Messages from Georg Simmel

Studies in Critical
Social Sciences

Series Editor
David Fasenfest
Wayne State University

Editorial Board
Chris Chase-Dunn, University of California-Riverside
G. William Domhoff, University of California-Santa Cruz
Colette Fagan, Manchester University
Martha Gimenez, University of Colorado, Boulder
Heidi Gottfried, Wayne State University
Karin Gottschall, University of Bremen
Bob Jessop, Lancaster University
Rhonda Levine, Colgate University
Jacqueline OReilly, University of Brighton
Mary Romero, Arizona State University
Chizuko Ueno, University of Tokyo

VOLUME 49

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/scss

Messages from Georg Simmel

By

Horst J. Helle

LEIDEN BOSTON
2013
Cover illustration: Teaching Simmel in China, Guest lecture for the School of Philosophy and Social
Development () of Huaqiao University (). Seated from left to
right: H. J. Helle ( ), YE Huizhen (), YANG Ying () Dean and Professor. 2010 by
the School of Philosophy and Social Development, Xiamen, China.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Helle, Horst Jrgen.

Messages from Georg Simmel / by Horst J. Helle.
p. cm. -- (Studies in critical social sciences)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-23368-3 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Sociology--Methodology. 2. Simmel, Georg, 1858-1918. I. Title.

HM585.H446 2013
301--dc23

2012029702

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 CONTENTS

Introductionvii

1.The Message of Interpretation1

Humanities versus Natural Sciences1
The Operation Called Verstehen6
The Controversy about Pragmatism 17
Simmel versus Conventional Philosophy 17
The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy 21
Simmels Critique of Subjectivist Pragmatism 29
Tension between Culture and the Individual 36

2.The Message of Change: Society Evolves Over Time 43

Evolution and Darwins Theory of Descendency 43
Change as Differentiation and Individualization 48
Competition promotes Evolution 51
Alternative Theories of Evolution 58

3.The Message of Interaction: How Reality is Constructed 71

Sociology as the Study of Interaction 71
Society Emerges in Interaction 79
Religion as Interaction 84
Strangeness as Form of Interaction 97
Encounters between Alien Populations 97
The Stranger as Innovator 99

4.The Message of Alienation: Money and Politics105

Money as a Paradigm of Cultural Processes105
Evaluation and Alienation108
Construction of Value in Interaction114
Money as a Means of Exchange117
Socialism as Result of a Forming Process123
Socialism on Happiness126
Machine Factory Government130
vi contents

5.The Main Thrust of the Messages contra Marx and Weber135

Simmels main Thrust against Marx135
Simmels main Thrust against Weber139

6.Background of the Messages: Intellectual Influences143

The Platonic Socrates143
Platos Eternal Ideas144
Spinoza152
Kant160
Dilthey 166
Summary: Statements about Simmels Method 177

Appendix 1: Biography of Georg Simmel181

Appendix 2: Simmels Autobiographical Fragment189

References193
Index199
 INTRODUCTION

Simmel trained as a philosopher, and sociology started out as a past time

for him. But he saw a specific message embedded in sociology, a message
so important in its effects on his students and readers that we now con-
sider him a founder of sociology. According to this message things are
often not what they appear to be. A hidden agenda may exist in a proposal,
a deeper meaning to a sentence. And usually, what something means
depends on the context in which it is seen and on the perspective from
which it is looked at.
Simmel also warns against rushing to any decision about what is real or
imagined because if a person acts on the basis of his or her imagination,
the action certainly results in something real. Besides, there are to Simmel
multiple realities, and he sets out to study the conditions under which
people think things are real (Simmel 1892a, vol. 1: 6).
Simmels message means something for people today. He wrote about
the stranger, and large numbers of persons have left the area in which they
grew up, moved to a city where they did not know other people and were
strangers when they arrived. But Simmel shows how being foreign is not
what it appears to be on the surface: It really is a quality of the relationship
between the native and the newcomer.
He wrote about competition, and many people living today work next to
colleagues and companions who strive to be better or perform faster than
they, so they have to compete with them. And whether competition exists
in a society or not has far reaching consequences that are not visible on
the surface. Simmel wrote about religion, and humans of today have
many different ideas on what religion is and whether or not it is still
needed. But many of them wonder if their grandfather or mother who
died has completely disappeared or continues to exist somewhere in some
form. These few examples show that Simmels writings are important
because they deal with topics that concern modern man and because
Simmel deals with them in a novel way that was frequently not under-
stood in his own days.
Simmel observed the enormous social, economic, and political changes
that occurred in Europe during his lifetime (18581918). The development
of Prussia and under its leadership of Germany from a predominantly
agrarian society to industrialization, the rise of capitalism, the unification
viii introduction

of the German speaking territories with the exception of Austria and

Northern Switzerland into the Second Empire in 1871 and its demise prior
to and during World War I, all evolved while he was looking on; these
events happened to him personally. His thinking became in part a reflec-
tion of these changes, of the economic advances, the ambivalence of life in
big cities, and the political intolerance throughout the nation.
His ideas are inspirations today to create fresh interpretations of similar
events in other parts of the world (or even in the same parts). In short
then, Simmels message states that with regard to experiences persons
make in dealing with each other things are often not what they appear to
be because
a.they are in need of interpretation,
b.they change over time (evolution),
c.they are socially constructed as a reality that was created in interaction
(construction),
d.they are not recognized as the results of their makers own doing
(alienation).
From these four aspects of Simmels message we take the chapter head-
ings of this text. In the first chapter Simmels message will be explained as
the need of interpretation and as a way to point to the importance of an
interpretive theory of culture and society. In chapter 2 the reader can find
Simmels theory of social change. Simmel will be shown to refer to Darwins
evolutionist ideas, but it will become clear that Simmels approach is in no
way close to biology.
Instead Simmel interprets the findings of Darwin as a contribution to a
renewed philosophy: In Platos philosophy something was real only if it
never changes, like the old concept of species. Darwin has shown our idea
of species to be but a snap-shot of one moment in the history of biological
evolution. Chapter 3 is oriented toward interaction as creation of the social,
and also as the crucial source of the reality to be studied by the humani-
ties. Chapter 4 will present money and socialism as constructions of reality.
That chapter will also expose the basis for Simmels critique of reification
or substantialization of social relations as leading toward alienation.
Chapter 5 is a brief summary of the main thrust of Simmel contra
Marx and Weber. Chapter 6 contains an overview of Simmels points of
departure in traditional philosophy which serve as background for his own
creative thinking. The six chapters will thus deal with interpretation, with
change, with the construction of reality in interaction, with alienation, with
the differences he has with Marx and Weber, and with Simmels reading of
 introductionix

selected philosophers respectively. Chapter 6 concludes with a list of seven-

teen topics as a summary of Simmels theoretical approach. Appended to
the last chapter the reader will find Simmels biography. It is in the back of
the book to make it easy to locate and to refer back to it occasionally while
reading other parts of this text.
This volume was written in English by a German. That is a reason for
acknowledging in gratitude the competence and kindness of those, who
helped make the outcome linguistically acceptable. There was my most
remarkable English teacher in high school in the fifties, the German
Richard Edens, there was my late first wife Carolyn Craft (19351999) from
Kansas since the sixties, and there was finally but most importantly the
cameraman and fiction writer Jeremy Trylch who helped me review the
manuscript when we met on the Island of Hainan in China and in Munich,
Germany. Where the English in this book is readable, it is due to the influ-
ence of these persons, where on the other hand the English is defective, it
is because my last minute additions could not be remedied by Jeremy
Trylch.
 CHAPTER ONE

THE MESSAGE OF INTERPRETATION

Humanities versus Natural Sciences

The dominant positions in philosophy prior to Kant suggested that the

objects of our knowledge are out there ready to be registered. Simmel does
not accept that but instead agrees with Kant in acknowledging our own
contribution toward forming images of those objects in the process of try-
ing to grasp them. If we actually make such a contribution it follows then
that we must carefully study that process in which it unfolds because it
entails the construction of reality.
Opponents to this constructivist position will argue that such a process
should be minimized or better yet not taken into account because it
means distortion and falsification of objective reality. They would declare
any attempt to interpret what goes on during reality construction as unsci-
entific and as dangerous to the credibility of scholarship. Accordingly they
would rely on hard facts only. Simmel provokes them by pointing out
how it would be a dangerous fallacy precisely to assume that anyone can
reproduce a reality existing in and of itself, without manipulating it in the
process. Only if we know what manipulation has occurred and how it
influences the outcome can we interpret the objects of our knowledge,
and because it is possible for us to know that, Simmel sends the message
that we must interpret them.
Simmels claim that we need interpretation, of course, hinges entirely
on our evaluation of mans faculty of perception: If we believe that sooner
or later we humans will have registered and clearly reproduced everything
worth knowing, because that, after all, is the goal of scholarship, then we
should reject Simmel as an unwelcome source of doubt. If we assume, on
the other hand, that reality is too all encompassing and complex for indi-
viduals to handle without introducing their own interests in selecting data
and that therefore they have no choice but to construct their own image of
reality, then we can learn from Simmel and ought to study him (Helle:
2001: 3).
Social science research, which operates in close affinity to the natural
sciences as is frequently the case in economics, psychology, and in soci-
ology particularly when making recommendations to politicians tends
2 chapter one

to be welcomed by those who paid for it because it produces a sense of

presumed security in decision making: The sponsor of the research glances
over the summary of the empirical results and leans back comfortably
because as he or she assumes they now know what reality is truly like
without any need of interpretation. However, such a person should then
not study Simmel because reading his works would probably produce
awkward doubts as to the reliability of what has been presented in the
research.
Simmel was convinced that the humanities cannot excuse themselves
from studying processes of forming as he calls it from which phenom-
ena of culture and society emerge in interaction. A sociology that refuses
to do so must limit itself to counting for instance the number of people
residing in a certain territory and generally work in close affinity to a natu-
ral science. But even then the problem, which territory should be selected
and what its borders ought to be in planning the research can only be
solved by introducing an interactive forming process assigning social
forms to human content.
The distinction between content and form (Simmel 1911: 16ff.) is an epis-
temological device frequently used by Simmel, however, in quoting from
his writing, other authors have sometimes misinterpreted what he had in
mind. To look at the strong influence the work of Spinoza (16321677) had
on Simmel may help avoid such errors. Spinoza was familiar with the divi-
sion of reality into two types of phenomena by Ren Descartes (1596
1650): Material objects which can be measured because they extend in
space (extensio) on the one hand, and ideas without any physical charac-
teristic (cogitatio) on the other.
To Descartes, the world simply consisted of two separate parts, but to
Spinoza, there was just one unified reality, and the impression of a twofold
typology existed only in the eyes of the beholders. Thus the extensio-
cogitatio-dichotomy was to Spinoza a way of looking at the world, it was not
an innate characteristic of the world. Applying this distinction between
mind and matter to the infinite multitude of phenomena will be helpful,
Spinoza argues, but we must remember that we, the observers and ana-
lysts, are the creators of this typology. Accordingly we should not try to
pretend that we simply discovered something that was already there
before we looked at it, or decided to work with it.
We do not have the opportunity here to discuss the impact this
Spinozistic principle had on the philosophy of Kant. But we can be sure it
deeply influenced the method of Simmel, partly via Kant, partly directly
from Spinoza himself. And, to come back to Simmels confrontation of
 the message of interpretation3

