy. With this argument, Plessner presents an alternative foundation of sociological epistemology in anthropological terms that diverges from Simmel’s approach because it goes deeper into the analysis of the mind and body dialectics that takes place between social actors. For Plessner, the ambivalent interplay between body and mind in the social space determines the reciprocal stereotypical perception of the social actors (GSG 11: 47 f.). Sociation processes are intermediated by the expressive surface of the body that makes the dialectics possible between the expression and retention impulse in social interaction (Plessner 1924/1981: 74). As a consequence, the expressive dynamics of social interaction is fundamentally ambivalent. This finding for Plessner has a clear consequence for the evaluation of the alleged normative opposition between community and society. Human beings can protect their intimacy in interaction only by leaning on forms that allow them to present themselves within the public sphere. This ‘constraint to form’, which makes sociation possible, constitutes according to Plessner the anthropological reason for the existence of the societal, and therefore formal, distanced and detached ways of life that characterise modernity (Plessner 1924/1981: 72). Instead, the appeal for the flight from modernity into an imagined authenticity,

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which the ideologies of the community spread, does not suit human nature because it compels giving up every protection of the non-socialised domains of the personality within social interaction. Socialised and non-socialised domains of the personality, as well as intimate and public forms of interaction, namely the communitarian and societal moments of the conduct of life, must be brought into a meaningful synthesis by the social actors and cannot be played off against each other. This is the result of the critique of the ideology of community that Plessner formulated in 1924 by following the viewpoint of Simmel’s foundation of sociological epistemology on the assessment of the a priori of sociation (GSG 11: 42–61). In Plessner’s book on the limits of community, the anthropological ascertainment of the reciprocal dependence between the intimate and public sphere and thus between community and society is still an outline (Plessner 1924/1981). In his later work on The Stages of Organic Life and the Human Being (1928/1975), Plessner developed his anthropology to a systematic comparison between plant, animal and human life forms. Here, the idea of ‘positionality’ delivers the guideline for the inquiry (Plessner 1928/1975: 129). Depending on the way in which plants, animals and human beings realise their dynamic delimitation from the environment as living beings, their positionality assumes a different shape. The plant presents an open, the animal a closed and the human an ‘eccentric’ positionality. The aim of Plessner’s inquiry is to deliver a definition for the unitary approach to life experience of the human being that takes into account its different aspects and notably human corporality and historicity (Plessner 1928/1975: 26–37). Central to the focus of the concept of the ‘eccentric positionality’ is the question of the life form of human beings who do not simply act instinctively like animals, but rather at the same time observe and reflect on their actions. The consequent condition of ‘brokenness’ in the performance of human action influences social interaction and negates the possibility of the communitarian utopia by making the idea of an overall authenticity of social behaviour illusory (Plessner 1928/1975: 309). As ‘eccentric positioned’ living beings, humans cannot merely exist in the centre of their positionality. Rather, they must constantly make themselves what they are. In his later anthropological theory, Plessner also concludes, therefore, that the apologists of the community preach for the realisation of a social arrangement that negates the most elementary needs of the human form of life. Yet, conversely, the need for security and protection cannot simply be dismissed as a pathological phenomenon because it is in turn a product of the eccentric positionality of human life. The quest for a final rescue, however, represents the anthropological root of religion; it cannot be satisfied by the secular political order of the community, but only by its projection in the beyond. In his book on community as well as in his foundation of philosophical anthropology, Plessner thus shows that the ambiguity of the human positioning toward life represents the crucial factor for consent to a social organisation that is grounded on modern societal ways of life despite all the implied conflicts. The conclusions of Plessner’s analysis for the anthropological preconditions of social interaction have specific normative consequences for social ethics as

Sociological anthropology 143 well as for political philosophy. Moreover, they plead for a reconciliation between intimacy and the public sphere, i.e. between solidarity and competition in modern society. As will be shown below, Simmel had a different approach to social ethics that derived from his assessment of the human condition in modern society from the viewpoint of sociological epistemology.

Note 1 Since Marx’s and Engels’ German Ideology was not published during Simmel’s lifetime, it is to be assumed that Simmel took notice of the critique towards classical philosophical anthropology on the basis of Engels’ book on Feuerbach, in which Marx’s theses on Feuerbach had first appeared in 1886.

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Individuals are faced with the consequences of the qualitative differentiation of society, so social action must follow the manifold logics of the different domains of culture. Modern personalities are therefore divided among the different approaches that realise the cultural work that is called for by the third a priori of sociation. The predominance of one attitude leading social action, for instance economic, political or religious, can guarantee the coordination of social action with the demands of the social structure. Yet, the social actors can hardly commit to only one logic of social action, since the complexity of social life in qualitative differentiated societies requires them simultaneously to follow different logics. Hence, they are torn between different attitudes which have the potential to give sense to the entire content of experience. Modern life thus results in a continuous conflict between different attitudes towards social action, so steadily confronting the personality of the social actors. This condition matches the definition of the ‘polytheism of values’ that Weber ascertains as the result of the historical development of modern Western rationalism (MWG I/17: 99) and creates the starting point for every inquiry into which ethical conduct of life may be adapted to complex societies. According to Simmel, the specific power that the different logics of social action exert on individuals is due to the progressive process of autonomisation which characterises the qualitative differentiated domains of society. To reproduce themselves, the latter compel the social actors to proceed in the sense of their different heteronomous normative orders of social action. Consequently, the conflict between social structure and social action becomes one between the subjective calling of the individual for a particular attitude to life and the socially determined imposition to follow the imperatives of the specific logic of other societal domains. Hence, the cultural work requested by the third a priori of sociation to integrate the individual into the social fabric compels the social actors to find, in whatever way, an answer to the question of modern normative polytheism. In this respect, overbearing characters seem to be less adapted for life in modern metropolitan environments, whereas rather discrete and flexible personalities come to terms with the variability of societal codes, to which they must conform to make complex sociation processes function. Yet, the increasing passivity of the social actors towards the logics of the different societal domains is not without

Social ethics 145 consequences, as Simmel’s analysis of the pathologies of the modern monetary economy shows. Established social mechanisms offer different strategies for facing the complexity of modern life. The institutionalised behaviour of specific societal milieus produces a variety of lifestyles which provide a technical answer to the questions concerning the meaning of life that trouble the modern individual. Consumerism can anesthetise to a certain degree the feeling of tension and incertitude which characterises modern life by filling moments of meaninglessness with an abundance of commodities. The ongoing increment of complexity in the structure of society, however, compels social actors to cope with unpredictable situations and conflicts among incompatible logics of social action, so that the subjective sense-giving performance requested by the third a priori of sociation becomes increasingly important. What in its origins is a societal problem, i.e. the integration between the logic of social action and the logic of social structure, increasingly becomes an issue for the individual conduct of life. The steady emphasis of the appeal to deliver sense-giving performance for enforcing social action can amplify the impact of alienation; in the end, therefore, social actors may renounce to establish themselves as consistent personalities. Moreover, they may prefer to live as a multitude of fragments of personality controlled by the antagonistic logics of the different societal domains. This final stage of the process of modern alienation can then lead to the complete atrophy of the creativity of social action. As a positive science, sociology can explain the dynamics of the conflict between the subjective and the objective logic of social reality by means of a sociological epistemology of the a priori of sociation. It can describe the mechanisms which empirically assure the integration of individuals into their milieus thanks to a theory of lifestyle. Furthermore, it can provide a theory of the conflict between subjective and objective culture. Yet, the pragmatic solution to the problem – even more so, if social complexity becomes so great that it undermines the established customary integration strategies – must be delegated to the inventiveness of the individual social actors. And in this respect, they are increasingly left alone in face of the conflict of modern culture. According to Simmel, a consideration of this problem implies, therefore, a transition from the analytical–descriptive domain of sociology to the normative assessment of the question, which belongs to the domain of social ethics, as the introduction of The Philosophy of Money already pointed out (GSG 6: 9–14). That Simmel’s social ethics concentrates on the issue of the individual conduct of life and not on the question of collective normative representations such as, for instance, Durkheim’s moral sociology (Durkheim 1950), is thus a consequence of Simmel’s sociological diagnosis of modernity. Social actors are left alone and faced with the increasing complexity and continuous novelty of the conflicts arising between the different logics of social action for which they are compelled to find new solutions that are unforeseen within the institutionalised codes of morality. Therefore, for Simmel, the only way to found social ethics is to comprehend the strategies that social actors put in place to cope with the complexity of societies that are increasingly qualitatively differentiated. The reflection on this issue flows into the late programme of ethical research,

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which Simmel develops under the title theme of ‘Individual Law’, namely, the essay that he published in Logos in 1913. This then constituted the closing chapter of The View of Life in 1918 (GSG 12: 417–470; GSG 16: 346–425; Simmel 2015: 99–153). Yet, the topic of the conflict between the objective normative orders and the subjective orientation of social action permeated Simmel’s examination of ethical questions since the very beginning, i.e. since the in-depth youth studies on the moral sciences, which he published in 1892 and 1893 (GSG 3 and 4).

