Georg Simmel

Soziologie : Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Documents about the work Soziologie, Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung (1908) / Georg Simmel (1858-1918) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Pages in data.bnf.fr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Related authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 This page in data.bnf.fr lab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Sources and references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Link to the main catalogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Variant of the title

The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies

(441 article begins page) All relationships of people to each other rest, as a matter of course, upon the precondition that they know something about each other. The merchant knows that his correspondent wants to buy at the lowest price and to sell at the highest price. The teacher knows that he may credit to the pupil a certain quality and quantity of information. Within each social stratum the individual knows approximately what measure of culture he has to presuppose in each other individual. In all relationships of a personally differentiated sort there develop, as we may affirm with obvious reservations, intensity and shading in the degree in which each unit reveals himself to the other through word and deed. How much error and sheer prejudice may lurk in all this knowing is immaterial. Just as our apprehension of external nature, along with its elusions and its inaccuracies, still attains that degree of truth which is essential for the life and progress of our species, so each knows the other with whom he has to do, in a rough and ready way, to the degree necessary ‘in order that the needed kinds of intercourse may proceed. That we shall know with whom we have to do, is the first precondition of having anything to do with another. The customary reciprocal presenta-

The Sociology of Sociability

While all human associations are entered into because of some ulterior interests, there is in all of them a residue of pure sociability or association for its own sake. Sociability it the art or play form of association, related to the content and purposes of association in the same way as art is related to reality. While sociable interaction centers upon persons, it can occur only if the more serious purposes of the individual are kept out, so that it is an interaction not of complete but of symbolic and equal personalities. While it is a departure from reality, there is no deceit in it unless one of the persons involved tries to exploit it.

The Number of Members as Determining the Sociological Form of the Group. I

THE following investigations constitute a chapter of a Sociology to be published by me in the future, the prolegomena to which have already appeared in this JOURNAL.2 In respect to the fundamental problem which appears to me solely to form the basis of a sociology as a distinct science, I refer to the introduction of these two monographs. I repeat here merely that this problem rests upon the distinction between the content or purpose of socializations, and the form of the same. The content is economic or religious, domestic or political, intellectual or volitional, pedagogic or convivial. That these purposes and interests, however, attain to realization in the form of a society, of the companionship and the reciprocity of individuals, is the subject-matter of special scientific consideration. That men build a society means that they live for the attainment of those purposes in definitely formed interactions. If there is to be a science of society as such, it must therefore abstract those forms from the complex phenomena of societary life, and it must make them the subject of determination and explanation. Those contents are already treated by special sciences, historical and svstematic: the relationshiDs. however, of men to each

The Sociology of Conflict. I

THAT conflict has sociological significance, inasmuch as it either produces or modifies communities of interest, unifications, organizations, is in principle never contested. On the other hand, it must appear paradoxical to the ordinary mode of thinking to ask whether conflict itself, without reference to its consequences or its accompaniments, is not a form of socialization. This seems, at first glance, to be merely a verbal question. If every reaction among men is a socialization, of course conflict must count as such, since it is one of the most intense reactions, and is logically impossible if restricted to a single element. The actually dissociating elements are the causes of the conflict -hatred and envy, want and desire. If, however, from these impulses conflict has once broken out, it is in reality the way to remove the dualism and to arrive at some form of unity, even if through annihilation of one of the parties. The case is, in a way, illustrated by the most violent symptoms of disease. They frequently represent the efforts of the organism to free itself from disorders and injuries. This is by no means equivalent merely to the triviality, si vis pacem para bellum, but it is the wide generalization of which that special case is a particular. Conflict itself is the resolution of the tension between the contraries. That it eventuates in peace is only a single, specially obvious and evident, expression of the fact that it is a conjunction of elements, an opposition, which belongs with the combination under one higher conception. This conception is characterized by the common contrast between both forms of relationship and the mere reciprocal indifference between elements. Repudiation and dissolution of social relation are also negatives, but conflict shows itself to be the positive factor in this very contrast with them; viz., shows negative factors in a unity which, in idea only, not at all in reality, is disjunctive. It is

A Chapter in the Philosophy of Value

THE fact of economic exchange confers upon the value of things something super-individual. It detaches them from dissolution in the mere subjectivity of the agents, and causes them to determine each other reciprocally, since each exerts its economic function in the other. The practically effective value is conferred upon the object, not merely by its own desirability, but by the desirability of another object. Not merely the relationship to the receptive subjects characterizes this value, but also the fact that it arrives at this relationship only at the price of a sacrifice; while from the opposite point of view this sacrifice appears as a good to be enjoyed, and the object in question, on the contrary, as a sacrifice. Hence the objects acquire a reciprocity of counterweight, which makes value appear in a quite special manner as an objective quality indwelling in themselves. While the object itself is the thing in controversy-which means that the sacrifice which it represents is being determined-its significance for both contracting parties appears much more as something outside of these latter and self-existent than if the individual thought of it only in its relation to himself. We shall see later how also isolated industry, by placing the workman over against the demands of