form and content, there too we are dealing with conceptual tools created
for the use of gaining insights rather than with characteristic qualities of
the objects out there. That is the reason why the same phenomenon (reli-
gion, for instance) can appear as content in some social contexts and then
again as form in another. To the hurried reader this may simply demon-
strate the inconsistencies in Simmels thinking.
But it is worth the effort to carefully look inside Simmels intellectual
workshop: Basic human drives and emotions typically become contents
for Simmel. Feeling the need to associate with a powerful partner for pro-
tection and assistance may be an acceptable illustration for content. It may
produce and make use of the form of adoring a dictator in politics or else
that of relating to a deity via religion. Looking at it in this way, religion is a
legitimate case of giving form to a deep seated emotion. Then again, religi-
osity may be looked at as a human need and therefore be considered to
belong among the contents. The concomitant form would then be a church,
a sect, a synagogue.
Simmel uses this approach also as a tool for his critical thinking. In his
talk The Metropolis and Mental Life of 1903 (Simmel 1903a) he refers to the
products (Produkte) of modern life. By those he means large scale orga-
nizations, bureaucracies, as well as military establishments in the absence
of war. Those obviously are forms. The content that is supposed to be
served by them may be identified as personal tendencies and emotional
needs of individuals, and indeed the legitimacy of the social forms can
only be derived from serving the needs of individuals. Unless such service
is provided, the products of modern life become self-perpetuating
instead of legitimate. All intimate emotional relations between per-
sons are founded in their individuality, whereas in rational relations
man is reckoned with like a number (Simmel 1950b, adaptation by
D. Weinstein, 3). This sentence illustrates Simmels critical stance: As
Spinoza before him he trusted the intimate emotions of persons but
warned of what became of them in the course of the forming process. He
warns of the impact of the natural sciences on metropolitan life: The cal-
culative exactness of practical life which the money economy has brought
about corresponds to the ideal of natural science: to transform the world
into an arithmetic problem, to fix every part of the world by mathematical
formulas (ibid: 4).
The usefulness of the two concepts form and content can also be exem-
plified by the following: As reported in the book of Genesis in the sacred
texts of Jews and Christians, Joseph was hated by his brothers out of envy
because their father loved him more than his other sons. In spite of this
4 chapter one

unfavorable point of departure Josef tells his brothers about a dream he

had in which he and his brothers work together during the harvest in a
grain field. They bind the grain into sheaves and put them to dry: Josephs
sheaf stood up and remained standing (Genesis 37, 7), whereas he
dreamed of his brothers, that their sheaves stood roundabout and bowed
down to my sheaf (ibid.). Surprising is the seriousness with which the
brothers react to the dream. The mood immediately deteriorates dramati-
cally: They become still angrier at Joseph than they already were, because
they see in the dream the announcement of his claim to rule over them. It
would have been conceivable that they consider their little brothers tale
unimportant and go over to the day to day agenda, because it had been
only a dream. Here the participants, however, recognize a content that can-
not be entirely dismissed, and even when put in the form of a dream, the
content is not thereby necessarily annulled but survives as the serious
meaning of the dream.
Maybe Simmel elaborates on the significance of content and form as
heuristic tools most convincingly in his Hauptprobleme der Philosophie
(Simmel 1911, Main Problems of Philosophy). He identifies as content the
existing world which we can only perceive in its various forms. Those are
mainly (but not exclusively) the following three: Art, religion, and scholar-
ship as the sciences and the humanities put together. Each of them has the
potential of capturing all the content there is, rather than specializing in
forming certain select types of content. This inclusive responsibility of art,
religion, and scholarship is reminiscent of the rejection of the Descartes
extensio-cogitatio-dichotomy by Spinoza: There are no separate realities to
be communicated in art, religion, or scholarship respectively; they are
each responsible for presenting the one and only reality in their particular
form.
Simmel comments on the ideal of scholarship. The hope that someday
all there is to know may be known in its final form is utopian: Learned
knowledge depends on concept formation, on techniques for collecting
and organizing data, on transforming what appears to the senses into nat-
ural laws or images of history respectively. It depends moreover on the
criteria for truth and error. However, all the forms and methods via which
the contents of the world become contents of scholarship have evolved
in the course of human history and will undoubtedly continue to do so
(ibid: 18). This is true because the human being is nothing final but instead
involves in a process of change as a historic-evolutionistic being (ibid.)
Accordingly, what kind of scholarship humankind has at a given moment
depends on what kind of humanity it is at that moment (ibid.).
 the message of interpretation5

Simmel mentions that this point of view appears to contradict Kant

whose fundamental categories are presented with the claim that they
refer to contents that are eternal and thus not subject to evolution
(ibid: 19). To this Simmel replies, that what we know about things has not
been poured inside us like nuts in a bag Instead all knowing is an activity
of the mind (ibid.), in the course of which we construct new insight.
Therefore, even if contents that Kant refers to may be eternal, the catego-
ries we use as bags to collect the nuts, are subject to evolution and as a
consequence the formed results of our research are subject to change no
matter how unchangeable the contents may be. Here we encounter
Spinozas wisdom reaffirmed by Simmel and later accepted also by Weber.
Whoever argues in favor of interpretation assuming that there are con-
tents with the potential of giving meaning to forms, as Simmel has done,
must expect to be confronted with this question: What benefits can be
gained from giving up a sense of objectivity typical of the natural sciences
in favor of Simmels constructivism. As a partial response the following
can be stated:

a.A molecule or a living cell under study in one of the natural sciences
does not have a consciousness, and therefore cannot be treated as a
subject making decisions. A human being, by contrast, under study in
the humanities, does have a consciousness and therefore should not be
treated as a thing but as an individual endowed with freedom. An
increased awareness of this freedom is one of the benefits to be gained
from Simmels approach.
b.The error to extend the epistemology of the natural sciences as it was
seen in Simmels lifetime with reference to Kant to all scholarship,
and consequently also to the humanities, must not be repeated in
reverse: Simmel did not intend to apply to the natural sciences the con-
structivist method he suggested for sociology. Rather, he never ques-
tioned an intersubjective objectivity for dealing with data in the hard
sciences. But he followed Dilthey in pointing out that sciences and
humanities devote their efforts to objects so vastly different from each
other that it is flatly unreasonable to tie such diverse efforts to the same
method. Following the demand that the method applied must fit the
task at hand, sciences and humanities ought to each work with their
own specific method. This insight is one of the benefits to be gained
from studying Simmel in the continuity of Dilthey.
c.The humanities, as described by Wilhelm Dilthey (18331911), devote
their attention to the realm of freedom. Given the condition of having
6 chapter one

choices to make, humans cannot be prevented from considering a glass

either half full or half empty or if there is a crack in it, even broken. To
reduce such processes of forming to individual arbitrariness rather
than asking what causes them culturally, would be (or is?) the end of
any scholarly involvement with art, religion, and other branches of
culture. Simmel has emphasized that the study of culture relies on
interpretation.
d.Differences of opinion in the context of the epistemology of the natural
sciences usually lead to proclaiming that one side is in error. In the
context of the humanities, on the other hand, the result of a difference
of opinion may be this: The same content permits two or more alterna-
tive perspectives from which to approach it, and consequently several
principles of forming. Thus both conflicting sides may acknowledge the
legitimacy of such alternate procedures. A confrontation of the first
kind in the natural sciences will produce a far more severe conflict
than a confrontation of the second kind in the humanities. This
potential of conflict reduction by itself may be reason enough to study
the forming process as Simmel did.
e.The sponsors of scholarly research, be it a politician, a business man, or
a manager of a large commercial or government bureaucracy, cannot
shift responsibility to a social scientist once the results of his research
turn out to be admittedly ambiguous. However, it is the nature of
research in the humanities that such an ambiguity will be part of the
new insights gained, since problems in culture and society typically are
open to interpretation and therefore admit and legitimize several ways
of looking at them. This involves the opportunity for the sponsors of
research to acknowledge that not scholars but policy makers (in gov-
ernment, business or in large organization in general) must take full
responsibility for their decisions and cannot pin that on the researcher,
and certainly not if the researcher concedes that his results are open to
interpretation.

The Operation Called Verstehen

In the English language the interpretive school of sociology has for a long
time been associated with the German word verstehen. This is largely
due to an article by Theodore Abel (18961988). He belonged to the pio-
neers of Weberian Sociology in America. In his Systematic Sociology in
Germany (Abel 1929) the first systematic exposure of Max Webers ideas
was made available in English. It appeared in 1929 when Abel started to
 the message of interpretation7

work as associate professor of sociology at Columbia University. Abel was

also the first to use verstehen and verstehende Soziologie in English litera-
ture in his publication The Operation Called Verstehen, which appeared in
the American Journal of Sociology (Abel 1948). Two years before that article
H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills published From Max Weber Essays in
Sociology (Gerth and Mills 1946) which became the Max Weber text for
generations of students.
Preceding Weber, Simmel assigns the Gestalt of interpretation or verste-
hen to the question that permeates all of his philosophizing, namely how
the human subject can bridge the gap to the objective. Although he unfolds
the methodical presuppositions of verstehen in the context of the philoso-
phy of history, he thereby lays the foundations of verstehen-sociology. The
problem of a theoretical approach to objective truth a truth whose exis-
tence Simmel takes for granted independently of whether or not it is
accessible to perception remains a theme of Simmels search for an
interpretive method. His philosophy of history as well is conceived under
the assumption of a realm of the absolute, from which values receive their
legitimation.
His book Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie (Simmel 1892b) (The
Problems of the Philosophy of History) which was published in 1892 i.e.,
in the same year as the first volume of his two-volume Introduction to
Moral Science [Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft] contains the
methodical foundation for verstehen-sociology. This claim is supported by
the fact that Max Weber expressly referred to this work of Simmel: The
logically most developed approaches to the theory of verstehen are to be
found in the second edition of Simmels The Problems of the Philosophy
of History (pp. 2762) (Weber, Knies and the Problem of Irrationality
[Knies und das Irrationalitaetsproblem], 1905, quoted from Weber 1951c:
92). Max Weber cited Simmels second, revised edition from 1905 (Simmel
1905) in an article that Weber himself published in October of that same
year.
Since the beginning of his studies beyond philosophy, leading him
toward the social sciences, the methodical concern in which Simmel was
engaged was that of an historian. He addresses the historians in this epis-
temological essay on the philosophy of history. The methodical conse-
quences that follow from this work, however, are valid not only for them
but for all the humanities. Objects of knowledge are the mental opera-
tions of acting persons (Simmel 1923: 35), i.e., the cognitive and emotional
procedures within human beings whose behavior the historian is con-
cerned with. It is these cognitive and emotional procedures that the
8 chapter one