5.1 Conduct of life in modern times The purpose of Simmel’s two-volume Introduction to Moral Science was to realise a transition from the customary speculative ethics to a historical– sociological ethics founded on a scientific understanding of the subject (GSG 4: 404). The study was to provide a critique of the main ethical concepts and to contribute towards building a science of ethical life grounded on the observation of psychological and social reality (GSG 4: 411). After showing that all the essential moral concepts, including moral obligation, egoism and altruism, merit and guilt, blissfulness and liberty as well as Kant’s categorical imperative, are grounded on contradictory definitions which evidence their historical origins, Simmel focuses in the closing chapter of his critique of the moral sciences on the ethical consequences of modern societal development (GSG 4: 284 ff.). Ethical imperatives can coexist and attain considerable autonomy. They do not need any form of reciprocal reconciliation, provided they do not overlap. There are, however, two main reasons for the rise of tensions between different normative imperatives. On the one hand, the impetus of linking together in a meaningful synthesis the different normative orientations of social action characterises the logic of the third a priori of sociation, thus permitting the integration of the individual into the social fabric. The cultural work of the social actors can thus lead to open conflicts between different ethical obligations, so underlining how what is mandatory from one perspective can be forbidden within the logic of another attitude towards the world and life, and vice versa (GSG 4: 352). The ideal–typical representation of this dilemma, for Simmel, is the figure of Antigone in the classical Greek tragedy, which thematises the conflict between family duty and citizens’ duty. On the other hand, different social circles develop the opposite normative expectations towards the social actors. The individual who participates in different social circles stands at their intersection point and in himself feels the opposition of their normative imperatives. Yet, ethics tends to ignore the situations of conflict; it characterises social reality by concentrating rather on a debate about the possible theoretical harmonisation between contradictory ethical principles. From the perspective of social ethics, this attitude constitutes a major omission, because conflicts between different normative orders constitute the basic condition of life in qualitative differentiated societies. Instead of moral philosophy, historically, drama tended to thematise the irreconcilability of the ethical conflicts by stating that they could only be overcome tragically, i.e. by the sudden death of the hero, so that intellectually they could be

Social ethics 147 recognised yet not solved (GSG 4: 356 f.). Hence, within the context of classical drama, the ethical endeavour for normative harmony is negated once and for all. Yet, for Simmel, the irreconcilability of normative conflicts, which drama illustrates, undoubtedly has a social origin, depending on the objectivation processes of social structure and inducing even more normative conflicts the more that societal differentiation progresses. The institutionalised societal domains are caught up in the idea of the allegedly granted stability of their normative orders; they develop a particularistic self-preservation instinct that aims to reproduce its logic by exploiting social action and so colliding with the claims of validity arising from further normative orders. Given the circumstance that the obligation arising from the institutional logic of the different social circles is interiorised as a duty by the social actors, the conflict between the different claims is transferred to the core of the individual’s mind and generates the basic question of social ethics. Conflicts between the different normative orders of society become conflicts that are internalised and played out within the individual person (GSG 4: 359). The tension-fraught relationship between the creativity of social action and the reproductive imperatives of social structure then takes the shape of an irreconcilability between the progressive and conservative tendencies of the subjective conduct of life. The intellectual progress constitutes an essential precondition for the modern individualisation process and requires a disentanglement of the social actors from the consensual unanimity of the customary ethical rules. Yet, this development does not occur without complicating the relationships between the societal conventions and individual morality because the social actors become aware of the historically determined irrationality of habits and customs (GSG 4: 362 f.). According to Simmel, the naïve metaphysical and sociologically completely unaware premise of traditional ethics consists of the assumption that the contingent historical contents of moral obligation would possess a latent unity, and that it would suffice to identify it to reconcile all their contradictions. This assumption ignores the situation that every deepening of ethical awareness may bring to light even more normative conflicts, so that contrary to Habermas, communicative action could in fact produce even more disruption of social cooperation (Habermas 1984). The illusion of conventional ethics is nourished by the idea that beneath existing morality there already exists a peaceful normative homogeneity, which could generate an ideal, not historically contingent morality. To go beyond this conventional belief, social ethics has to take into account the societal basis of morality. To proceed in this way, Simmel proposes an application of his theory of the parallel differentiation of the social group and the individual personality on the matter of ethics, as he developed this in the study On Social Differentiation, which he published two years before the Introduction to Moral Science of 1892/93 (GSG 2: 109–295). The personality of the social actors is split into the manifold fragments that follow the normative logics of the different social circles to which they are affiliated. Thus, the normative conflict between the possible logics of social action becomes an interior conflict that has important effects for the shaping of the conduct of

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life (GSG 4: 380). Certainly, in modern societies the social actors gain important backing of their autonomy by being linked to the most different social circles and not only to the narrow circle of familial bonds. The position of the individual within the social fabric becomes stronger because he establishes the unique intersection point of more and reciprocally independent circles. Accordingly, he can approach fellow social actors with the full determination of what he is besides the current role, which he plays, by presenting himself as an independent personality. Yet, the condition of life in complex society also involves a stronger feeling of fragmentation and social isolation, and it confronts the social actors with the task of building a meaningful synthesis out of the manifold social roles which they have to play to avoid alienation. Living in highly differentiated societies presupposes a stable process of individualisation and confronts individuals with important conflicts between different normative orders. In the everyday life, certain duties may not be visible straightaway because social actors are deeply embedded in the praxis of compromise and passive acceptance of normative conflicts that govern interaction (Fitzi 2015). Nevertheless, this adaptation to the antagonism of the normative orders cannot permanently hide the growing tension between the competing social ethical expectations in qualitative differentiated societies. An increasing difficulty in bringing together the manifold fragments of the modern personality, following heteronomous rules, represents the major challenge for the conduct of life and evidences the normative dynamics of the conflict between objective and subjective culture. If the social group is progressively relieved from the objective conflicts between its different normative orders, the social actors bear the burden of modern normative complexity in terms of a growing incongruity of their subjective conduct of life. The more that the social actors endeavour to build a consistent personality, then the more they struggle with the conflict between opposing normative expectations. In place of a conflict of ‘obligation’ (Sollen), a conflict of ‘will’ (Wollen) arises, which characterises the modern moral subject that must come to terms with the growing complexity of the normative orientation of social action (GSG 4: 386). Yet, for Simmel, this central ethical problem has been widely ignored, so that social ethics must concentrate on this as its object of inquiry by compiling a description of the social backdrop that generates the normative conflicts of modern life. Accordingly, the inquiry into the normative mechanisms regulating the interface between the logic of social action and social structure assumes a central place in Simmel’s programme for the development of sociologically founded ethics. This investigation constitutes in some way the normative counterpart for the assessment of the a priori of sociation that founds sociological epistemology. In highly differentiated societies, the coordination between the opposing subjective and objective normative orders of social reality is delegated more and more to the single individuals. The cultural work that the third a priori of sociation requires thus becomes a moral duty, whereby the social actors are asked to contribute to the normative cohesion of society. They can fail to do so by capitulating in the face of alienation, or they can realise a meaningful synthesis between objective

Social ethics 149 and subjective ethical orders. Yet, this effort constitutes a mere subjective task and no external power – neither the family, nor the church nor the party can relieve individuals from delivering this performance. In some way, for Simmel, as well as later for Weber, too, this performance emerged as the price for the modern individual’s freedom. Founding an ethics which is at the height of modern social complexity therefore means to address the issue of the normative instability of the individual life form in qualitative differentiated societies. Modern societal life results in substantial fragmentation both of the objective normative orders as well as the subjective orientation of social action. External social powers dominate the individual, compelling him to conform to their reified logic. Life conditions in complex societies thus confront the moral subject with a normative dilemma because ethical autonomy seems to become impossible. Yet, as Simmel’s study about religion among other shows, if a specific logic becomes predominant for the individual approach to social action, the normative fragmentation of social reality can be translated into subjective meaning and given consistent sense. The creative process of social action, however, does not unfold automatically; rather, it requires subjective impetus on the part of the social actor, so posing a particular nuance of the sense-giving process, due to the third a priori of sociation, in the centre of the attention. The spontaneity of the mind represents the decisive force for realising a synthesis of the subjective and objective normative orders, thus relating their conflict-fraught fragments together. Whether or not individuals succeed at this is a question that can only be answered empirically. The divergence between subjective and objective culture in modern societies constitutes a major hurdle in realising this purpose. The biographies of great artists show, for Simmel, a pattern to realise the normative programme of the modern moral subject, yet social ethics has to understand how and at what price their attitude to life and the world can be practised within the common conditions of social life in qualitative differentiated societies.

5.2 The conflict of normative cultures Given the social structure of modern societies, conflicts between subjective and objective normative cultures are a daily occurrence. The quantitative predominance of the reified normative orders over the capacity of social actors to orient social action on the basis of consistent life conduct prevents the moral subjects from gaining an overview of their normative obligations and organising them in a meaningful way. This is the normative consequence of the modern divide between subjective and objective culture (GSG 5: 560–582). The major effect of this societal development is a growing diffusion of situations of anomy, albeit not in Durkheim’s sense (Durkheim 1893/2014). The modern moral subjects are confronted not with a lack, but with an overspill of normative guidelines, which contradict each other. Furthermore, normative obligations are no longer an expression of the bonds of solidarity which exist between the social actors, but become more and more control levers, whereby the reified social structure ensures its reproduction in the different domains of qualitative differentiated societies. The

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modern normative emergence, therefore, does not consist of an insufficient moral regulation of the economic domain vis-à-vis the moral regulation of the remaining societal domains, which is still acceptable, as Durkheim argues. The modern normative emergence consists of the exponential and uncontrolled increase of normative expectations that the reified social structure nourishes for the social actors, who for their part no longer manage to link them in meaningful life conduct. Accordingly, the spillover of contradictory normative expectations produced by the autonomous logic of the different societal domains confronts the social actors with permanent normative conflicts. Modern individuals are compelled to ask themselves constantly whether to follow the interest logic of their economic position, or rather obey the imperatives of their religious orientation, or maybe even to conform to their political standpoint within society, or to trust their artistic attitude to take a decision. The solution to the normative conflicts of everyday societal life is often given by compromise, which alternatively frustrates the normative expectations of one or more institutionalised societal domains. The result is an irrational sequence of contingent decisions that has a major backlash on the self-esteem of the social actor as a moral subject; he is made into a fool, unless he renounces his position to seek normative consistency and surrenders unconditionally to normative alienation. The most problematic development in this respect must be recorded on the temporal axis of ethical life. To take a single decision, moral subjects can conform to Kant’s categorical imperative; they can apply to Aristotelian practical wisdom or adopt a Weberian outlook of the expected consequences of social action. Nevertheless, if they consider the succession of their normative relevant decisions in time, they are confronted with its socially conditioned ethical inconsistency. The construction of the modern moral subject, therefore, is for Simmel a challenge that must be accepted by taking into account the need to grant consistency to ethical behaviour along the lines of the longue durée of human life. Accordingly, a project for individual ethical coherence needs to be developed that respects and adds value to the individual social actor’s particular attitudes and their importance for the individualisation process. The dilemma of the modern moral subject consists of the fact that the elements of his life conduct are largely socially determined, making their subjective meaningful synthesis practically impossible. Social actors are confronted with the normative expectations of the different societal domains, thus constructing the stereotypical role-images of conformist behaviour, which the social actors have to observe by following the normative logic of the first a priori of sociation (GSG 11: 47). Given the variety of these often contradictory normative expectations, the modern moral subjects realise that they are something that also persists beyond the imperatives of the different societal domains, as the second a priori of sociation shows (GSG 11: 51). The only way to escape from the dilemma of the modern conflict between objective and subjective normative logics therefore lies in the capacity of the moral subjects to link the contradictory objective normative expectations which they are confronted with in a synthesis of life conduct, which makes sense on a subjective level of moral judgement. Achieving this goal within the complex normative reality of qualitative differentiated societies, however,