The Problem of Sociology

The overthrow of the individualistic point of view may be considered the most important and fruitful step which historical science and the moral sciences (Geisteswissenscha_ ften ) generally have made in our time. In place of the individual careers which formerly stood in the foreground of our picture of history, we now regard social forces, national movements, as the real and determining factors, out of which the parts which individuals play cannot be evaluated with complete definiteness. The science of human beings has become the science of human society. No object of discussion in the moral sciences can avoid this tendency. Even where movements culminate in the individual, as in the realm of art, we seek the causes in the evolution of the race, from which we have arrived at a perception of the beautiful, and in the particular social condition of the time, which made possible just this or that form of artistic product. In the realm of religion, as in that of economic life; in the realm of morals, as well as in technical progress; in politics, as well as in those things which treat of the health and disease of body and soul, it is equally true that we find

Der Raum und die räumlichen Ordnungen der Gesellschaft

Es gehort zu den haufigsten Ausartungen des menschlichen Kausaltriebes, formale Bedingungen, ohne die bestimmte Ereignisse nicht stattfinden konnen, fur positive, produktive Ursachen derselben zu halten. Das typische Beispiel ist die Macht der Zeit — eine Redensart, die uns unzahligemal darum betrugt, den wirklichen Grunden von Milderungen oder Erkaltungen der Gesinnung, von seelischen Heilprozessen oder fest gewordenen Gewohnheiten nachzuforschen. Mit der Bedeutung des Raumes wird es sich vielfach nicht anders verhalten. Wenn eine asthetische Theorie es fur die wesentliche Aufgabe der bildenden Kunst erklart, uns den Raum fuhlbar zu machen, so verkennt sie, das unser Interesse nur den besonderen Gestaltungen der Dinge gilt, nicht aber dem allgemeinen Raum oder Raumlichkeit, die nur die conditio sine qua non jener, aber weder ihr spezielles Wesen noch ihren erzeugenden Faktor ausmachen. Wenn eine Deutung der Geschichte das Raummoment derart in den Vordergrund stellt, das sie die Grose oder Kleinheit der Reiche, die Zusammendrangung oder Zerstreutheit der Bevolkerungen, die Beweglichkeit oder Stabilitat der Massen usw. als die gleichsam vom Raum ausstrahlenden Motive des ganzen geschichtlichen Lebens verstehen will, so gerat auch hier die notwendige raumliche Befastheit aller dieser Konstellationen in Gefahr, mit deren positiv wirksamen Ursachen verwechselt zu werden. Freilich konnen Reiche nicht irgend welche Umfange haben, freilich konnen Menschen nicht einander nahe oder fern sein, ohne das der Raum seine Form dazu hergebe, so wenig jene Vorgange, die man der Macht der Zeit zuschreibt, auserhalb der Zeit verlaufen konnen.

The Philosophy of Money.

Acknowledgements Foreword to The Routledge Classics Edition Preface to the Third Edition Introduction to the Translation Analytical Part 1. Value and Money 2. The Value of Money as Substance 3. Money in the Sequence of Purposes Synthetic Part 4. Individual Freedom 5. The Money Equivalent of Personal Values 6. the Style of Life Appendix: The Constitution of the Text

The Fragmentary Character of Life

Editorial Note: ‘The Fragmentary Character of Life’ (‘Der Fragmentcharakter des Lebens’) first appeared in August 1916 in the journal Logos and is in part a preparatory study for Chapter 2 of Simmel’s last great philosophical testament, his View of Life or Lebensanschauung of September 1918. Complementing and overlaying his earlier sociological theorems of the 1890s, the text is key for an understanding of Simmel’s later philosophical thinking about ‘life’ as a flow of experience shaped by ‘form’. Echoing kindred vitalistic motifs in the thought of figures such as Dilthey, Bergson, James, Husserl, Scheler and Heidegger, Simmel begins with some criticisms of conventional Kantian and Platonic theories of mind and knowledge, thematizing ‘life’ in its higher stages of self-reflection as an embodied ‘stream’ of consciousness directed toward ‘contents’ of experience. The middle pages of the text then present Simmel’s vision of conflict between multiple ‘worlds’ of value and meaning. As a project of reflective self-fashioning, life is a fragmentary composite of worlds; but worlds, seen in relation to life as a limitlessly creative flow of embodied will, feeling and understanding, are themselves only fragmentary composites of life. As Simmel puts it in the concluding lines of the text, ‘life appears to be something lived always at the intersection of multiple worlds, always garnering particles utterly particular in nature from the God’s-eye perspective of each absolutely self-subsistent categorial world – and composing itself from these particles. Life makes up a whole, yet so too does each categorial world. Where life and worlds intersect, they create fragments – fragments of life, fragments of worlds’.