historical researcher attempts to reconstruct. Whether or not he can suc-

cessfully accomplish this, according to Simmel, can only be determined if
verstehen is possible. For this purpose, alongside (or above) the two per-
sons concerned (the historical actor and the historian) he postulates a
third realm (Simmel 1910: 103) of objective truth. It is to this realm that
the creative constructions the historian brings to his or her research, must
correspond.
Whether the psychological connecting-links that the historian attaches
to the events are objectively true, i.e., whether they really reflect the men-
tal operations of the acting persons would be of no interest for us if we
would not understand [verstehen]. Were this not to happen, then correct-
ness could be reached via some other means for instance, how in some
cases this correctness does not seem to require the psychological recon-
struction by the historian but rather to be immediately given by utterances
and confessions of these personalities and yet we would still not attri-
bute to it that which we call truth. But what does this verstehen mean and
what are its conditions? (Simmel 1923: 35).
The search for the criteria of truth, which had led Simmel to his own
pragmatic theory of truth, also concerns him as a philosopher of history.
He addresses the historians about whom he says in a manner we are
already familiar with that they reconstruct something, much as a painter
creates a piece of art by inspecting reality and creatively transforming, not
merely photographing, it. (Even though of course photography can be an
artful transformation as well). The question of whether that result of
reconstruction may claim to be a truth could not be meaningfully raised,
were it not for the possibility of verstehen [understanding]. For Simmel,
therefore, the method of verstehen is so important because only it offers
the preconditions that allow one to check the truth-content of what has
been cognitively constructed. And because verstehen is so important, one
has to deal with it and clarify its background: But what does this verstehen
mean and what are its conditions? (ibid.).
Apparently the first condition is that those mental operations are
reconstructed within ourselves, that we are able, so to speak, to put our-
selves into the other persons mind (ibid: 3537). This formulation by
Simmel reminds us of the frequently quoted notion of George Herbert
Mead, taking the role of the other. For Simmel it is decisive that the creat-
ing and combining process which he calls formation has taken place
within the person under study, and that the recreation of this process in the
mind of the observer is now attempted.
 the message of interpretation9

Simmel explains which processes of reciprocal causation [Wechsel

wirkungen] he associates with the concept of verstehen and which pro-
cesses, as a result thereof, are initiated inside the minds of both persons
concerned. Understanding an uttered sentence means that the mental
operations of the speaker which led to these words will, via these words,
be aroused in the listener as well (ibid.: 37). This formulation of
Simmels is reminiscent of what Mead later wrote in 1922. In his article
about the Significant Symbol, Mead stressed that the quality of a symbol
can be distinguished by the correspondence of the impressions it triggers
for the sender as well as for the receiver of the message (Mead 1922).
Having clarified, that the item to be understood cannot be in the mind
of only one isolated individual, but that it has to be the content of a recip-
rocal relationship, Simmel turns to a differentiation of various kinds of
verstehen. Linked to the idea of the reconstruction of mental operations of
one person in the mind of the other, he distinguishes between different
qualities of the content of thoughts: Such a direct reconstruction, how-
ever, only takes place and only suffices where theoretical thought-contents
are at stake, where it is not essential that they originate as mental opera-
tions in this particular individual, but rather contents that present them-
selves in their logical form to each individual similarly. For objective pieces
of knowledge, I orient myself toward the object of knowledge as does
someone whose mental operations about them I understand; he merely
transmits to me their content and will afterwards be, so to speak, switched
off (Simmel 1023: 37).
Here Simmel presents the first of two types of verstehen: The informa-
tion passed on from one person to another is independent of the persons
involved. One can illustrate this type with the following example. I listen,
for instance, to the news on the radio. The announcer has transmitted
something that I have understood, thereby transferring the content that
was present in the mind of the newscaster into my mind. If the newscaster
mentions his or her name, then this may be motivated by other reasons
such as the desire to make ones name known; but for understanding the
message of the broadcast, the identity of the speaker is entirely irrelevant.
Here we have a type of verstehen that deals with the transmission of theo-
retical contents, i.e., contents that are emotionally neutral.
Should the newscaster, however, reveal some emotional arousal and
cause such among his listeners as well, one would have to judge this occur-
rence as not belonging to the first of the two types of verstehen distin-
guished by Simmel. About the transition from first to his second type,
10 chapter one

Simmel writes: In a way I understand not the speaker but that which is
spoken. This changes immediately when anyone is driven to his utterance
by a personal intention, by prejudice or anger, by fearfulness or scorn. By
recognizing this motive for the utterance, we have understood it addi-
tionally in an entirely different sense than by grasping its factual content:
It is here where this verstehen refers not only to what has been spoken but
also to the speaker. This latter kind of verstehen, however, and not the for-
mer, is what matters in dealing with historical personalities (ibid: 38).
And leaving the frame of reference of historical research, it of course
matters in sociology.
This second type of verstehen is to be clearly distinguished from the
first. Here we are dealing with that interpretive procedure which Simmel
considers to be decisive. In the type of communication to be interpreted
we are now not only confronted with linguistic gestures being exchanged.
Instead in this type of verstehen the acting person adds to the message a
personal contribution scorn, anger, sarcasm, or fearfulness, signaling
the most diverse emotional and evaluative content which the person
attempting to understand must try to grasp together with the factual con-
tent of the message. Simmels second kind of verstehen or understanding
sets itself apart by the fact that the person, who does the understanding,
while reconstructing the relevant aspects of reality, can no longer ignore
the subject involved in the interaction process. Here subjects as they pres-
ent themselves in interaction have become objective reality themselves in
a new way, and this personal, new formation process must be recreated in
the act of verstehen.
For Simmel it is here self-understood that in an historical psychologi-
cal sense the re-creation is by no means an unchanged repetition of the
content of the mind of the historical persons. We claim, after all, to under-
stand each kind and each degree of love and hate, courage and despair,
wish and feeling, without necessarily experiencing as our own the affects
portrayed by the image that communication about those emotions gener-
ates within our minds. And yet, that process in our mind that we call
comprehending or grasping evidently presupposes a psychological trans-
formation, a condensing, or else a faded mirroring; somehow the content
of these affects must be incorporated into it (ibid.: 39).
Objectively given is the Platonic, archaic image of an affect that we
as observers recognize in the utterances of another person. And by re-
invoking the psychological transformation which we experience that our
counterpart has carried out, we understand. We are therefore dealing, not
with physical effects of bodily behavior, but rather with what is wished
 the message of interpretation11

and what is felt. And historians are scholars whose work falls short if they
do not attempt, as best they can, to reconstruct, to re-paint for us, for
instance, what Alexander the Great or Napoleon or whoever must have
felt and wished. Simmel is clearly aware of the considerable methodical
difficulties that arise in this process (ibid: 3952). But he continues to pos-
tulate the third realm as objective truth, a realm which is perceived in its
dynamic by the individual and brought into a form in which it then pro-
ceeds within the subject (ibid.: 52).
This is how it is possible that mental events take on the form of history,
i.e., that the subject carrying them imagines them as if they were carried
by someone else (ibid: 52). What is happening here, when verstehen
occurs, is like breaking through toward capturing the objective: It is not
that the completed, subjectively conscious imagination is retroactively
worked upon, but rather that the form into which it condenses is the his-
torical one, whose way of proceeding within the subject means, with
regard to its psychological aspects, that its content has its reality in another
subject (ibid.).
It is here where Simmel reaches the border between the subjective and
the objective, with the consequence that his line of reasoning becomes
metaphysical. To him the objective is something close to a realm of evolv-
ing truth that is, however, not normally accessible to humans. In the
context of his methodical treatise he appeals to a feeling of correctness
as non-verifiable evidence: And the epistemological interpretation of
this direct translation seems to me to be given by that feeling of trans-
subjective but not necessarily physically real correctness of certain
psychic constellations and connections, by the recognition that, as they
unfold, ones own relations of psychic content can be allowed to speak for
themselves, independently of their current objectification as thought
objects (ibid.: 53). Objective correctness, therefore, is located in the con-
stellations and connections that through recognition are allowed to
speak, whereby the individual becomes their medium. Characteristic are
ones own relations of psychic content, and its here where their relation
forms the specific reality. It is typical for Simmel to see the locus of reality
in relations.
In order to explain his epistemological position in yet another way,
Simmel points to the tasks that lie ahead for the history of philosophy.
While it does seem as if direct reconstruction of the object is particularly
easy in this area, even here one is not dealing with a mechanical, even if
mental, mirroring of data; what is called for, rather, is a forming of the
contents of thought that were inwardly experienced and created by the
12 chapter one

philosopher and are then re-thought by his historian (ibid.: 54). Despite
the fact that he illustrates his methodical position with the problems of
the historian, when Simmel summarizes it as follows, it is obvious that it
can be applied to the tasks of sociology as well:
Historical truth is not a mere reproduction but rather a mental activity
that makes something out of its material which is given as an inner re-
creation. Historical truth thus creates what this material is not yet, in and
of itself, and does so not only by summarizing its singularities, but by ask-
ing its own questions generated by that mental activity. In this way the
singular aspects are tied together in a sense that frequently was not even
in the consciousness of its hero. This happens by digging meanings and
values out of its material, shaping this former time into a painting that in
its presentation benefits us today (ibid.: 55). The digging of meanings
and values out of its material is only thinkable if one postulates an objec-
tive meaning behind the particular individual consciousness of the par-
ticipating persons. Only then can the historian discover something that
the hero of the historical action was not even aware of.
What is the basic concern that Simmel has in mind in this treatise about
epistemology and the philosophy of history? He intends to apply his pro-
cessual picture of reality and his theory of formation to the work of an
historian. He particularly criticizes the naive idea that writing history
could grasp things as they really were in the past. The decisive thing is to
break through the barrier of epistemological naturalism which wants to
make knowledge into a mirror image of reality (ibid: 58).
Simmels method thereby yields not only a critique of historical natural-
ism but also, in an analogous way, a critique of historical materialism. But
what is important about Simmels approach is not just the criticism of
those methods which do not take the process of gaining knowledge into
account or do so only inadequately. Important as an additional conse-
quence of Simmels approach is the implicit picture of the human being.
According to it, in the process of verstehen or understanding, the individ-
ual also finds him or herself only by proceeding through the you that
becomes indispensable as a mediator to ones own I. Modern humans
increasingly find themselves puzzled by the experience of being unable to
understand even their own person.
For the immediate experience, every human being we encounter is
only a machine which produces utterances and gestures; that behind this
appearance there is a soul and which processes occur therein, we can only
infer from the analogy with our own interior that is the sole mental being
directly known to us. The knowledge of the I, on the other hand, can only
 the message of interpretation13