Social ethics 151 means that the moral subjects must deliver a continuous normative performance to bestow the necessary consistency on their conduct of life. Yet, to realise the cultural work of this normative third a priori of sociation is anything but selfevident (GSG 11: 59). The risk of failure could be easily classified as a mere subjective problem: if the modern moral subjects loses himself in the contradictory normative multifaceted nature of complex societies, then that is too bad for him. Yet, the consequent spread of normative alienation, in Simmel’s sense, and the substantial passivity of the social actors towards the imperatives of social structure undermine the persistence of the social fabric of qualitative differentiated societies. Accordingly, modern societies, on the one hand, cannot afford ethically inconsistent individualities, yet on the other hand, they do not have the means to produce them, unless they are fabricated by the spontaneous creativity of social action. This dilemma characterises, in Simmel’s analysis, every consideration about the possible development of social ethics within the context of modern societies. The historical circumstance that Napoleon introduced the Code Civil not only in France but also in those European countries which his armies occupied, along with the fact that the Restauration enforced the new regulations of civil law after the fall of the First French Empire, testify to the innovative revolutionary legislation that conveyed in normative terms what had already become a consistent structuration of society. The family was no longer considered the legal cell of society. Rather, the individual as a legal subject was seen as capable of entering into contractually regulated commitments with other individuals. This societal transformation constituted the object of the legal–historical research by Henri Sumner Maine, who coined the metaphor of the rise of modern society as a transition ‘from status to contract’ (Maine 1861). If Roman law was based on the concept of the family as the constituent building block of society, then modern civil law was grounded on the concept of the morally consistent and therefore legally responsible individual. Maine’s historical reconstruction, focusing on the transformation of the legal orders of society, which mirrored the change of socioeconomic structures, was decisive for the development of the grounding sociological categories because it represented the starting point for Ferdinand Tönnies’ theory building project in Community and Society (Tönnies 1887; Fitzi 2015: 113–123). Simmel was familiar with the work of his peer; he was aware that the subsistence of consistent social individuals was of pivotal importance for the integration of complex societies, as he observed in his theory of the intersection of differentiated social circles (GSG 2: 239). Yet, he simultaneously observed the increasing difficulty of the modern individualisation processes necessary to grant the social function of individuals and to link together the most disparate social circles (GSG 6: 617–654). Accordingly, Simmel’s sociology pointed out that the increasing tendency to normative alienation, which was produced by the dynamics of modern sociation, substantially undermined the persistence of the social fabric grounded on the legal institution of the ethically consistent individual. The analytical–descriptive assessment of this issue in the studies about The Philosophy of Money and on the forms of sociation

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in Soziologie showed that societal dynamics did not manage per se to produce a reliable sociotechnical solution to the problem of normative alienation (GSG 6; GSG 11). Only if the social actors were to make the normative project of becoming consistent individuals the goal of the cultural work, which was called for by the third a priori of sociation, could the modern social fabric continue without major consequences. This perspective, however, was a strictly normative one, and thus for Simmel constituted the object of social ethics and not sociology. The diagnosis of the development of culture in the age of European détente between 1872 and 1914 had evidenced that the scope of subjective normative creativity became more and more narrow compared to the predominance of the reified orders regulating the qualitative differentiated domains of society. Not only were individuals increasingly culturally and ethically passive, but culture as a whole also no longer managed to perform its cycle, as the study on ‘The Conflict of Modern Culture’ showed (GSG 16: 181–207). The conflict between the productive forces of normativity and the established normative forms of society had come to a substantial stagnation. The historical process, which time and again produces new normative regulations to substitute the older ones, seemed to rotate on itself. Accordingly, the productive forces of normativity showed an ongoing tendency to refuse every coagulation in a new form of ethical life conduct (GSG 16: 185). No longer was a struggle observed against the obsolete normative forms in the different domains of qualitative differentiated society, but rather a struggle of the productive normative forces against every possible normative form and even against the principle of the ethical form in itself. Simmel considered this ethical attitude as being present in different tendencies of German life and thought which emerged between 1872 and 1914, but the one that more clearly highlighted this was the fashion for amoralism – a trend that was characteristic of the so-called founders’ years (Gründerjahre) of economic boom after the German victory in the Franco–Prussian War (GSG 18: 167–202). This consumerist tendency aimed at legitimising itself thanks to a popular lecture of Nietzsche’s philosophy and became a focus for sociological inquiry as well as dispute between Simmel and Tönnies. If Tönnies considered Nietzsche’s ethics as being a pure and simple vindication of the economic avarice which characterised life at the turn of the 19th century (Tönnies 1897; GSG 1: 400–408), for Simmel a distinction had to be made between Nietzsche’s cult in the most blasé milieus of Wilhelmine society and the appeal to ethical autonomy that Nietzsche’s philosophy echoed (GSG 5: 115–129). The patriotic engagement which Simmel meant to observe both in Germany and France at the outset of war in summer 1914, gave him the impression that this dramatic historical event could represent the end of the age of Wilhelmine mammonism, as Patrick Watier argues (Watier 1991; GSG 15: 271–285). Yet, this illusion soon evaporated, so that by March 1915 Simmel observed a grave recurrence of the ethical crisis of modernity by pointing out that the war had provoked the loss of the ideal of Europe that constituted the central ethical value and guiding light for his generation (GSG 13: 112–116). That Simmel could only mean to refer to himself here, along with a certain group of friends and colleagues in France

Social ethics 153 and Germany with whom he cooperated (Fitzi 2002: 17–54, 195–255), does not detract from the importance of his statement in the midst of the conflict. Not only was it the horrendous loss of human lives that the war represented, but also a loss of cultural and ethical values that deepened the cultural crisis of modernity (GSG 13: 190–201). In this context, the appeal to resume the normative project for morally autonomous individuality with the capacity to accept the challenge of an ethical life in qualitative differentiated societies became all the more the central aim of Simmel’s social ethics. Accordingly, after having completely revised and extended the text (GSG 16: 236, 438), he included the study on ‘Individual Law’ (GSG 12: 417–470) at the epicentre of his last book The View of Life (Lebensanschauung) (GSG 16: 346–425; Simmel 2015: 99–153).

5.3 Individual law and community Simmel’s idea of ‘individual law’ represents the mature formulation of his longlasting examination of the ethical question concerning the relationship between the individual and society, thus exploring the normative side of the relationship between social action and social structure in complex societies. This reflection steadily accompanied Simmel’s analytical–descriptive assessment of the modern individuation processes since the study on Social Differentiation (GSG 2: 109–295). The position of the individual in qualitative differentiated societies that permit higher margins of freedom to the social actors finds its counterpart in the fragmentation of the personality motivated by modern cultural conflict. To have a life conduct in this context means that the individual has the capacity to link, in a meaningful synthesis, the different and to some extent contradictory social roles which he performs. The reconciliation of normative conflicts resulting from the opposition between the objectified logics of different societal domains can hardly be granted by existing lifestyles, so that the cultural work, which has to be performed to constitute ethical individuality, becomes increasingly important. Therefore, the individual’s necessary normative effort could be formulated in terms of Kant’s categorical imperative (Kant 2015; GSG 9: 7–226), i.e. as an ethical maxim which calls for a disavowal of all subjective interests and individual needs by ensuring the conformity of behaviour to a universal rule, to which everybody would be able to conform in the same situation. Even if the contemporary representatives of ethical socialism, like Hermann Cohen, meant that only Kantian ethics could deliver a solution for modern class conflict (Holzhey 1994), Simmel was critical towards Kant’s moralising conception of life. In social ethical terms, the categorical imperative seems to contribute to the substantial heteronomy of the modern moral subject rather than to its emancipation from normative alienation. It forces him to accept the power of the conflicting normative orders characterising the institutionalised domains of qualitative differentiated societies. In Kant’s deontological perspective, every individual inclination or need must be rejected as an expression of the immoral and egoistic tendencies of the human being. Yet, in this manner not only are egoistic inclinations criticised, but also the self-fulfilment of individuality is rejected

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as something immoral, along with the humanist ideals of the Renaissance or of German classicism and above all Goethe’s way of life (GSG 17: 7–270). According to Simmel’s sociological assessment of complex societies, these limitations of the creativity of social action have to be seen critically because here the moral subjects are called upon to be consistent by realising a meaningful subjective synthesis of their normative commitments. Alternatively, if the individual were unable to realise his fulfilment, this would have negative consequences not only for his consistency, but also for the persistence of the social fabric. The fact that in modern times no ethics emerge which are capable of shaping anew the individual’s life conduct in complex societies and of overcoming the socially determined heteronomy of the moral subject depends for Simmel on the traditional ethical way of thinking. From this perspective, life and duty are seen as ontological entities; they belong to separated orders of reality, so that ethical consciousness is conceived of as a succession of disjointed decisions that are divorced from the remaining life process. Yet, according to Simmel, an empirical view of ethical life shows that things do not follow this logic. The contents of moral judgement and the formulations of obligation are a direct expression of the individual’s real life and cannot be added to externally by following some abstract, general rules (GSG 16: 349). Empirically normative acts emerge from the specific individual context of life of moral subjects, so that duty does not prevail in contrast to individual life. Rather, duty is a modality of life performance, thus making possible an autonomous normative legislation of individuality. The problematic aspect of Kant’s concept of ethical autonomy therefore lies in the fact that it splits the individual into two opposing domains by playing off sensuality against rationality, and so supposing that only the latter can constitute the true moral subject (GSG 16: 355). Simmel’s project for grounding a social ethics of the autonomous moral subject in complex societies, therefore, focuses on overcoming the Kantian dualism between individual life and obligation. The ‘individual law’ aims at reconciling the creative impulses of the modern complex personality with the ethical principle of obligation towards the community by making the biographies of great artists exemplary or model expressions of this process. Self-fulfilment and the commitment to the normative expectations of the different social circles, or simply the normativity of social action and social structure, would no longer remain in a relationship of reciprocal exclusion. Thus, an ethical realisation of the third a priori of sociation becomes possible. The precondition for Simmel’s social ethical project, however, is represented by the emancipation of individuality from all traditional ideals of moral conformity. Starting with the intimate personality, the individual has to give himself an ethical law and make self-fulfilment the principal purpose of his moral life, so that he can shape his personality as though he were a work of art by cyclically overcoming his current form for a new one and also making the struggle for qualitative individuality the purpose of social ethics (GSG 7: 49–56; GSG 16: 367). As long as ethics was founded on the idea of quantitative individuality, i.e. solely on the ideal of freedom from external coercion, then self-limitation of

Social ethics 155 the scope of action in the terms of Kant’s categorical imperative and the idea of respecting the freedom of the fellow human became a necessary and pivotal point of social ethics. Yet, if the concept of the qualitative self-fulfilment of individuality represents the starting point for developing social ethics, the continuous process of moral life shaping can no longer be regarded as a sum of disconnected single actions. Accordingly, the ethical law of individuality can only be constituted as a reflection about its comprehensive dynamic unity. Thus, on the one hand, the individual conduct of life becomes the object of a consistent ethical project. This is not simply the result of an accidental succession of normative decisions, which are induced by the categorical imperatives, as proposed in the logics of the different societal domains of society. On the other hand, however, this ethical life conduct does not provoke the triumph of hedonistic amoralism or blasé artistic egoism, as Simmel observed in his diagnosis of the Wilhelmine age (GSG 18: 167–202). Every individual law is firmly anchored in the obligationhistory of individuality, so that moral judgement must always take it into account (GSG 16: 392 f.). The ethical way out of the spatial conflict between the different normative orders of qualitative differentiated societies thus must be found in the temporal depth of individual moral life. The idea of ‘normative temporality’ characterising Simmel’s conception of individual law represents the most decisive compensation of his profoundly liberal social ethics in communitarian terms. In determining the normative path for the self-fulfilment project of the individuality, every moral subject has to be absolutely free. In doing this, however, he does not find himself in an ethical vacuum but rather within a network of constitutive ethical obligations that he contracted during his previous ethical life and that demand him to be consistent. For Simmel, realising a positive synthesis between these obligations and the self-fulfilment of the individuality represents the regulative ideal of modern societal life. Furthermore, the individual is called upon to perform a normative variation of the cultural work outlined in the third a priori of sociation. Beyond the dichotomy between the subjective moral and the objective ethical obligation, a third dimension of life conduct thus becomes decisive: the objective obligation that the normative history of individuality represents for present moral judgement (GSG 16: 408). As a living being, the individual is deeply rooted in his obligation-history, so that the latter allows him to make decisions by taking into account his very personal, yet for the most part absolutely objective, normative consistence. With this formulation of individual social ethics, Simmel provides a persuasive alternative to the consumerist hedonism of the Belle Époque by simultaneously offering a path for overcoming the normative alienation of the moral subject in qualitative differentiated societies. Social actors should be free to develop themselves and so would become conscientious members of their society. In this respect, Simmel developed an ethical programme that is comparable with Durkheim’s conception of so-called moral individualism, even if it is grounded on completely different moral assumptions (Durkheim 2002). Accordingly, already in the first version of ‘Individual Law’ of 1913 (GSG 12: 417–470), Simmel regarded the feeling of national belonging as an ethical corrective for a potentially unlimited

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tendency towards individualisation. In order to construct itself in complex societies, individuality must overcome the condition of alienation produced by the ongoing process of differentiation. The multiple facets of the personality are narrowly tied to the different social domains, which are founded on autonomous and at times contradictory logics and become increasingly fragmented. Individuality therefore risks resulting in a simple addition of the social roles to which the actors are committed. To overcome this condition, modern moral subjects must take the shape of a project, giving sense to the entire personality in accordance with the ‘individual law’. This is the perspective that Simmel’s social ethics adopts to provide a loophole as a way out of the levelling process reducing modern individuality to a simple epiphenomenon of the social mechanism. For him, however, there is an objective limit to the autonomisation project of the individual law. It consists of the existential debt, which every individual contracts vis-à-vis the community that made possible his birth, growth and education. If the individual traces back the causal chain of experiences which constitutes his moral life, there is a long series of passages connecting him to the nation state of which he or she is a citizen. These ties cannot be simply forgotten or cut; rather, they have to be taken into account to construct the ethical project of the individual law. At the time of the first publication of the essay on ‘Individual law’, before World War I, Simmel already exemplified his conception of social ethics by resorting to the analysis of the relationship of an antimilitarist to the motherland (GSG 12: 417–470). The objectivity of the individual law is so deeply rooted in the temporal sequence of life that the call of the homeland to the service of arms would apply also to an antimilitarist, because he is a citizen of the nation state and cannot take leave of the debt he contracted visà-vis the political community, even if from a moral point of view he refuses the use of arms (GSG 12: 458; GSG 16: 409). Under the semblances of the nation, thus, the ethical history of the individuality appeals to him with an ethical objectivity that he cannot deny without calling into question at once its own existence.

5.4 Emotional nationalism and transnational rationalism The outbreak of World War I confronted Simmel with the full gravity of his conception of political obligation (Horton 2010), even if he was aware that the war instantly destroyed half of his life work, i.e. the relationships of scientific cooperation that he developed with his French colleagues. Fifty years were needed for Simmel to rebuild what one single day in 1914 had destroyed (Simmel 1941/1942– 2008: 111). Nevertheless, at the end of July 1914, Simmel naively believed the news of the alleged aggression of the Triple Entente against the Central Powers that the German government successfully spread, and considered the consequent formation of a large ‘emotional community’ (emotionale Vergemeinschaftung) during the so-called August Experience as a positive development (Fitzi 2015: 308, 2017b). The emergence of strong feelings of national solidarity, which Simmel deemed to observe in Germany as well as in France in the first weeks of war, led him thus to hope for a moral renewal through the experience of the war. In

Social ethics 157 his letters of summer 1914, he returned several times to the feelings of commitment provoked by the conflict. He related that they made him feel in a dizzying sense his belonging to the nation and prevented him from working scientifically (Simmel 1941/1942–2008: 112). The mammonism that was dominating pre-war Germany and imposed the evaluation of all worldly items as commodities seemed eventually to be delimited through the ethical and political imperatives of the general mobilisation. According to Simmel, reversing the cynicism of modern capitalism through the normativity of national belonging seemed finally possible (Watier 1991). The topic of the alleged ethical change due to the war experience forms the core of Simmel’s first public intervention during the war in a speech on the ‘Inner Transformation of Germany’ (Deutschlands innere Wandlung), which he delivered quite late, i.e. on 7 November 1914 at the Salle de l’Aubette in Strasbourg (GSG 15: 271–285). The unanimous opinion of the secondary literature is that the corresponding paper represents the worst text which Simmel ever wrote. In the speech, he bore witness to his capitulation before the widespread feelings of national belonging and his incapacity to regain scientific distance toward the events. With the continuation of the war, however, Simmel became more sceptical about the conflict and began to articulate his critique towards the irrevocable destruction of the human, material and cultural patrimony provoked by the conflict. From March 1915, he began to publish interventions on the ideal of Europe, which subjected him to trial for anti-German activities (GSG 13: 112–116; 138– 142; GSG 24: 417–429). In 1917, when at least in Germany everyone was beginning to wonder about the possible outcomes of the conflict, Simmel published a collection of his war writings titled Der Krieg und die geistigen Entscheidungen (‘The War and Decisions of the Spirit’; GSG 16: 7–58). The short book was a montage of those interventions on the war that were not banned from republication. Simmel’s intention was to outline an ideal spectrum. Hence, the ordering of his selected texts did not respect the chronology of their first publication. Starting with Germany’s ‘inner transformation’ (‘Deutschlands innerer Wandlung’, November 1914), he came to the longings of the German spirit for the cultural contents that are diametrically opposed to him (‘Die Dialektik des deutschen Geistes’, September 1916. GSG 13: 224–230) and then faced the issue of the crisis of culture (‘Die Krisis der Kultur’, February 1916. GSG 13: 190–201). He concluded with the loss of the European ideal (‘Die Idee Europa’, March 1915. GSG 13: 112–116). Simmel could also have appended to his essay collection the short study titled ‘Europa und Amerika’ (‘Europe and America’) of 4 July 1915 (GSG 13: 138–142). However, this final text did not make it into the collection (GSG 24: 417–429). Rather tellingly, Simmel was forbidden from republishing the contribution because in the essay he expressed his opinion on the Alsace question as follows: ‘in terms of world history, it is largely indifferent whether these four thousand square kilometres of Alsace-Lorraine [. . .] are German or French’ (GSG 13: 141). One wonders, however, what the message is that Simmel wanted to convey with Der Krieg und die geistigen Entscheidungen. The point of departure for the

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reflection was ‘the inner transformation of Germany’. The accelerated capitalist development, the strong social differentiation and the weakening of the bond of political obligation that Germany went through since 1870 seemed to have ceased upon the outbreak of the war. Confronted with this situation, Simmel thematised the state of disarray, which he allegedly shared with the elder generation, and quite apart from what the overall outcome of the war could have been. The country that he had experienced throughout his lifetime did not exist anymore because the emotional process of community building in the first weeks of the war cemented the link between the individuals and the nation state. This state of exception brought important material losses with it. However, the question arose for Simmel as to whether this change would at least bring an inner enrichment and reorganisation of values according to a new idea of national solidarity. Simmel’s arguments in this regard developed as follows. After losing the war of 1870/71, France had become morally superior to Germany thanks to a strong idea of revenge, which gave shape to the nationalism of the young French people, whom Simmel praised in his speech. In 1914, however, the belief that Germany’s existence was threatened – a position that Simmel shared in an uncritical way – seemed to produce a new, leading idea that united the nation in terms of a highly emotional conception of belonging. Under its influence, a criticism of modern mammonism became possible which attempted to attain Rousseau’s ideal of the ‘new man’. Yet, Simmel’s last word on this topic is not an apology concerning the ethical specifics of the German nation in a state of exception. He integrates the reflection about the emotional belonging to the nation with the assessment of the longings of the German spirit for whatever it conflicts with. Simmel devotes to this topic his text on the Die Dialektik des deutschen Geistes (‘The Dialectic of the German Spirit’; GSG 13: 224–230), thus providing a reflection on the necessary transnational ties that connect the European nations. The ideal of a strong national identity characterises, according to Simmel, both England and France. In contrast, the German national ideal seems to be dominated – so Simmel in September 1916 – by the desire of simultaneously being oneself while also being the most distant from oneself. This must be seen as the reason for the German longing for Italy and the Italian lifestyle, which are in direct contrast to what may be called a German attitude to life. Due to this sentimental nostalgia for the other and for the foreigner, German national consciousness is constantly at risk of losing itself either to individual fragmentation or to superficial cosmopolitanism. Historically, this instability was later to become the basis for a radical identitarian reaction, thus fighting this uncertainty by building virulent racist nationalism, as Plessner pointed out in 1935 in his study on The Belated Nation, by reviving some aspects of Simmel’s reflection (Plessner 1935/1959). According to Simmel, only a recurrent synthesis of the opposition between nationality and transnationality could instead constitute the basis for a kind of ‘German national consciousness’, which explicitly takes into account the contradictory tendencies of its being. Thanks to his theory of culture, however, Simmel knew that such a synthesis between Western and German culture became increasingly difficult in a time of