grow with the knowledge of other persons; the fundamental partition into
a part that observes and a part that is being observed only comes into
being via the analogy of the relationship between the I and the other per-
sonalities (Simmel 1907b: 76).
The familiar problem of a cleavage between the subject and the object
is again taken up in a new form. The other human being is initially part of
the object-world for me, but since I attribute the mental processes I have
observed in myself to this other person (my You) as well, I gain the oppor-
tunity to grow with the knowledge of other persons. Seen this way, the
process of verstehen and the process of socialization are two aspects of the
same reciprocal interrelation [Wechselwirkung]. The structure of all ver-
stehen, internally, is synthesis of two initially separate elements. What is
given is a factual appearance that as such is not yet understood. It is joined
by a second one, from the subject who perceived this appearance, that
either immediately emerges from the subject or is received and pondered
over, namely the understanding thought that enters into what was received
first and transforms it into something understood (Simmel 1918a: 4).
This process applies to the understanding of things as well as of per-
sons. But for Simmel the interrelation between persons is the starting
point of his thinking about the process of verstehen; the relationship
between I and You, according to its quality, enables or prevents verste-
hen. It is the relationship of one mind to another (ibid: 3); it is at the
same time a basic occurrence of human life (ibid.) that, according to
ones individual fate, as early childhood experience, brings about either
normality or exception. Whenever it can be accomplished, it occurs as a
synthesis of a not-yet-understood empirical fact with the thought-process
of verstehen that is able to make the essence of the appearance accessible
to being understood.
The You is granted an autonomous existence this is another ethical
consequence of Simmels epistemological position. The I which wants to
be able to understand and itself grow in the process must not demote its
You to an echo of or projection-screen for itself. It has to recognize
that the You, rather, is a basic phenomenon, just as the I is (ibid: 10).
The notion that one can understand in the other only what one has expe-
rienced oneself is a thought that Simmel casts aside as erroneous. Simmel
traces this error to the Greek thought pattern that he mentions in connec-
tion with Plato, a thought pattern with its solid substantialism, its cling-
ing to the plastic security of forms (ibid: 9), according to which like can
only be recognized by like. To us, however, this appears to be a naive,
mechanistic dogma (ibid.).
14 chapter one

Simmel appeals to the reader, whom he expects has had the experience
of being able to understand processes in someone else without any doubt,
despite never having lived through them personally. One does not have to
be Caesar to understand Caesar; one does not have to be married to under-
stand a marriage. The approach to the You becomes identical to the
approach to the objective world that would remain closed to us without
the ability of verstehen. While Simmel wrote about the relationship of one
mind to another (ibid: 3), he seems to have wanted to refer to the relation-
ship of one soul to another: The You endowed with a soul on the one
hand is our only peer in the universe, the only being with whom mutual
understanding is possible and with whom we can feel a oneness as with
nothing else, such that we subsume the rest of nature, where we think that
we feel unity with it, under the category of the You. It is for this reason
that St. Francis addresses as brothers the animals and creatures not
endowed with souls (ibid: 12).
For Simmel the category of the soul contains the quality of unity, of a
harmonic connection of all elements, much more explicitly than the cat-
egory of the mind. The process of verstehen lets unity in the world of
objects come into existence according to the pattern of ones own soul,
and it makes the singularities understandable in their interrelationship.
One can therefore describe the process of verstehen as a method, in which
one describes the You one encounters as one addresses the world of
objects. The You and verstehen are thus the same, as if expressed once as
a substance and once as a function a basic phenomenon of the human
mind as are seeing and hearing, thinking and feeling, or as objectivity in
general, as space and time, as the I; it is the transcendental basis for the
fact that man is a zoon politikon [a Greek word meaning a being endowed
with the ability to engage in community; Aristotles definition of a human
being] (ibid: 13).
Max Weber refuses to work with an approach so deeply indebted to
metaphysics. Rather than recommending the construction of the appro-
priate You he introduces the construction of the tool of his ideal type.
That tool is neither permitted by him to have normative implications in
telling people how things ought to be, nor does he expect the ideal type to
reproduce reality as it is out there objectively given. Thus, methodological
realism is not his preference, and he is in agreement with Simmel on this.
(Weber 1951b: 192). He who is of the opinion that knowledge of historical
reality should or can reproduce unbiased and objective facts will deny
that the ideal types are of any use (ibid.). To Weber the ultimate source
of the ideal type is not empirical fact finding but scholarly imagination:
 the message of interpretation15

We are dealing here with the construction of interrelations which our

imagination judges to be sufficiently motivated and therefore objectively
possible according to our knowledge about social regularities (ibid.).
Since, accordingly, Max Webers ideal type is not allowed to tell us what
ought to be, and since moreover it is unable to tell us what really exists,
there is every reason to fear that it will end up being seen by its critics
simply as some kind of an academic toy (ibid: 193). The question if what
we are faced with is either purely playing with ideas or a useful contribu-
tion to scholarly concepts, can never be decided in advance: There is just
one guide post for this: The success in promoting insights into concrete
phenomena of culture and into the way they interact with each other, how
they originate, and what they mean. Thus the construction of ideal types is
not the end but the means for gaining new insights (ibid.). Here Max
Weber subjects his tool of ideal type construction to a necessary test: Did it
contribute toward gaining new insights and promoting better understand-
ing of phenomena of culture and society? It is a tool and a tool must justify
itself by how useful it turns out to be when it is applied.
An additional objection to constructing ideal types as Max Weber rec-
ommends them, to some critics just as serious as that of simply playing
games with concepts, is the observation that they do not have a claim to
permanent validity. Natural laws as discovered and conceptualized by the
respective sciences are presented with the well founded expectation that
they refer to unchanging facts and will therefore be eternally valid. Max
Webers critics contribute the lack of everlasting validity of his ideal types
to the immaturity of his discipline, originally economics, but applying
even more forcefully to sociology. A mature field of research would be able
to present results not subject to a consumption deadline, so his critics
would argue. Weber, however, contributes the time limit of validity to the
youthfulness of his discipline and to the lively condition of development
applying to his objects under study.
As is typical in debates about youth, immaturity coincides with creativ-
ity and drive toward innovation. The latter can often be found lacking
in established academic disciplines. There are sciences endowed, as it
seems, with eternal youth. That applies to all historical disciplines because
the incessant flow of cultural evolution supplies them time and again with
novel problems to be solved. In the context of those fields of research the
transience of all ideal typical constructions as well as the constant need
for new ones is characteristic for how they operate (ibid: 206). Thus Weber
turns the apparent defect of his ideal type into its very virtue: For scholar-
ship to keep up with a changing reality it must constantly adjust its
16 chapter one

concepts to fit the questions at hand. The great problems of culture which
shone their light on us have moved on. Therefore the time has come for
scholarship to overhaul its point of view and its conceptual tools needed
to look from the height of the idea down unto the stream of historical real-
ity (ibid: 214).
The preceding is a sketch of the verstehen method as it was published by
Max Weber in 1904. However, this methodological position showing him
in close affinity to Simmel was soon to be given up by Weber. During the
years 19061911, sometimes referred to as the dark years (Kenzlen, 1980:
4655), he distances himself from certain essentials of his position of 1904.
In the year 1911 Weber starts working on the manuscripts which his widow
was to publish as Economy and Society (Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft,
Weber 1956) after his death. Here we clearly find a different Weber, not to
be confused with the one who wrote the 1904 texts. Of course both Weber
and Simmel are co-creators of the verstehen method in sociology: As we
have seen above, in a text of 1905 Weber refers to Simmels method as an
approach he agrees with (Weber 1951c). (ibid: 92). However, in Economy
and Society, written in 1911 or later (Weber 1956) Weber inserts several pas-
sages that document in which way he by then disagrees with Simmel. It
can be shown that these differences are not superficial, but that they
follow consistently from the respective theories of knowledge the two
authors used at that time.
In Webers text on basic concepts in sociology (Weber 1951d) we read
about Simmels method (as he uses it in his book Soziologie as well as in
Philosophy of Money) which Weber does not intend to follow. Contrary to
Simmel, Weber announces that he will make a clear distinction between
meaning that is subjectively ascribed from meaning that is objectively valid
(ibid: 527). This distinction is then tied to the special approaches of differ-
ent academic disciplines: The empirical sciences of social conduct (sociol-
ogy and history, ibid: 528) are given the task to determine which meaning
is subjectively ascribed, whereas the dogmatic fields of learning: Law, logic,
ethic, and others must direct their research toward finding the true and
valid meaning of a given phenomenon (ibid.).
Webers text appears critical of Simmel when he writes that the latter
not only neglects to consistently distinguish the two forms of meaning
but rather lets them intermingle intentionally (ibid: 527). However, that
observation by Weber should not be attributed to the possibility of any
inaccurate way of working on Simmels part, rather it follows from the lat-
ters theory of knowledge. According to Simmel every type of meaning is
by necessity the result of a construction. He does not deny the existence of
 the message of interpretation17

an objectively given truth, but to him we cannot access it without chang-

ing and forming it in the process of trying to grasp it. Weber only allows
such a construction process in the special case of creating the tool of an
ideal type. Simmel by contrast claims that it is all we ever do, whether we
admit it or not.
Weber knows of course as a trained lawyer that in Law corporations
and other collectivities are treated as if they were individuals. But he
ties sociology to his claim of methodological individualism: Only indi
viduals are real in the empirical sense of the word (ibid: 539). Large
groups, classes, and other phenomena of the macro sphere of society
exist only as imaginations inside the heads of real people (ibid.). They
must therefore be distinguished from the empirical world of real human
conduct (ibid: 540). This is the difference between Simmel and Max
Weber! For Simmel in culture and society all mental and social reality
exists as imagined. If those phenomena cannot be found in anybodys
mind, they simply do not exist anymore. Because of this, the distinction
between types of meaning proposed by Weber does not make any sense
for Simmel.
George Herbert Mead replaces Simmels You with the concept of per-
spective (Mead 1927). Thereby he clarifies Simmels basic thought, accord-
ing to which the You should be introduced into the method of verstehen
as a hypothetical construct. A social scientist who is confronted with the
task of verstehen simulates or construes a hypothetical You, then con-
ceives the research field from the viewpoint (or perspective) of this You
and, by communicating the chosen You, makes his or her procedure veri-
fiable. A critique of such research may then relate to the questions: a) Was
the choice of the perspective adequate for the subject?; b) Was the thought
construction of the object to be understood, done in such a way that it
would follow from the chosen perspective? In the tradition of verstehen-
sociology, this approach has continued to be influential. The path of its
refinement and concretization can be traced through the works of Mead,
Charles H. Cooley, Max Weber, Anselm Strauss, Tamotsu Shibutani, and
others.

The Controversy about Pragmatism

Simmel versus Conventional Philosophy

Simmels work has been controversial from the start. In spite of the reserva
tions toward his ideas of many philosophers who were his contemporaries,
18 chapter one

he created an alternate version of pragmatism, similar to what Charles S.