Social ethics 159 crisis, as modernity is. This observation is the starting point for the third study included in Der Krieg und die geistigen Entscheidungen, i.e. Die Krisis der Kultur (‘The Crisis of Culture’), first published in February 1916 (GSG 13: 190–201). Simmel wonders, again, if the war could introduce a path leading towards a solution of the modern cultural crisis. Unlike in 1914, however, here the answer is utterly negative. Simmel presents the experience of the war as a strong disenchantment which may help to face the future in times of destruction but is equally unable to end the crisis of culture. The strong feelings of solidarity provoked by the emotional community of the first weeks of war had reduced the divide between the culture of things and the culture of the person. The gap between them, however, will resume as soon as the links of the international economy are reactivated in the aftermath of the forthcoming armistice. The war indeed showed that the omnipotence of money has its limits; nevertheless, Simmel expected it to regain its position of centrality in post-war society. The fact that the self-preservation of the nation took precedence over the selfpreservation of the individual during the war strongly marked people’s minds. Consequently, the attitude towards the predominance of money in modern society would probably no longer be the same for the ‘lost generation’ that had fought the war. Nothing, however, will prevent a return to the relativity of social ties in the market economy, which elevates the means of existence, and above all money, to the dignity of an end in itself. World War I represents for Simmel the most dramatic event in European history after the French Revolution because it has a remarkable impact on the reification processes of modern society. Yet, it remains an episode in the broader drama of culture, a temporary turning point of modernity without any real completion. After the collective effervescence of the nationalist emotion during the summer of 1914 and its later failure, it is therefore necessary to question what the possible further developments of culture could be. To answer the question, Simmel completed the miscellany on Der Krieg und die geistigen Entscheidungen with the short study titled Die Idee Europa (‘The Idea of Europe’), which first appeared in March 1915 (GSG 13: 112–116). Here, Simmel asked for the last time the question about the meaning of World War I. While rejecting every kind of justification, which was apparently necessary based on the terms of the philosophy of history, Simmel described the war as the product of the blindness and the frivolity of a minority of men in Europe (GSG 16: 55). In its early days, war had spawned a wave of will to sacrifice that deserved respect. Meanwhile, however, Simmel found in its place the ‘wellknown German selfishness’, as he formulates it for the 1917 book publication with an implicit criticism of the so-called Seeberg-Adresse (ibid.). According to Simmel, no one could say how future generations would judge World War I. As early as March 1915, however, there was no doubt that beneath the material destruction and death, it caused at least one symbolic loss without any appeal. The ‘idea of Europe’, or a ‘constellation of the spirit’ (Geistige Einheitsgebilde), which his generation had worshipped, was irrevocably lost. This event could not be transfigured as the price that had to be paid to strengthen and purify the German national conscience, as many other German intellectuals argued.

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For Simmel, the maintenance of national identity was no reason to rely on the renunciation of Europeanism. The latter does not contrast with national identity because it lies beyond every nation and is thus compatible with each particular national spirit. Moreover, the idea of Europe was a venue of spiritual values for every man of culture for whom national being was an inalienable property, yet no blinding narrow-mindedness. The experiences of the war showed, however, in what kind of pitiful condition the idea of Europe had been forced, for after 1914 it found very few advocates. Simmel’s leading statement at the heart of World War I thus became the following. Because of the hatred that had taken hold of European minds, he expected that for a longer time the ideal of Europe would no longer exist. However, not everything was lost for him. Simmel trusted in the dialectic of the German spirit and expressed the belief that the longings for Europe, which were also his own, would finally bring Germany back to the European family, like the prodigal son of the biblical parable. During World War I, Simmel remained a man of his time, that is to say, of the period from 1872 to 1914, which was characterised by a long phase of European peace, and yet also by the challenging existence of Germany’s imperial pretentions. He was the witness of the irresistible development of young German capitalism, of rapid urbanisation processes in Berlin and of modern normative relativism. He undertook to explain such phenomena and their mechanisms in his sociological studies. However, Simmel did not provide a Marxist analysis of the war as a process of destruction which supported the augmented valorisation of capital, nor did he have a political conception of Europe, as did Weber. He merely proposed a sociological approach to think through the normative limits of the nation state and its possible integration within a European normative order. Modern qualitative differentiated societies produce the normativity of the nation state, but they equally overcome its limitations by being linked to each other in supranational sociation processes. In Simmel’s view, this dual development could become the object of a sociological inquiry into the relationship between nation state building and transnational societal processes.

5.5 Between Kant and Goethe Qualitative differentiated societies do not allow a long-lasting compromise between the competing logics of social action and social structure. Therefore, in Simmel’s view there is no exonerating solution to the grounding conflict of social ethics. Modern life conduct finds itself throughout in a state of tension between the creative dynamics of the individual law and the deontological imperatives emanating from the normative history of the moral subject. The problem concerns everyone in complex societies, regardless of social affiliation, because establishing a modus vivendi between the creativity of social action and the reproduction of social structure represents the only way of overcoming modern normative alienation. Yet, the ethical dilemma of individuality goes hand in hand with the dichotomies of the modern worldview. Since the Renaissance, the consciousness that the human being is profoundly divided between the logic of thought and the

Social ethics 161 imperatives of the body dominates philosophical reflection and becomes irreconcilable in religious terms because of the impact of qualitative societal differentiation. Accordingly, restoring the balance between the opposing fragments of human nature as well as of the societal fabric becomes the crucial task for the cultural work of individuals. As Simmel outlines in his short monograph on the modern Weltanschauung, there are two opposing ways of reconciling the epistemological and ethical antagonism between the subjective and objective worldview, which characterises the development of natural science and informs social reality in modernity (GSG 10: 119–166). They are to be discovered in the works of Immanuel Kant and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who provided their classical formulations. Hence, if there is a solution to the modern dilemma between the individual and collective normative logics, for Simmel it can only be found thanks to a comparison between Kant’s and Goethe’s contrasting ethical approaches, so that the project of ‘individual law’ has to be grounded on their integration. Yet, the antagonism between Kant’s and Goethe’s worldviews initially includes an important epistemological chapter (GSG 10: 119–147). Kant regards reality as something that can only be understood analytically, by meticulously decomposing it into its component parts, whereas Goethe is profoundly persuaded that only an immediate perception of the unitary and thereby aesthetic character of reality can grant its cognition. Knowledge is for Kant entirely a matter of intellectual application, while for Goethe it is the immediate expression of an aesthetic attitude to life (GSG 10: 125 f.). The artist searches for the unity of the subjective and objective principle of knowledge in the immediate aesthetic appearance of things, as long as they coincide. Moreover, this search takes precedence over the epistemological assessment of reality that decomposes it by introducing the analytical distinction between perception and understanding. Accordingly, if one’s aim is not to compromise the spontaneous modality that reality proposes to human knowledge, it makes no sense to represent it analytically. By virtue of this aesthetic attitude towards the world and to life, the artist wants to ‘see the idea with open eyes’ and, therefore, he can do nothing other than to refute modern scientific epistemology, which decomposes the immediate unity of the matter of knowledge (GSG 10: 129). The same ideal–typical opposition of Kant’s and Goethe’s views of life characterises their attitude towards the ethical problem arising from the tension-fraught relationship between the moral subject and societal orders (GSG 10: 147). Simmel compares the two approaches from the perspective of his theory of social differentiation (GSG 2: 109–295). The development of the practical dualism between the individual and collective normativity, which constitutes the basic issue of social ethics, begins with a state of indifference that characterises social groups in which individual and collective interests tend to coincide. Yet, quite soon the parallel process of differentiation and individualisation produces tensions and requires the social actors to subordinate their personal interests to the needs of the social group. Kant’s and Goethe’s moral conceptions possibly represent the most contradictory answers to this dilemma based on the rationales of the collective and of the individual. Kant provides a moral imperative that arises beyond every individual interest yet is deeply anchored in the reason of the subject. On the other hand,

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Goethe advocates the natural harmony between individual self-fulfilment and collective interests. Kant’s autonomous will to obligation therefore is confronted with Goethe’s affirmation of the fundamental unity between will and obligation in the deep moral balance of the self-fulfilled individual. According to Simmel, Goethe’s undivided feeling of life elevates itself beyond the deep-seated opposition of the eudemonistic and the deontological moral which characterises Kant’s ethics (GSG 10: 151), though without subordinating life to eudemonistic egoism. Obligation implies for Kant the absolute freedom of the moral subject from every empirical impulse. For Goethe, who, following Simmel, could not fathom the last meaning of Kant’s categorical imperative, this sounded like a violation of the other domains of life because of moralist austerity. Moreover, Goethe was deeply convinced of the substantial harmony between the accomplished moral subject and the world, so that in the vein of classical liberalism he inferred collective prosperity from individual self-fulfilment and did not attach importance to modern normative conflicts. Simmel saw a major problem with Goethe’s harmonic conception of the individual law that, seen from the angle of sociological theory, called for compensation in the sense of Kant’s understanding of moral obligation. Goethe’s deeply aesthetic attitude to life overlooks the conflicted nature of society and does not foresee the necessity of any deontological compensation of individual life conduct. In turn, the ascetic vein of Kant’s categorical imperative does not comprehend the importance of individual self-fulfilment for granting social integration in modern societies. Hence, a sound foundation of the individual law needs, on the one hand, to contrast Kant’s radical negation of the idea of self-fulfilment by embracing Goethe’s artistic conception of life. This is necessary for overcoming modern normative alienation. Yet, on the other hand, to evolve as ‘social ethics’, the individual law must also make provision for a deontological corrective. Since this cannot be found in the Cartesian split between rationality and corporality, which for Kant imposes a radical alienation of moral judgement from every empirical need of the person, only the temporal dimension of ethical life, according to Simmel, can grant the ethical benchmark for coordinating the creativity of social action with the normative expectations of society. The weight of the normative history of the moral subject thus represents the ultimate counterpoise for the unlimited freedom of self-fulfilment which social actors need in order to live at the height of social complexity characterising qualitative differentiated societies. Being sincerely convinced that the harmonic self-fulfilment of the personality would lead it to overcome every egoistic incentive, Goethe is far from preaching simple artistic libertinism. For him, the individual has the moral duty to develop his talents to a maximum level of accomplishment and to live like a cosmopolitan, who goes beyond all artificial ties among human beings (GSG 10: 155). Representing the development of the human potential to its highest level, the aesthetically fulfilled moral subject, the ‘beautiful soul’ in Schiller’s sense (1793), remains beyond the limits of social ethics. For him, morality is only one part of the human self-fulfilment project and its realisation is granted if the aesthetic

Social ethics 163 project of individuality is accomplished. Yet, considering modern normative alienation, this level of completion is rarely achieved empirically, so that the issue of social ethics reappears beyond its aesthetic overcoming. Accordingly, for Simmel the social researcher cannot focus exclusively on the potential of human selffulfilment. Rather, he has to return to the complex ground of empirical social coexistence (GSG 10: 154). The fundamental assumption for Simmel’s social ethics is that societal life does not automatically imply a just and harmonious relationship between morality and blissfulness. Developing life conduct that is at the height of modern social complexity implies, therefore, finding a way to link obligation and self-fulfilment in a meaningful relationship. Yet, a balance between these two needs of modern societal life seems fraught with difficulty, so that the ideal–typical alternative between the two views of life which Kant and Goethe provide does not suffice to overcome the dilemma of social ethics. Even if, for Simmel, they represent two authentic products of the reflection on the modern age, they are not capable of coping in themselves with its complexity. The intrinsic rhythm of modern life constantly blurs the boundary between Kant’s scientific–mechanical and Goethe’s artistic–vitalist view of the world, making the unilaterality problematic of the related approaches to the conduct of life (GSG 10: 165). Social coexistence can never be seen as taken for granted. Rather, it is always a pulsating process, so that the moral subjects are continually compelled to readjust to the mix of eudemonistic and deontological elements that characterise their conduct of life. According to Simmel, this is the deepest meaning of the issue of social ethics in qualitative differentiated societies. It implies that the social actors are asked to serve as crossing points of increasingly manifold social circles, yet without capitulating in the face of normative alienation. Hence, the more that the consistency of the normative orientation of social action seems unachievable in the spatial dimension of qualitative differentiated societies, the more it makes sense to look for its achievement in the temporal dimension of the individual law. The only viable orientation for the moral subject becomes the long-term temporal consistency of his normative life that strives to conform to the ideal of his self-fulfilment project. Modernity is an age that stays within the orbit of both Kant’s and Goethe’s Weltanschauung. However, by negating their absolute opposition, it also makes their possible reconciliation an unattainable goal. As could be expected, Simmel’s final answer to the question of social ethics is aporetic. The conflict between the opposing logics of the societal domains in qualitative differentiated societies and the imperative of self-fulfilment for the realisation of the viable social actor cannot be resolved, when not by pursuing the lifelong project of the individual law. Kant and Goethe represent the champions of two opposing strategies that try to cope with the normative dilemma of modernity. Yet, for Simmel, the modern moral subject has no other possibility than to oscillate between Kant’s analytical and deontological approach and Goethe’s intuitive and aesthetic attitude. Neither the one nor the other represents a definitive solution to the issue of modern social ethics. This shows how erroneous all allegations are about aestheticism of Simmel’s theory of modernity. Only the temporal dynamics

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between analytical–deontological and intuitive–aesthetic morality which characterises the development of the individual law can cope with modern social complexity. Accordingly, only the overall normative history of the individuality will be able to show if it managed to relate the imperatives of self-fulfilment, which characterise the creativity of social action, with the imperatives of conformity that derive from the social structure of qualitative differentiated societies. At this point, a debate could start about merging ascetic protestant life conduct with the humanist, aesthetic ideal of Weimar Classicism, albeit this debate lies beyond the scope of this study. Nevertheless, it must be noted that, for Simmel, the dynamic oscillation between the two ideals represents the only way to overcome the misconceived eudemonism of the ‘founders’ years’ (Gründerjahre) of economic boom after the German victory in the Franco–Prussian War in 1871, which characterised the so-called Nietzsche cult of the most blasé milieus in Wilhelmine society. According to Simmel, there is no guarantee of success for the enterprise of social ethics between Kant and Goethe, because modernity represents a structurally unstable age. However, it is worth readily accepting its daily challenge to cope with the normative alienation of qualitative differentiated societies.

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Having assessed the ‘consistency’ of Simmel’s sociological research programme as a grand theory and highlighted the contribution that his work makes to different domains of sociological theory, the question arises why such a significant part of sociological heritage could have been forgotten. The damnatio memoriae of the conservative revolution and its effect on the way that Parsons established his influential canon of classical sociological authors have already been mentioned. However, a more comprehensive societal phenomenon must be addressed that plays a central role for the cyclical development of sociological theory. Society does not wait for social science to analyse social reality. Rather, it continuously produces societal self-interpretation that claims to be its genuine image. Sociology as a discipline, which strives to establish objective knowledge beyond societal appearance, stays in a relationship of profound tension with societal self-interpretation. Therefore, it is not surprising that the results of sociological research are periodically consigned to oblivion. Socio-political discourse is a means of power because it defines what has a right (or no right) to exist in social reality; moreover, it establishes social ontology that conforms to its aims. Sociologists live in social environments. They are therefore strongly influenced by the existing socio-political self-representation. Social science can only manage to differentiate itself from comprehensive social ontology thanks to an ongoing critical and methodologically guided effort. However, often and especially in phases of economic, social and political crisis, social science is completely overturned by societal self-interpretation. In these periods, the complexity of sociological theory building is forgotten or reduced to an ideological reinterpretation of the basic social categories. Sociology must restart from the bottom and critically rebuild its concepts anew in a determined quarrel with ongoing societal self-interpretation. Classical authors tend to be disregarded and play a very modest role because everybody is concerned with the state of societal emergency that is portrayed in socio-political discourse. Sometimes sooner, or sometimes much later, the heritage of sociological theory building is rediscovered, so it can bear fruit for the benefit of critical social research. Such cycles of oblivion and rediscovery are recurrent in the history of the social sciences, and they question the structural incapacity of this field of knowledge to establish its critical autonomy in the face of societal self-interpretation. The history of Simmel’s reception with its karstic

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sequence of oblivion, veiled reception and rediscoveries is a perfect example of the overall dynamics of gain and loss of autonomy that characterises the relationship between social science and societal self-interpretation. The European generation that was socialised in the trenches of World War I experienced a desperate need to restore the lost meaning of its existence. Sociological abstraction in the vein of Durkheim, Simmel and Weber was of no use to the repatriated soldiers. They were looking for significance, membership and guidance, so that intellectually they were more attracted by a concrete conception of ‘community’ (Gemeinschaft) rather than an analytical concept of the ‘processes of sociation’ that Simmel outlined (Vergesellschaftungsprozesse). The time of social ontology had arrived. Tönnies’ juxtaposition of community and society (1887) was rediscovered and rapidly became ideologised into an extremely successful antithesis between the ‘evil’ of the modern societal ways of life and the ‘good’ of the imagined premodern or utopian future communitarian ways of life (Plessner 1924/1981). Simmel and Durkheim died before the end of the war and Max Weber passed away in June 1920, so nobody remained who could contrast with enough scientific authority the dissolution of sociological language in ideological categories. The subsequent period of inflation and economic crisis seriously undermined the remaining autonomy of the social sciences from socio-political discourse. In the face of this development, the representatives of ‘official sociology’ in Weimar like Alfred Vierkandt (1923) and Leopold von Wiese (1924–1929) developed Simmel’s sociological approach to social reality in such an extreme, formalistic way that it could never encounter the interest of the younger generation (Stölting 1986). The institutionalisation of sociology that was loyal to the Nazi regime in the 1930s caused, on the one hand, the persecution, flight and migration of the best minds from Germany and led, on the other hand, to the definitive proscription of Simmel’s sociology from university teaching (Rammstedt 1986). Yet as Simmel already knew and wrote in his diary, his intellectual legacy was like cash that every heir would transform to use according to his nature (GSG 20: 261). Indeed, different aspects of Simmel’s thought – above all his approach to critical reflection on the ongoing change of modern society – made progress. Simmelian aspects are therefore to be found in the works of Adorno, Benjamin, Kracauer and many more lesser-known representatives of philosophical and sociological essayism (Braungart, Kauffmann 2006). After World War II, however, the interest in Simmel’s oeuvre could only be rekindled in Europe thanks to the untiring engagement of Michael Landmann, and this finally set in motion the project of the collected works edition (Gassen, Landmann 1958; Rammstedt 2015). The American reception of Simmel’s sociological work demonstrates some other specific aspects. From the beginning, this response was strongly anchored in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago and lasted for several generations. Albion Small had already asked Simmel in 1895 to become an advisory editor for the American Journal of Sociology. During the years ahead, Small translated nine of Simmel’s articles on different topics that were published in this journal until 1910 (GSG 18: 525 ff.). Robert Ezra Park attended Simmel’s lecture on sociology in Berlin in 1899/1900 (GSG 21: 281–344) and later contributed to