Peirce, William James and John Dewey developed in the U.S.A.. But any
version of pragmatism, whether the one Simmel initiated or the American
one, was a highly provocative position in philosophy in his lifetime. The
opposition against him eventually culminated in the rejection of pragma-
tism, but it originated from a number of different points of departure.
In the continuity of Spinoza (16321677), he confronted the dogmatism
of some philosophers, who did not want to permit interpretation, with
fresh insights into human nature which were later accepted by Max
Scheler, Karl Mannheim and others. Simmel preferred to see sociology in
the companionship of philosophy, history, social psychology, and other
humanities. This meant of course that to him sociology is not a distant
relative to physics, biology, or physiology. As a philosopher of ethics he
proposed a dynamic approach to human behavior because he saw culture
and society evolve over time. This antagonized Neo-Platonists in whose
view what is real must be eternal and therefore unchanging.
Like Spinoza before him he was aware of the relevance of human emo-
tions. By acknowledging that actions of women and men are in part driven
by emotions and that certainly the process of reality construction is influ-
enced by such sentiments as optimism or pessimism, he unintentionally
provoked those who solely view human behavior as subject to eternal,
never changing codes of conduct and to rational decision making. To them
the commands given to humans, be it by gods or by politicians, are not
allowed to imply any semblance of ambiguity. With regard to commands
given in the military this is immediately plausible. But the general princi-
ples of ethic like: do unto your neighbor as you would have him do unto you,
have different meanings and consequences in different contexts. Indeed,
the parable of the Good Samaritan is a very emotional and ambiguous
story about the stranger from Samaria doing the good deeds which the
natives refused to perform.
Simmels critics suggest that his diverse subject matter is confusing.
Thus, many claim that sociologically he did not know what he was doing.
They point out that Simmel simply drifted from one area of interest to the
next. This implies the absence of any systematic order in his scholarly
activities. However, if we see Simmel as a scholar who spent his entire life
searching for a method that would fit the study of culture and society,
we can dispel this negative impression and rather ask what his message
really is.
The diversity of Simmels topics is the way he scholarly tested his
epistemology. Once he succeeded in devising the proper method for
 the message of interpretation19

social inquiry, it proved fruitful in his investigations on the stranger, the

adventurer, and the poor, on art, love, and religion. Decades before Berger
and Luckmann (1967), the message that reality is socially constructed is
clearly evident in Simmels writings. Simmel was a philosopher, yet soci-
ologists consider him one of their classics because he is the founder of the
humanist branch of the field: The interpretive school. Contemporary theo-
rists are deeply indebted to him as is amply documented by the frequent
references to his work in recent publications. Yet, the interpretive school is
controversial by itself. In concluding then that a sociology of culture ought
to be an interpretive sociology, Simmel is in his own way a precursor to Max
Weber, Robert E. Park, Erving Goffman, Anselm L. Strauss and others. He
influenced many contemporary scholars.
His sociology has consistently been based on his philosophy. He appears
to have picked up and modified statements by Plato, Spinoza, and Kant, as
we shall explain in chapter 5. These greats helped Simmel find his own
position which he then compares in literary dialogue with those of Goethe,
Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and others. But he creates consternation
among the established followers of Plato, or of Kant, or of Marx, by not
persisting in some kind of admiration mode, but rather by selectively
accepting some of the results those heroes of scholarship came up with
while rejecting or criticizing others. This meant that Simmel was at odds
with conventional philosophy.
In fact, his dealing with established insights is liable to raise objections
even today, because the very same idea was in some cases rejected by
Simmel in one way, yet accepted in another. This needs some explanation:
As shall be detailed in chapter 5, Simmel rejects Platos eternal ideas as
never changing phenomena that have been observed by everyone in the
beyond prior to their birth and then enable them to have intuitive insights
here on earth. To Simmel they did not, as Plato assumed, exist in their own
right only waiting to be discovered and observed. Rather according to
Simmels interpretation of Plato, they were brilliant inventions Plato cre-
ated and introduced then as heuristic tools. It was thus not Platos eternal
ideas which Simmel rejected but rather Platos explanation of how they
originated.
Or, to take another example: The method of historical materialism by
Karl Marx. To claim, as Marx has done, that history is determined by
economic factors alone, is absurd to Simmel, because countless his
torical developments have religious or other non-material causes. But
to study history as if the economy were in fact the all decisive source of
development is to Simmel a very fruitful and legitimate approach.
20 chapter one

Accordingly, Simmel rejects historical materialism as a description of

history, and at the same time applauds it as a tool and source of novel
insights. This was bound to confuse (or enrage) both Marxists and anti-
Marxists.
In addition, Simmel incorporates Marxs concept of alienation into his
philosophy of life: Mental activity produces something which no longer
acknowledges its origin but becomes in Simmels terminology eigen-
bedeutsam und eigengesetzlich (self-significant and self-regulating,
Simmel 1918c: 25), and accordingly has the potential of becoming alien to
its maker. This happens because human life is continually grasping for the
unfamiliar and thereby brings forth that which becomes alien by becom-
ing self-reliant.
While Marx considers that a deplorable defect of the production pro-
cess in capitalist society, Simmel sees in it the inevitable mark of the
human condition in general. Like in a parent-child relation the mental
product, the idea someone has, the book he or she writes, can be regarded
as emancipated rather than alienated: It is not a runaway extension of the
subject who made it, but instead may legitimately stand by itself, having
started a life of its own. This is what Simmel calls Mehr-als-Leben-Sein
(to be more than life). It is a controversial position bordering of course on
metaphysics, but at the same time opening up new potentials for inter-
preting modernity.
It is not easy to sort Simmel into a specific category: The obvious ques-
tion would be: Is Simmel a materialist or an idealist? He cannot simply be
counted among philosophical idealists: In Platos view, the world includ-
ing the eternal ideas in the beyond is what I see. That is not acceptable to
Simmel because the consequence would be that what I cannot see does
not exist and all that which transcends life becomes an illusion. Instead
Simmel wants to accept what is out there as objective reality in its own
right even if we cannot fully grasp it, facing us prima facie as alien and yet
as created by a life we can identify with because it is our own life or one of
the lives of those close to us.
To Simmel reality is too vast and too complex for the human mind to
grasp. Many of his critics would reject that because they do not share
Simmels modest expectations of what scholarship can achieve. The only
chance men and women have therefore for Simmel, is to create tools for
selecting, describing, and placing in context those segments of reality that
correspond to their interests and emotions. The construction of ideal types
as recommended by Max Weber is for Simmel essentially all we ever
do: Scholarship is whether admitted or not the creation of heuristic
 the message of interpretation21

tools. This controversial insight and the message that reality is socially
constructed are rooted in Simmels epistemology. This message is wel-
come to some but a provocation to others.

The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy

One significant source of controversy about Simmels approach resulted
from his closeness to philosophical pragmatism. That is a school of thought
today typically associated with the American philosophers Charles S.
Pierce, William James and John Dewey. It appears, however, that Simmel
started his own version of pragmatism earlier. Thus he first anticipated the
pragmatism of the three Americans, and later criticized their version of
that school of thought. To see in Simmel the founder of pragmatism is so
contra-intuitive that in the following an unusually large number of quota-
tions will be used to back up that view.
Simmels point of departure on the subject is as follows: If it is true that
human knowledge has developed from practical necessities, because
knowledge of the truth is a weapon in the struggle for existence, both
against non-human elements and within the contest amongst men if
this is true, then such knowledge has long ceased to be bound to this ori-
gin, and has developed from the mere service of action, as a means to an
end, to being an ultimate end in itself. Nonetheless, knowledge even in
the self-glorified form of science and learning has not broken off all links
to practical interests (Simmel, 1908a: 1).
The search for reliable insight can only be successful if the subject who
strives for knowledge is active. What is demanded is autonomous and
potentially creative conduct. Building upon Kant, Simmel creates the epis-
temology of an active human being, an approach that William James was
to name pragmatism. Because in the process of acting, the interests of the
subject flow into the process of gaining knowledge, Simmel sees as the
central concern of Kants system not thinking but the will. What matters to
Simmel is this: A given body of knowledge must be assumed to guide and
command action, even if its validity cannot be tested, let alone proven. No
matter how far removed that knowledge may be from objective reality, it
will produce action and nobody can deny that then the results will be real.
Since sociology is (also) the study of human conduct, the pragmatist
approach as suggested by Simmel makes it plausible to assign types of
knowledge a status of reality not according to what has preceded it to bring
it about, but rather according to what action may potentially result from it
or has resulted from it.
22 chapter one

In Simmels two-volume Introduction to Moral Science from 1892/93,

the problems of epistemology that had haunted him before reappear as
aspects of evolutionism and lead Simmel to new results. It is typical for
him that he portrays the process of gaining knowledge as having parallels
to that in practical life. This causes Simmels epistemology to resemble
philosophical pragmatism of America, whose advocate he had been in his
early works but from which he explicitly distanced himself shortly before
his death. Wilhelm Jerusalem criticized as erroneous Simmels rebuttal of
American pragmatism (Jerusalem, 1913: col. 3223f).
The eulogy to Simmel by Max Frischeisen-Khler refers to the relation
between pragmatism and evolutionism in Simmels work: This approach
to English evolutionism even led him to statements that precede the the-
ory of truth of pragmatism. The world views of living beings are, as func-
tions of a specific psycho-physical organization, no mechanical imitations
of the objective world. One cannot attach truth to them. But since they
are, however, the material of and directive for practical behavior, we dif-
ferentiate between those that lead us to useful and those that lead us to
harmful behavior. Therefore, those images are true that lead us to useful
consequences in the context of their specific organization, their force, and
their needs. This is why there are, in principle, as many different truths as
there are specific organizations and requirements of life. (Frischeisen-
Khler, 1919: 15).
Without explicitly quoting Simmel, Frischeisen-Khler in this state-
ment about Simmels contribution to the theory of truth in the context of
pragmatism is apparently referring to his Philosophy of Money from
1900 (Simmel, 1907b: 56). As we shall see, Jerusalem also seems to refer to
the same passage (Jerusalem, 1913: 3223) as Frischeisen-Khler. Simmels
position becomes clearer, however, when one takes into account his
article, About a Relationship between the Theories of Selection and
Knowledge (Simmel, 1895c). Neither Jerusalem nor Frischeisen-Khler
take this article into account. In it, Simmel elaborates on what he means
by different organizations and requirements of life, each of which seem-
ingly have their own truth: For the animal, the true image is the one
according to which it behaves in a way that is, for its circumstances, the
most advantageous, because the requirement of this kind of behavior has
itself built the organs which form its images. The diversity of the actually
existing world of the senses proves, that there have to be many such truths
(Simmel, 1922b: 119).
An organization, therefore, is a living being that according to evolu-
tionary thinking does not belong to an unchanging eternal species but
 the message of interpretation23

rather it is but a snapshot of a moment in the gigantic process of the devel-

opment of life. As a consequence of selection, organs have been built
that form the images which the living being perceives. And just as the
organs develop that determine these images, so too the content of these
images and their respective truths develop. From this line of reasoning,
it becomes apparent how the theory of truth in the context of pragmatism
emerges straight from evolutionism according to Darwin.
In late 1913 (or early 1914) Wilhelm Jerusalem gave an overview of the
state of the art of pragmatism. He deplored the difficulties this theory of
truth had faced in the German speaking region and that it continued to be
the target of unfair attacks. Such difficulties and attacks may have some-
thing to do, Jerusalem writes, with the connection between this theory
and evolutionism and hence between pragmatism and Darwins thought.
The attacks came from supporters of German Idealism, who as neo-
Kantians and neo-Hegelians rejected what they considered to be
American Philistine endeavors (Jerusalem, 1913: 3205). With his leanings
towards the thought of Kant, on the one hand, and his apparent sympa-
thies for Darwin on the other, Simmel must have come early in between
the fronts of this controversy. In fact, he seems to have tried to counter the
most popular objection to pragmatism, which focused on the short for-
mula truth = benefit with the following statement:
The effect of the principle of utility or any other principle that drives
us toward knowledge, has, therefore, no formative influence upon the con-
tent of this knowledge; it only brings about that this content, which is as it
is and cannot be anything else than it is, will be realized psychically just
as utility could lead us to do a mathematical calculation but not lead us to
arrive at a mathematical result different from that grounded in the objec-
tive relationship among the component factors (Simmel, 1922b: 111)
Shortly before the outbreak of World War I, Jerusalem presents to the
German reader the American philosopher Charles Pierce as being the
creator of this line of thought (Jerusalem, 1913: 3206). According to
Pierce, what matters in a judgment is its content relevant to life and that
this content is equal to the direct or indirect measures that the subject is
taking. Thinking thereby serves to prepare, accompany, and interpret
behavior. It is not separate from life but part of it. In general, not the part
explains the whole but, inversely, the whole always explains the part; and
since thinking is part of life, life can explain thinking and not vice versa
(ibid: 3206).
According to Jerusalem, the leading thinkers of pragmatism in
1913 where William James from Harvard University, John Dewey from
24 chapter one