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making the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago a prominent centre for the diffusion of Simmel’s sociology (Levine, Carter, Gorman 1976: 179 f.). Here, over the years many other connoisseurs of Simmel’s sociological work were active, such as Ernest Burgess, Everett Huges, Louis Wirth and, later, Eduard H. Shils as well as Donald Levine (ibid.: 182; Levine 1957; Simmel 1971). Furthermore, Nicholas Spykman’s introduction to Simmel’s social theory was published for the University of Chicago Press (1925/2004). Parsons did not contribute to the dissemination of Simmel’s sociology through his writings but thanks to his teaching. In the early 1930s, he offered an influential course on sociological theory at Harvard which also considered Simmel’s position. Robert K. Merton has traced the origins of his interest in Simmel back to that course, as Levine reports (Levine, Carter, Gorman 1976: 183). Merton himself went on to make Columbia University an important centre for the study of Simmel’s sociology and influenced its reception by several of his students and above all Lewis A. Coser (ibid.), who became a leading interpreter of Simmel’s thought and especially of his conflict sociology (Coser 1956, 1965). A distinguished group of German immigrants created a new wave of interest in Simmel’s sociology in the 1940s and 1950s. This generation included among others Hans Gerth, Albert Salomon, Gottfried Salomon-Delatour and Alfred Schutz, who published and taught on Simmel, as well as Kurt Wolff, who translated and presented different collections of his writings (Simmel 1950, 1959). In spite of this rich reception history, Simmel’s influence on American social thought in general has always been erratic. Moreover, also here phases of substantial oblivion alternated with phases of sudden rediscovery (Jaworski 1997). In other countries, there have been very different historical lines of Simmel reception; two examples should suffice here. In Italy, thanks to the engagement of the philosopher Antonio Banfi, who studied with Simmel in Berlin 1910, an intensive philosophical Simmel reception became established (Portioli 2012). Since the 1980s in Italy, a younger generation of critical Marxists turned to Simmel to find an alternative to Marx’s interpretation of modernity and defended the idea of Simmel as a left-liberal intellectual (Dal Lago 1994). In France, in addition to the early sociological reception, above all due to Celéstin Bouglé (1896), a debate arose concerning the translation of Simmel’s selected works in 1912 – the Mélanges de philosophie relativiste. Contribution à la culture philosophique promoted by Henri Bergson as a contribution to ‘relativist philosophy’ (GSG 19: 137–371; Fitzi 2002: 238–250; Mamelet 1914). After a longer phase of oblivion, a new reception was established through the ‘polemologic’ interpretation of Simmel’s conflict sociology, given by the political scientist Julien Freund (1983). The specific effect of this interpretation was related to its conservative political orientation, so that French sociologists tended to characterise Simmel as a right-wing liberal intellectual. The divergence between the different political interpretations of Simmel’s thought provoked the most astonishing debates in the international conferences ahead. Yet the most productive phase of rediscovery for Simmel’s work was a result of the encounter of different groups of scholars who were motivated by the start

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of the enterprise of the Georg Simmel edition in the 1990s under the guidance of Otthein Rammstedt. The journal Theory, Culture and Society played a crucial role in this context (Featherstone 1991). Among other English social scientists with a Marxist background, David Frisby initiated a longer reception wave that continues until today (Frisby 1981, 1985, 1992; Harrington, Kemple 2012). He also inspired other lines of reception in Canada and Finland (Pyyhtinen, 2010, 2018; Kemple, Pyyhtinen 2016). In France, Patrick Watier has established a solid tradition of sociological Simmel reception in cooperation with the Simmel edition (Deroche-Gurcel, Watier 2002; Rammstedt, Watier 1992; Watier 1986). In recent years, new lines of Simmel reception have been initiated in France by a new generation of Simmel scholars (Thouard, Zimmermann 2017). With regard to Germany, the research that developed within the work group of the Simmel edition has already been mentioned (among others Cantó 2005; Dahme 1981; Dahme, Rammstedt 1995; Köhnke 1996; Krech 1998; Fitzi 2002, 2015; Meyer 2017; Rol, Papilloud, 2009; Rammstedt 1998, 2003; Tyrell, Rammstedt, Meyer 2011). After the completion of the edition, in Germany there is a stronger interest in a canonisation of Simmel’s work that emerges at least in one Simmel Handbuch (Müller, Reitz 2018). Otherwise, however, and to echo Albion Small’s viewpoint (GSG 24: 1050), the ‘sociological movement’ in Germany seems not to look too intensively to Simmel. On the other hand, a strong wave of internationalisation in Simmel research is to be observed. Under the acronym of Red Simmel, a Simmelian network has been established in Latin America that is very active with different conferences and publications in Spanish (www.redsimmel.org/; Sabido-Ramos 2007; Díaz 2015; Vernik, Borisonik 2016). Furthermore, the Simmel Studies have been relaunched as a peer-reviewed journal under the leadership of Enrico Campo, Vincenzo Mele, Claudia Portioli and myself (www.erudit.org/en/journals/sst/). Today, as in previous years, Simmel’s theoretical achievement is always being rediscovered somewhere, while it is equally neglected elsewhere. This fluid situation raises the provocative question about the actuality of Simmel’s sociology in the 21st century. After the end of the Cold War, the world is in a much more undefined, uncertain and conflict-prone situation. In this context, it becomes difficult to explain social reality simply from the viewpoint of a sociological paradigm of reification or rationalisation. Apparently, a global liquefaction of normative orders is taking place. Yet beyond Zygmunt Bauman’s (2000) diagnosis, there are also tendencies to establish ‘new’, or in some cases old or at times very restrictive orders of social reality. Thus, a condition of ‘solid liquidity’ seems to characterise the current development of societies that rapidly alternate from phases of liquefaction to periods of rigidity (Fitzi 2016). Intermittent processes of sociation with strong spatiotemporal delimitations in validity and legitimacy are constitutive for social reality, so that an overall shifting of normative orders – or simply a condition of ‘transnormativity’ – seems to become dominant (Fitzi 2015). Some distinctive aspects of modernity persist like capitalism, economic and financial crises, state power, war and migration. Yet their character gains a higher level of complexity. Simmel’s sociological theory delivers a number of analytical means with which to deal with this complexity. In sociological categories, he captured

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the rapid societal development of the transition to the 20th century. Hence, he delivers a complex portrait of the modern age and not the simplified image that was typical for the Cold War era and became the polemical counterpart of neoconservative ideologies. This multifaceted achievement of Simmel’s sociological theory defines its actuality and furnishes us with the analytical instruments to understand our present era. Now, we must respond to and accept the challenge.

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Index

Adorno, Theodor 7–8, 113, 166 agency 10–12, 16, 19–20, 47, 100 alienation 5, 8, 11, 18–19, 21, 23, 39, 45, 65, 98, 104, 113, 121, 125, 140, 145, 148, 150–153, 155–156, 160, 162–164 Alighieri, Dante 75, 108 Alsace 157 altruism 115, 146 amoralism 152, 155 Andreas-Salomé, Lou 114–115 anomy 12, 149 Antigone 146 antisemitism 1, 22, 32, 117–118 Arendt, Hannah 133 Ascona 114–115 autonomisation 45, 48, 51, 57, 95–96, 104–105, 115–116, 123, 130–132, 144, 156 autonomy 22, 30, 33, 54, 66, 79, 83, 92, 146, 148–149, 152, 154, 165–166 axial rotation 116–117, 130–132, 134–136 Banfi, Antonio 167 Baudelaire, Charles 1, 7 Bauman, Zygmunt 14 beings of the limit 127 Belle Époque 29, 112, 114–115, 123, 135, 155 Benjamin, Walter 1, 8, 30, 68, 166 Berger, Karl 109 Bergson, Henri 125–127, 130, 133, 167 Berlin 4, 9, 26, 29, 68, 86, 109, 114–115, 160, 166–167 blasé attitude 8, 24–25, 27–31, 39, 125, 141 Böcklin, Arnold 108 Bonaparte, Napoleon 151 Bouglé, Célestin 78–80, 82, 88nn1–2, 88n4, 167 Bourdieu, Pierre 35, 44n2, 81

Breton, Jean 78 Buber, Martin 92, 97, 114 Buddhism 107 Buonarroti, Michelangelo 108, 112 Bureaucratisation 50, 55, 57, 101, 104 Burgess, Ernest 68, 167 calling 67, 144, 158 capitalism 4, 6, 8, 24, 26, 29, 34, 40, 42, 71, 119, 139–140, 157, 160, 168 categorical imperative 146, 150, 153, 155, 162 charisma 24, 56, 101, 102, 107, 121 Chicago School 68, 72, 118 Christianity 56, 112 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 74 civilisation 31, 111–112, 117 class 8, 14, 19, 21, 26, 33–34, 37–39, 58, 75–76, 153 Code Civil 151 Cohen, Hermann 153 cohesion 55–56, 74–75, 140, 148 Cold War 168–169 collective representations 80–81, 83–86, 98 communicative action 2, 7, 147 community 6, 10, 12–13, 48, 70, 74–75, 78, 98–99, 107, 114, 139–142, 151, 153–156, 158–159, 166 community, ideology of 139–140, 142 competition 27, 51, 58, 73, 76–77, 92, 94, 104–106, 108, 140, 143 Conditio humana 129, 133 conditions of possibility 60, 63, 95, 97 conduct of life 13, 20, 24, 27–28, 32, 40, 92, 121, 142, 144–145, 146–149, 151, 155, 163 consciousness, collective 9, 11–12, 46 consciousness, forms of 61, 63, 85, 136 consciousness, of the other 134

Index conservative revolution 1, 117–118, 165 consumerism 20, 29, 39, 145 contingency 63–64, 66, 106, 136 Coser, Lewis 68, 167 creativity of social action 11, 18, 21, 26, 36, 44n1, 45, 57, 59, 65, 93, 97, 100, 104–106, 109, 110, 113, 117, 120, 122–126, 128, 130–131, 133, 145, 147, 151, 154, 160, 162, 164 cultural pessimism 22, 65 culture, concept of 4–5, 90, 122, 136 culture, conflict of 20–21, 23, 25, 34, 45, 133 culture, feminine 32, 34–35 culture, objective 9, 18–21, 25–26, 35, 45, 73, 91, 94, 99, 104, 106, 109, 111, 129–130, 145, 149 culture, philosophical 32, 108, 137–138 culture, preforms of 130, 132–135 culture, sociological 138 culture, spheres of 5, 91, 95, 104, 106, 125, 129–130, 131, 137 culture, subjective 18–19, 21, 66, 90, 98–99, 111, 113, 123, 130, 134, 148 culture, tragedy of 104, 124 culture industry 113 cynicism 27–28, 157 Dachau 78 democracy 31, 33, 77, 101–102 deontology 153, 160, 162–164 Descartes, René 98, 112, 162 differentiation, functional 91–92 differentiation, qualitative societal 3–5, 10–11, 21, 91–95, 99, 103–105, 113, 115, 121–122, 144, 161 differentiation, segmentary 35, 37, 71 Dilthey, Wilhelm 61, 85, 89 distance, social 8, 23, 63–64, 68–70, 72, 97, 141 distance, spatial 68–70 division of labour 11, 19, 21, 27, 57–58 domination 34, 37, 42, 71, 100–101, 119–120 drama 108, 111, 134, 146–147, 159 Dreyfus Affair 53, 79 durée 123, 125, 150 Durkheim, Émile 6, 12, 21, 35, 46, 53–54, 60, 67, 74, 77, 78–88, 90–91, 107, 113, 138, 145, 149–150, 155, 166 duty 9, 70, 107, 117, 146–148, 154, 162 Eckhart, Meister 116 egoism 115, 146, 155, 162 election by grace 106 Elias, Norbert 31, 36

181

emancipation 7, 25–26, 31–35, 38, 72, 109, 113, 115–116, 139, 153–154 Engels, Friedrich 124, 127, 143n1 Enlightenment 7, 19, 25, 33, 106, 117 equality 25–26, 33, 35, 88 eroticism 5, 22, 104, 113–117, 120–122 Europe 5, 43, 76, 103, 152, 157, 159–160, 166 exchangeability 14–16, 41, 96 exhibitions, world and art 29–30 experienced temporality 125–126, 130, 133 Expressionism 30, 43 fetishism of commodities 18, 41–42, 96 Feuerbach, Ludwig 39, 124, 143n1 Florence 108 fragmentation 4–5, 7, 11, 19, 21, 38, 64, 66, 71, 92–93, 98, 104, 110, 121, 124, 139, 148–149, 153, 158 Franco-Prussian War 78, 152, 164 French Revolution 25–26, 51, 159 Freud, Sigmund 114 Freund, Julien 167 Freyer, Hans 1, 117 Frisby, David 7–9, 22, 108, 119, 168 gender 33, 35, 56, 69, 114, 137 George, Stefan 79, 108 German classicism 154 German Sociological Association 118 Gerth, Hans 167 God 106–107, 116–117 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 6, 108, 113, 122n2, 160–164 grand theory 1–6, 165 Gross, Otto 114 Habermas, Jürgen 2, 7, 16, 19, 147 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 7, 33, 40, 121 Heidelberg 22, 115, 118, 124 hermeneutics 61, 85, 89 Hippel, Theodor G. 32–33 historical materialism 40–41, 43–44, 48, 121 Hitz, Dora 35 Hobbes, Thomas 76 Horkheimer, Max 7, 113 Huges,Everett 167 human rights 32, 117 Husserl, Edmund 98 impressionism 1, 29 individualisation 10, 25–26, 38, 47, 141, 147–148, 150–151, 156, 161

182

Index

individualism, qualitative 25–26 individualism, quantitative 25–26 individual law 5, 8, 20, 46, 110, 146, 153–156, 160–164 inequality 21, 26, 37, 71 institutionalisation 1, 14, 16, 54, 56–57, 118, 130, 132, 166 intellectualism 8, 17, 23–24, 45 intermediate reflection 92, 113 intersubjectivity 98–99, 104 iron cage 104 Italy 43, 158, 167 Jaffé von Richthofen, Else 114 Kant, Immanuel 6, 49, 62, 95, 106, 108, 153, 160–164 Kantorowicz, Gertrud 114, 124 Köhnke, Klaus Christian 1 Kollwitz, Kathe 35 Kracauer, Siegfried 68, 166 Kramme, Rüdiger 1, 124 Landmann, Michael 166 Landsberg, Hans 36 L’Année Sociologique 53, 78–80 Lawrence, David Herbert 114 Lazarus, Moritz 86 Le Bon, Gustave 87 legitimacy 14, 38, 45, 55, 81, 83, 105, 120, 125, 129, 132, 168 legitimation 2, 14, 26, 38, 51, 60, 84, 101, 107, 120 Lessing, Theodor 32 Levine, Donald 118, 139, 167 liberty 10–12, 25–26, 38, 146 lifestyle 20–21, 36, 38, 73, 145, 158 liquefaction 4, 13–14, 16, 72, 123, 168 Locke, John 103 love 94, 97, 114–117 Löwe, Adolf 109 Luhmann, Niklas 25, 91 Lukács, Georg 1 mammonism 152, 157–158 Marx, Karl 8, 18, 39–44, 67, 90 masculinity 32, 34 Menger, Carl 40 Merton, Robert K. 167 metropolis 9, 17, 22–24, 26, 30, 75, 108, 114, 119, 140 middle classes 38, 57–58 migration 55, 72–73, 166, 168 mobility 36–39, 57–58, 72

monetarisation 8, 17, 23 moral philosophy 60, 82, 86, 146 more-life 128 more than life 116, 128 nationalism 53, 156–160 nation-state 4, 43, 53, 71, 156, 158, 160 Nazi regime 166 neurasthenia 8–9, 22, 27–31, 39, 45, 141 Nietzsche, Friedrich 7, 114, 127, 164 Normative alienation 150–153, 155, 160, 162–164 normative integration 5, 11, 13 objectification 8, 17, 23, 42, 96, 101 obligation 10, 48, 71, 107, 146–148, 154–156, 158, 162–163 Overruling 102 painting 108–113, 134–135 Park, Robert Ezra 68, 166 Parsons, Talcott 1, 11, 64, 91, 117–118, 165, 167 peace 42, 58, 113, 160 persistence 54–58, 61, 63, 65–66, 80, 98, 105, 120, 125, 151, 154 petrification 104, 113, 120 philosophy of history 6, 33, 43, 119, 159 philosophy of life 123, 125 Plato 112 Plessner, Helmuth 6, 31, 135, 139–143, 158, 166 poetry 108, 134–135 political body 56, 102–103 polytheism of values 92, 121, 144 the poor 65, 70–71 positionality 135, 142 productive forces 21, 39, 42–43, 136, 152 progress 18, 21, 36, 46, 147, 166 prostitution 56, 114–115 Protestant Reformation 112 Psychologism 46, 79, 81, 84–86 psychology, collective 80, 85–88 psychology, individual 61, 80–81, 84–89 psychology, social 36, 85–86 public sphere 17, 30–31, 141–143 racism 32, 69, 140, 158 Rammstedt, Angela 1 Rammstedt, Otthein 1–2, 53, 79, 88nn2–3, 109, 114, 118, 166, 168 rationalisation 8, 24, 92, 168 rationalism 24, 29, 106, 117, 121, 144, 156–160

Index rationality 108, 154, 162 realism 43, 111 Red Simmel 168 reification 8, 11, 17–22, 24, 39–40, 42, 45, 103–105, 110, 116, 122–124, 134, 159, 168 relativism 13, 16–17, 160 religiosity 105–106 Renaissance 7, 112, 154, 160 reproduction 36, 42, 45, 47, 51, 54–56, 85, 90, 121, 131, 136, 149, 160 Ricardo, David 40 Rodin, Auguste 108, 112–113 Roman Empire 56, 72, 112 Rome 108, 119 Rothacker, Erich 1, 117 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 103 sacralisation 107 Salomon, Albert 167 Salomon-Delatour, Gottfried 167 Sanzio, Raphael 75 Schäfer, Dietrich 22, 118 Scheler, Max 99 Schiller, Friedrich 162 Schluchter, Wolfgang 2, 46, 52, 61, 82, 91, 120, 122 Schmoller, Gustav 39, 88n3 Schopenhauer, Arthur 127 Schutz, Alfred 94, 98–99, 167 Schwerin, Jeanette 33 science of the logos 1, 117 sculpture 108, 111–113 sedentariness 55, 72 self-fulfilment 26, 33, 64, 131, 153–155, 162–164 self-preservation 53–54, 79, 147, 159 sexuality 32, 69, 92, 114, 116 Shakespeare, William 111 Shils, Edward A. 64, 167 Simmel, Arnold 78 Simmel, Hans 78, 108, 118 Simmel-Kienel, Gertrud 114, 118 Simmel Newsletter 118 Simmel Studies 168 Small, Albion 68, 74, 139, 166 sociability 30–31, 137–138 social democracy 33 social exclusion 65, 69–71, 73 social facts 6, 53, 78–79, 81, 83, 86–88, 139 social integration 5, 12, 45, 65, 74, 77–78, 90, 99, 105, 108–109, 162 socialism 26, 37, 153 social mechanisms 48, 53–59, 145

183

social ontology 46–48, 54–55, 64, 87, 98, 121, 165–166 social question 49, 76 societal self-interpretation 2–3, 46–49, 59, 87, 165–166 sociological theory 1–6, 13, 16–17, 20, 25, 41, 45, 52–53, 58–60, 64–68, 81, 84, 88–92, 94, 99, 102, 104, 109, 115, 120–121, 123, 135, 137–140, 162, 165, 167–169 sociology, formal 50, 53–54, 57–58, 60–61, 74, 120, 138 sociology, moral 60–61, 74, 78, 82, 145 sociology, phenomenological 98–99 sociology, philosophical 137–138 sociology, understanding 2, 85–86, 88, 122 solidarity 9, 12, 50–51, 75, 77, 139–140, 143, 149, 156, 158–159 solid liquidity 123, 168 sovereignty 102 Spencer, Herbert 12, 91 Spykman, Nicholas 167 Stammler, Rudolf 40, 48 state of exception 158 stereotyping 25, 63–65, 97 the stranger 6, 69–70, 72–73, 97, 109 Strasbourg 157 stratification 35, 37, 39, 58, 102, 120 subordination 33, 51, 73, 77, 100–103, 107, 136 Sumner Main, Henri 151 superiority 51, 73, 100–102 Susman, Margarete 109 Tarde, Gabriel 36 tertiarisation 71, 76 theatre 26, 111 theory-building 13, 45, 52–53, 59, 66, 84, 86, 121–122, 135, 151, 165 Tönnies, Ferdinand 12–13, 48, 74–75, 140, 151–152, 166 transnormativity 168 universal philanthropy 116–117 urbanisation 4, 9, 22–26, 71, 139, 160 validity 2–4, 14–15, 48, 51, 53, 81, 83–84, 96, 98, 105–106, 120, 129, 131–136, 147, 168 Van Rijn, Rembrandt 108, 110 variability 58, 120, 144 Venice 108 Vierkandt, Alfred 139, 166 Von Richthofen, Frieda 114

184

Index

Wagner, Kornelie 35 wandering 70, 72–73 Watier, Patrick 152, 157, 168 Weber, Marianne 52, 108, 118–119 Weber, Max 6, 40, 85, 88, 99, 118–119, 166 Weimar 16, 26, 113, 135, 164, 166 Weininger, Otto 32 Weltanschauung 79, 82, 139, 161, 163 Wiese, Leopold V. 118, 139, 166 Wirth, Louis 68, 72, 167 Wolff, Kurt 167

women’s emancipation 31–35 world religions 70, 92, 107, 113, 121 World War I 5, 42–43, 45, 78, 122, 135, 139–140, 156, 159–160, 166 Worms, René 78–79 Wundt, Wilhelm 86 you experience 63 zeitgeist 65, 111–112 Zetkin, Clara 33 Zionism 79