Columbia University in New York (formerly at The University of Chicago),

and F.C.S. Schiller in Oxford, England. The main literature to which
Jerusalem refers the German reader is: John Dewey, The Influence of
Darwin on Philosophy and other Essays in Contemporary Thought
(Dewey, 1910). In this volume, the importance of the theory of develop-
ment and selection is explained to philosophers thus: Dewey finds this
influence to begin with therein, that the concept of species this proto-
type of solidity and absence of change is transformed into a process.
Philosophy, which labored for 2000 years with the search for rigid
unchangeable forms is thereby led in the direction of change and becom-
ing (Jerusalem 1913: 3210).
This is in line with the pragmatists claim that truth cannot mean a
static relationship between thinking and being, but that it keeps proving
itself through its effects on the process of knowing and acting (ibid.:
3211). Jerusalem translates (into German) from a book by Ralph Barton
Perry of Harvard University (Perry, 1912) the following sentence. The
pragmatist brings life into the intellect, his enemy intellectualizes life
(Jerusalem, 1913: 3212). Jerusalems own words demonstrate how easy it is,
despite all these clarifications, to misunderstand the theory of truth in
pragmatism as merely being oriented to utility:
Images and judgments are, for the pragmatist, not copies of reality but
means and tools with which the human mind operates in order to grasp
reality and to get along in it and thereby to identify those measures
that improve life. A judgment is true when it is corroborated, when the
predictions based on it are accurate, when the actions that are taken in
accordance with these predictions are successful adaptations to the envi-
ronment (ibid: 3213).
It seems at this point as if Simmels own program, namely to declare the
dynamics of developing life as supreme value, has found a specific form in
these statements. Simmel had earlier interpreted Platos ideas, not as
statements about a transcendental reality but as tools used in the philoso-
phers workshop. According to Simmel there is a remarkable ability of the
knowing subject, to hide the following even to himself: What he or she
experiences as given objects is in fact the result of his own creative con-
struction of reality. Those creations of the human mind are mistakenly
assumed to be elements of an independent reality, but they must be inter-
preted as heuristic instruments, as man-made tools in the epistemological
process. In pragmatism then, as presented by Jerusalem, images become
tools not only of theoretical thought but for the very concrete purpose of
determining, which measures improve life and which do not.
 the message of interpretation25

The philosophy of vitalism is also treated by Jerusalem in the context of

pragmatist thinking. (On the meaning of vitalism in Simmels work, see:
Bevers 1985.) Henri Bergsons works play an important role in inspiring
Simmels vitalist thinking (Simmel, 1914). According to Jerusalem, the phi-
losophy of Bergson has two sides, one pragmatic and the other mystical-
speculative (ibid: 3215). Bergson has, furthermore, a kind of personal
relationship with pragmatism. His concept of the intellect had a strong
influence on William James. In his book A Pluralistic Universe (1909;
German Translation, Leipzig: Krner, 1914), James spends a whole lecture
analyzing the philosophy of Bergson (pp. 225273). He admires the depth
of thought and the enchantment of the presentation. James shows
full appreciation for the pure time or real duration (dure relle) and
for the inability of logical thinking to grasp the flowing stream of life
(ibid: 3217).
This reference to James strengthens the seemingly surprising hypothe-
sis of a connection between Bergson and pragmatism. Jerusalem even
draws a line to Nietzsche but apparently only insofar as life is a basic cat-
egory (ibid: 3219). At the philosophers convention in Heidelberg in 1908,
pragmatism was the subject of lively debates. Objectively one may say that
the discussions were heated, often even fierce, that they revealed very
great interest in this new line of thinking, and that the majority of partici-
pants were opposed to it (ibid.: 3220). Five years later, Jerusalem has to
recognize that pragmatism as well as empiricism, psychologism, and
positivism are considered to be inferior to the established philosophy
and considered as having been surpassed. In Germany, pragmatism never
really could put down roots. This fragile plant had been uprooted before it
could gain strength. The fate of pragmatism in the German speaking
regions impacted the reputation of Simmels scholarly achievements.
Five years before the turn of the century, Simmel published a paper in
the first issue of the first volume of the journal, Archiv fr systematische
Philosophie. In this article About a Relationship Between the Theories of
Selection and Behavior (Simmel, 1895c; Simmel, 1922b), he develops what
he considers to be the foundations of pragmatism. The introductory sen-
tences contain, in a nutshell, what is important about it to Simmel. He
refers to the hypothesis that he subscribes to, that human knowledge
emerges from practical necessities (Simmel, 1922b: 111).
But while he concedes necessity-boundedness, he attributes it to the
process of gaining knowledge but not to objective truth. This distinction is
of the utmost importance because it characterizes Simmels position par-
ticularly insofar as he differs from other pragmatists. As will be shown,
26 chapter one

he continued to carry this point through in a consistent manner up to and

including his last contribution on this topic (Simmel, 1918b). In this last
work he emphatically rejects the American variants of pragmatism,
because they do not follow him in making this distinction. The publica-
tion of the work About a Relationship between the Theories of Selection
and Knowledge (Simmel, 1895c) happened at about the middle of the
time span during which Simmel worked on the topic of money.
Simmels contemporary, Jerusalem, had read this Philosophy of Money,
first published in 1900, from the point of view of its methodological con-
tent and particularly of its contribution to clarifying the pragmatist
concept of truth. Jerusalem writes: Formerly I had counted Georg Simmel
among the thinkers who were oriented in the pragmatist direction. I did
this on the basis of his discussion of the concept of truth in his book, The
Philosophy of Money. In it he says (p. 56): What is the meaning of this
truth, in essence, which in its content is different for each species endowed
with consciousness and is for none a mirroring of objects as such? Could it
be anything else but that image which, in connection with the total special
organization, its forces and needs, leads to useful consequences? Originally
the truth is not useful because it is true but vice-versa. We attach the hon-
orary title of truth to those images that are effective as real forces or move-
ments in us, and that bring us to behave beneficially. It is hardly possible
to express the pragmatist concept of truth any more clearly or decisively
than Simmel has done in his quotation. Therefore I was justified in having
considered Simmel to be a representative of pragmatist thought. But in
the meantime this deep-digging philosopher seems to have changed his
mind (Jerusalem, 1913: 3223).
From the point of view of Jerusalem, Simmels formulations in his The
Philosophy of Money fall entirely within the context of pragmatism.
Jerusalem does not see a distinction between Simmels point of view and
the positions as held in the United States and England. Simmels later
rejection of English-speaking pragmatism provides Jerusalem with the
impression that Simmel must have changed his mind. It will be shown
that Jerusalem erred, that Simmel kept his position unchanged, and that
there are significant methodological differences between Simmel and
American pragmatism. To begin with, the consistency of the method used
in the article on the theory of selection from 1895 with that used in The
Philosophy of Money in 1900 shall be demonstrated.
The question to which Jerusalem refers was on page 56 of the first edi-
tion. In later editions, one finds it on page 69. The text excerpt that was
meant to prove Simmels membership in the camp of pragmatism follows
 the message of interpretation27

immediately after two sentences that exactly correspond to the line of rea-
soning used in the article on the theory of selection: By no means can one
decide, on the basis of the content of its image, whether a behavior led and
determined by constructs of the imagination has useful consequences for
the acting person regardless of whether this content does or does not
correspond with absolute objectivity. It will rather depend entirely upon
the success toward which this imagination leads, as a real process within
the organism in conjunction with the other physical-psychic forces and
according to the specific requirements of life for it. If we say of a human
being that he acts in a life-preserving and life-enhancing manner only on
the basis of true images, but destructively on the basis of false ones, what
is the meaning of this truth, in essence, which in its content is different for
each species endowed with consciousness and is for none a mirroring of
objects as such? Could it be anything else but that image which, in con-
nection with the total special organization, its forces and needs, leads to
useful consequences? (Simmel, 1907b: 69).
The relevance of images for behavior does not depend upon the con-
tents alone. From the article on the theory of selection, we are already
familiar with this idea. Against the background of evolutionism, truth can-
not be conceptualized statically. It is, rather, no more eternal than is the
concept of species, which Darwin has shown to be a snap-shot of one
moment in the history of biological evolution. Both in his article of 1895
(Simmel 1895c) and in his book of 1900, Simmel poses the question, on the
basis of which circumstances are certain images attributed the quality of
being the truth. He does not make the answer easy for himself by simply
saying: True is what the actor considers to be true. With such a statement,
the subject-object problem would have been eliminated by a one-sided
simplification and a mere retreating to the subject. The hasty reader, how-
ever, can misunderstand Simmel as having said this, which had apparently
happened repeatedly. Despite this, Simmel remained untiring in his efforts
to recall for himself and his readers that an objective truth may exist even
if we cannot grasp it.
Thus the quest for objective truth must not cease and Simmel offers the
way toward mutuality of contexts, because images out of context cannot
be examined for their truth content. Only in overarching constellations
can one detect whether the particulars in question fit to each other, sup-
port and confirm each other. Unless we stick dogmatically to a truth once
and for all, truth by definition not requiring any proof, one would be well
advised to consider this mutuality of the interconnectedness of items as
the emergence of a pattern, as being the basic form of grasping knowledge
28 chapter one

which can be conceptualized as analytically ideal. The process of grasping

knowledge is thereby a free-floating process whose elements mutually
determine their position, in the same way as the masses of matter do on
the basis of their gravity; in the same way as in the latter, truth (like mass)
is a relational concept. That our image of the world thus floats in the air is
not disturbing, because our world itself does it (ibid: 68, compare Einstein,
relativity).
Like a pendulum, Simmels thinking swings back and forth between the
question of the origin of the objective truth on the one hand and the ques-
tion of its application to the behavior of human beings on the other. Step
by step, the problem for him moves into process-terms: From the form to
the process of formation, from the truth to the attribution of the quality of
being considered as true. So it is to be expected that he deals with evalua-
tions and it is that which Simmel wants to examine also with regard to
money. The isolated individual is unable to evaluate with any expectation
of success, using whatever isolated value spontaneously occurs to him or
her. In order to safely evaluate, he has to orient himself to a manifold of
relations. This is why attribution processes, while enacted by persons, nev-
ertheless are not arbitrary. Truth is relational or, as Simmel writes (some-
what confusingly, perhaps out of a certain desire to shock): it is relative.
What we mean by this term is apparently something entirely different:
The relativity is not an additional qualification which waters down a con-
cept of truth that is otherwise independent, but it is the essence of truth
itself. It is the way in which images become truths. Relativity does not
mean, as such a trivial interpretation might suggest, a lessening of truth,
from which considering the reputation of this concept truth one could
really have expected more. But, to the contrary, it is a positive filling of the
term with meaning and validity. There truth exists although it is relative,
here because it is relative (ibid: 81).
Simmel has finally expressly made the transition from the theory of
truth to the theory of evaluation. Still admiringly, he looks back at Platos
realm of ideas, which Simmel thinks to be the result of definitional form-
ing. What matters is the quality of being objective, of being removed from
the arbitrary grasp of a spontaneous subject, and the model of Platonic
ideas for Simmel fulfills this condition just as much in the realm of truth as
it does in the realm of values.
The deeper dissatisfaction with the knowable world, to which we nev-
ertheless are tied, led Plato to assume a supra-empirical realm of ideas
beyond space and time. This realm of ideas supposedly contains within it
the real, self-content, absolute essence of things. For its benefit, earthly
 the message of interpretation29

reality was emptied of all real being and meaning on the one hand; on the
other hand, some rays of knowing reflect back to this reality, so that at
least as a pale shadow earthly reality could participate in this illuminating
realm of the absolute. Via this indirect route it finally did gain some impor-
tance after all, which in and of itself it was denied. This relationship, in
fact, finds a repetition of corroboration in the area of values (ibid: 135).
Human beings run the risk of evaluating falsely, because they miss what
is objectively correct. By no means does Simmel want to be distracted
from this uncomfortable insight. Nobody can gain popularity with this
message neither today or in Simmels lifetime. If one wants to popularize
Simmel today, one should not mention this side of the author. And this
does happen. Simmel refutes dogmatism and easily harvests applause for
so doing. But Simmel also rejects subjectivism and that makes him unpop-
ular with some readers of his work. These insights are not wanting in nor-
mative firmness: Yes, every imagining being possesses a truth that is
predetermined in principle, which in any single case his imagining may
grasp or miss (ibid.: 70).
Accordingly guilt and failure belong, as possibilities, to human exis-
tence. With astonishment and disappointment but undoubtedly correctly,
the introduction to an English translation of the Philosophy of Money
says: Ultimately then, Simmels analysis of the capitalist social order has
little in common with that of a socialist critique (Bottomore, 1978: 29).
There appears to be a truth that is predetermined in principle that,
when interpreting the texts of Simmel, may be grasped or missed.

Simmels Critique of Subjectivist Pragmatism

Simmels critique of American pragmatism is for Wilhelm Jerusalem the
signal that Simmel has changed: In his recently published book on Goethe
(Leipzig 1913), there is a chapter entitled Truth (pp. 2049). Here Simmel
opposes the opinion that Goethe had thought pragmatically but regard-
less of whether Simmel has or has not correctly captured Goethes way of
thinking, it is beyond doubt that Simmel has turned his back on pragma-
tism. He is, of course, entitled to do so, but it is incomprehensible to me
how he can come to speak of the crudest forms of pragmatism(p.21).Prag
matism isnt crude in the sense of rude, i.e. without understanding the
fine differentiations of the soul. Applied to someone like William James,
such a reproach would be simply ridiculous (Jerusalem, 1913: 3223).
From that which he, in a consistent continuation of his methodic posi-
tion, must have considered crude, Simmel distanced himself most clearly
30 chapter one

and convincingly in a brilliant talk that was published in 1918, the year of
his death. Under the title of The Conflict of Modern Culture, he deals in
44 pages (pp. 548) with the tension between form and life and illustrates
the applicability of his thought pattern to questions of art, youth, the new
ethic including sexuality, and religion (Simmel, 1918b). Simmel sees youth,
with its proclivity toward outer and inner revolutionaryism (ibid: 26), as
the carrier of historical change. While old age, with its declining vitality,
concentrates more and more upon the objective contents of life (which in
the present sense may also be called its forms), what matters for youth is
the process of life (ibid.: 27).
Simmel criticizes an exaggerated inclination among young people
toward originality: What is supposed to be rescued in these cases is not
the individuality of life but rather the life of individuality (ibid: 28). He
sees the equilibrium between form and life in danger as a result of a strong
shift toward the processual. With regard to its relationship to forms, it
could be said about youth that it is frequently enough disloyal to them
(ibid.: 27). In connection with modern individualism (ibid: 28), Simmel
sees a neglect of the objective. And the same individualistic behavior that
characterizes youth which Simmel clearly dislikes he detects as a ten-
dency within American pragmatism as well: I am attempting now to
prove the presence of the same basic intention in one of the most recent
philosophical movements, which has most decisively turned its back on
the historically fortified patterns of philosophy. I will call it pragmatism,
because the best known branch of this theory, namely the American one,
has been given this name and which, by the way, I consider to be the most
superficial and most limited branch (ibid.). This diagnosis of superficial-
ity is tied to the impression that a neglect of the objective seems to be
obvious there.
This critique requires further justification: Very different schools of phi-
losophy agree with the position that there exists an independent process
of knowing, i.e. independent of the individualization and fates of life
(ibid: 29). This is the effort of grasping the concept of a thing, which
already Socrates had set as his goal. Simmel repeats what he had always
stressed in his previous works: There is a knowledge that remains attached
to an ideal realm of truth, an order in its own right with its own laws
(ibid.). But: Pragmatism denies this independence that was always
ascribed to truth. Every journey of life, whether it is an outer or an inner
one, rests according to pragmatism upon certain images of knowing
which, if true, preserve and improve our life and, if erroneous, lead us
toward destruction (ibid.: 29).
 the message of interpretation31

With regard to truth, Simmel sees two problems: The question of the
theoretical approach toward objective truth and the question of the
acceptance or rejection of truth on the subjective level. He presented as
we have seen the example of motivation by vital interests, which could
lead a person to execute a certain mathematical calculation but which
could not alter or make false the result of that calculation. For Simmel, it
is as if truth hovers over us and we potentially work it into our behavior,
incorporating or ignoring it. American Pragmatism, however, is individu-
alistic and subjectivistic and is not aware of the existence of an ideal realm
of what is true: Therefore there exists no a priori independent truth that,
as if retroactively, is pulled down into the stream of life in order to lead
ones life correctly, but the reverse: Among the countless theoretical ele-
ments to which this stream gives birth, are those whose influence con-
forms to our will to life by chance, one could say; but without this chance
we would not be able to exist and it is these elements we call the true
ones, the ones that grasp knowledge correctly. Neither the objects in and
of themselves, nor a sovereign mind in us, determine the truth content of
our images; rather, life itself produces, sometimes according to its crude
utilities, sometimes according to the deepest needs of the soul, that rank-
ing of values among our images whose one pole we call the full truth and
whose other pole we call full error (ibid.: 30).
Reflecting what he considers to be the theory of truth in the context of
pragmatism, Simmel mentions, as the sources of the ranking of values,
the crude utilities and the deepest needs of the soul. In so doing, there
emerges a picture of a gliding transition on a scale from truth to error, on
which full truth and full error occupy the extreme positions. But Simmel
hesitates. He does not spar with angry blows against an erroneous theory.
Not even its correctness or falsity matters to him: I am not about to
explicate or criticize this theory. Its correctness or falsity does not matter
to me either. What matters is that it has been developed at this particular
point in time, that it denies to human knowledge its old claim of being a
free-floating realm administered according to ideal laws in its own right
(ibid.: 31). That is the core of Simmels critique.
Pragmatism, in Simmels opinion, signifies a time period during which
it becomes fashionable. It is itself a form of truth which seems to be legiti-
mated by life as it was lived, particularly around 1918, and this relativity to
a historical condition probably ought to trigger distrust. In conclusion,
Simmel distinguishes between an original and the new pragmatism,
whereby the original is likely to be Simmels own version, which to his
dismay was then misrepresented or misinterpreted. While namely the
32 chapter one

original pragmatism dissolved the world view into life only from the side
of the subject, the new one did the same from the side of the object as well.
Nothing remained of that concept of form that has been considered a
principle of the world outside of life and a fixation of existence with its
own meaning and own power. What in this picture could still be called
form exists only by the mercy of life itself (ibid: 33).
Form as a principle of the world outside of life (ibid.) is necessary for
Simmel as a prerequisite for his sociology. But if it is permitted to exist
only by the mercy of life itself (ibid.) it will result merely in a method-
ological point of departure (as was the case with some of the immediate
successors to the three founders of American pragmatism) that may lead
to social psychology but hardly to macro-sociology (Strauss 2009).
The tension between subject and object is one of the main general top-
ics in Simmels works. Knowing about the limited ability of human beings
to gain insights corresponds to attributing to this human subject a neces-
sity-boundedness. Objective truth, however, stands above such limita-
tions; Simmel does not want to leave the contents of such truth to the
practical necessities of the maintenance and care of life. The different
schools of the theory of knowledge, by the way, seem to agree with this
point: An objective truth can be found independently of whether or not
the individual who is interested in practical actions accepts it.
The different schools of philosophy are not in agreement on how such
objective truth comes about. For realism, the process of gaining knowl-
edge is a direct perception and mirroring of absolute reality (ibid.), while
for idealism truth is determined by a priori forms of thinking (ibid.). To
Simmel the fallible human being in his action may accept not at all, or
only selectively, the truth that in principle is available to him. And insofar
as the truth is not accepted, it will lead to false actions. To demand that
knowledge must be corroborated in practical behavior leads back to
Socrates, and Simmel sees in this demand the ancient and only legitimate
root of philosophical pragmatism.
Although in the development of the theory of knowledge one has to
struggle with ever-changing new means on the path toward objective
truth, one should never give up this quest. For Simmel it is clear that an
objective truth exists whose content is not influenced by the practical
interest of the subject: Only that we grasp it, that we realize it in our
images, happens according to utility which prefers imagining the true to
imagining the erroneous (ibid.). Simmel thus emphatically restricts
the reflection of the influence of utility thoughts to the process of accept-
ing an already existent truth, that itself is entirely uninfluenced by this
 the message of interpretation33

process. We have seen the same line of reasoning in the previously men-
tioned analogy to the mathematical calculation, which may have been
executed with certain interests in mind but whose outcome remains inde-
pendent in its numerical value by these interests.
As was already pointed out, Simmel intended to examine in this article
the relation between the theory of selection, which goes back to Darwin,
and the theory of knowledge. This theory of selection claims to be able to
say something about the content of objective truth and the process by
which it is generated. Since only the true thought could be the foundation
of a behavior that benefits life, the truth of building images should be cul-
tivated in the same way as are our muscles (Simmel 1922b: 112).
One could talk about a friction-free transition from a biological evolu-
tionism to an evolutionism in the humanities, if the destruction of images
that are contrary to life could be supposed to occur in the same way via
breeding selection as the destruction of bodily characteristics that are
not conducive to survival. Very oversimplified, one could say: He who
thinks nonsense is thereby prevented from procreation. Simmel enter-
tains this thought as a hypothesis and analyses it in his typical careful
manner.
Simmel is aware that there is a tension between subject and object
according to the hypothesis of selection theory. A subject pursues in this
tension those interests that are useful for his or her life; at the same time,
there exists an objective truth, whether or not this is perceived. It has
arrived at its current form via the evolutionary process. The human being
shares with objective life the destiny of being coined by the dynamics of
development. If both the current state of the subject (with his interests)
and of the objective truth (with its validity beyond individual characteris-
tics) are the result of one and only one developmental process, then one
could detect in this a basis for overcoming the subject-object tension. One
could identify optimistic points of entry that approach the vital leanings
of the subject with less distrust, because they are just as much the prod-
ucts of selection as is the reality in which the subject must act. The idea of
an evolutionary process serves here as a bridge between subjective and
objective, just as did the realm of ideas for Plato.
Simmel himself formulates this thought process as follows: Faced with
this plausible hypothesis, I would like now to ask whether one could
not find a unitary principle for the duality contained in this hypothesis,
i.e. the practical vital needs on the one hand and a corresponding objec-
tively knowable world on the other; In other words, have these two seem-
ingly opposing independent elements, the outer reality and the subjective
34 chapter one

utility which only can be related to each other on the basis of getting to
know the latter already met each other at a deeper level? (ibid.)
Simmel inverts Socrates demand that one must help a human being to
think correctly, in order that he can act correctly, as follows: If the assump-
tion of Socrates is correct, i.e. if correct thinking leads to correct acting,
one can reverse the direction and conclude that the person whose con-
duct turned out to be correct must have thought correctly. But if there is
no reliably criterion for correctness other than the success of behavior,
then Simmel as a theoretician of knowledge cannot be content with the
state of philosophy. So he is thrown back to struggling with Platos realm
of ideas.
Where Plato had seen a transcendental reality, Simmel saw a mental
construction. Simmel always admitted the necessity of postulating
Platonic ideas, because man tends to consider his thinking to be true only
if it is related to an objective thing. And even where an object cannot be
grasped reliably, i.e. where it is uncertain whether it exists at all, human
beings manage to create it in a mental process. In order to behave cor-
rectly, a human subject needs thoughts that he considers to be true; he can
only consider his thoughts to be true if they are related to an object. In
those cases where the human ability of thinking is not sufficient to reveal
the existence of objective truth as given, it is necessary and therefore also
legitimate in order to secure ones ability to act to define such truth as
given.
One could therefore perhaps say: There is no theoretically valid truth
on the basis of which we could proceed to act in a goal-oriented way;
rather, we call those ideas true that have proven themselves as motives of
goal-adaptive, life-enhancing behavior. Thereby the above-stressed dual-
ism would be removed; the truth of the ideas would no longer be based
upon their correspondence with any reality, but would be based upon that
quality of the ideas which made them the cause of the most beneficial
behavior; and it remains entirely undecided whether the content of such
ideas bears a resemblance or possesses a stable relationship to an objec-
tive order of things. The only question is whether the concept of truth can
live without the image of a corresponding objectivity (ibid: 113).
In this last sentence, Simmel articulates his discomfort: Could one label
as truth a thought that owes its existence and content to an act of defini-
tion? Unless philosophy escapes the requirement to help human beings to
behave effectively, it is mandated to conceive the theory of knowledge in a
Socratic manner: The person who is thinking correctly (whether true or
not) is he whose behavior is beneficial. Then thinking will be measured
 the message of interpretation35

according to what kind of behavior it motivates and thereby the content of

thinking can be amazingly diverse. What matters is that a person con-
ceives of something which brings him or her to behave correctly, even if
the content of his ideas is perhaps entirely made up, utopian, dreamed up,
carried along by blind courage or elementary fear at any rate, aroused by
definitions that certainly are not true in the sense that they would corre-
spond to any presence of an objectively testable thing.
Or in other words: the images that guide our behavior are effective, not
according to their content but according to the real psychic power which
they have at their disposal (ibid: 115). It is here where emotions come into
play. Jerusalem had taken from Perry the sentence: The pragmatist brings
life into the intellect, his enemy intellectualizes life (Jerusalem, 1913:
3212). For Simmel, bringing life into the intellect occurs by taking into
account non-rational motives as contents of images. These contents can-
not be called truth in the intellectual sense, but they are effective. Spinoza
has prepared the way for this type of thinking.
In the theory of knowledge this transition from the question of truth to
the question of effectiveness serves as a foundation for sociology as the
study of social behavior. Sociologists know: It is in the sociological sense
true, that human beings behave because of objectively unfounded joy,
fear, love, jealousy, anxiety, etc.. It is also true that they produce as a conse-
quence of such behavior a reality as a sum of behavior-results whose exis-
tence one cannot deny. Therefore, sociological research must always
assume that phenomena which ought not to be may nevertheless exist.
This of course shifts the attention from the question what is true? to the
question what is real?
It is important to keep in mind that Simmel published these ideas
in 1895. Images are effective as real psychic forces for behavior according
to their forms, i.e. according to their decisiveness, their firmness, their
flexibility or lack thereof, by which they are brought into social reality
and not because of their content. If initially the filling of forms with
content may have been almost a question of chance, retroactively such
contents were declared as truths whose utility had shown up in behavior:
That the acting person now follows the perceived truth, even with
good success, can be understood by the fact that initially the truth fol-
lowed behavior and its successes (ibid: 123). Simmel concludes his essay
About a Relationship between the Theories of Selection and Knowl
edge with a reference to Kant, whose methods he claims to have used
and whom he at the same time radicalizes and pushes to its extreme
consequences:
36 chapter one

If Kant removed the dualism of images and being by conceiving being

as an image as well, then the unification that was presented here goes one
step further and deeper: The dualism between the world as an appearance
which exists for us logically and theoretically, and the world as a reality
which gives answers to our practical behavior, will be removed as a conse-
quence of my analysis that the forms of thinking which produce the world
as an image, are determined by the practical effects and counter effects
that form our mental constructions as well as our bodily ones according to
evolutionist necessities. And if one is permitted to summarize in his own
words Kants theory in one sentence: The possibility of knowing produces
for us at the same time the objects of our knowing then the theory sug-
gested here means: the utility of knowing produces for us at the same time
the objects of our knowing (ibid: 124). Thus, in the continuity of Kant, this
is Simmels contribution to pragmatism and his critique of its subjectivist
version.

Tension between Culture and the Individual

For Simmel autonomy and individuality of the person are values which he
does not question or discuss; they are taken for granted as goals that must
be pursued. Against this background he diagnoses the impact of metro-
politan life (in Berlin around 1900) not merely as progress toward moder-
nity, but also as a threat directed precisely against personal autonomy and
individuality. That threat which originates in the large cities is the cause
for the deepest problems of modern life (Simmel 1950b: 409, adapted by
Weinstein, D.). Due to urbanization and political movements of emanci-
pation the call for individualization grew louder over time.
In Europe during the eighteenth century man felt the need to emanci-
pate himself from suppressive traditions in government and religion.
During the nineteenth century the economic development urged further
and further specialization in occupational life. This urge to be special
resulted in an increasing recognition of the uniqueness of the individual,
not simply as an ethical imperative supported by religious ideas, but in
addition as an empirical reality, because it became more and more diffi-
cult to replace one person with another in real life. But that increased rec-
ognition also made the experience of death even more unbearable than in
traditional cultures.
The trend toward progressive individualization goes on to this day.
Urbanization not only frees the person from traditional pressures, it also
makes him or her potentially lonely and more dependent on cooperation
 the message of interpretation37

with others. The more highly specialized people become, the fewer skills
each can master by themselves and for themselves. There are two sides to
this development: a) There is the increased need to purchase services and
expertise from each other. b) Specialized people will compete with those
who have identical competence to offer. As a result the existence of com-
petition is a condition for modern city life to function.
However, as Elman R. Service (19151996) has pointed out in the context
of his Law of Evolutionary Potential (Service 1975), an increase in special-
ization will mean a loss in the potential of adaptation and thus will gradu-
ally create structural rigidity. That problem, of course, will become visible
not at the beginning but at the end of the process of specialization. It
shows the scope of the ambiguity of the individualization that drives
specialization.
The ecological setting for individualism is the metropolis. With each
crossing of the street, with the tempo and multiplicity of economic, occu-
pational and social life, the city sets up a deep contrast with small town
and rural life with reference to the sensory foundations of psychic life. The
metropolis exacts from man as a discriminating creature a different level
of consciousness than does rural life. Here the rhythm of life and sensory
mental imagery flows more slowly, more habitually, and more evenly.
Precisely in this connection the sophisticated character of metropolitan
psychic life becomes understandable as over against small town life
which rests more upon deeply felt and emotional relationships. (Simmel
1950b).
Simmel contrasts less individualized rural life with life in the metropo-
lis, and he sees in front of his mental eye the conditions in his native city
of Berlin on the one hand and the way people lived in small rural commu-
nities of the surrounding Prussian heartland on the other. But he does not
leave his observation at the confrontation between metropolis and coun-
tryside: As a third type of social life he mentions the small town with its
deeply felt emotional relationships as an intermediary between the low-
est level of individualism in the country and the most advanced level in
city life.
This threefold typology remains important in sociology. With regard to
the village communities, dramatic change has taken place: At the begin-
ning of the century into which Simmel was born, roughly three fourths of
all Germans led rural lives (comp. Wikipedia Landflucht). But by the
time he became a student at the University of Berlin, the rural segment of
the population had dropped to less than two thirds. With accelerating
speed, farmers and their farm hands left the countryside to look for better
38 chapter one

opportunities in the growing small towns and even in the large metropoli-
tan agglomerations. There they became members of what was to be called
the labor class. As a result between 1800 and 1900 the number of industrial
workers in Germany grew from below 100,000 to almost 8 million. This
trend was fuelled by the decreasing pay for work in the countryside com-
bined with the perception that it was more likely to make good money in
the big city as urbanization and industrialization progressed in tandem
with modern capitalism. Individualization occurred in the context of
these massive demographic and structural changes.
Simmels observations toward the end of the 19th century in Prussia
lead him to conclude that the individual minds or selves, as G.H. Mead was
to write later, have attained a level of development in the history of cul-
ture, at which they see themselves removed from the world as objective
reality and as it were confronting it. (Helle 2009: 165). This applies to law,
to religion, to various customs, in sum to culture in general as it constitutes
the objective mind (objektiver Geist) (Simmel 1949: 311). During a period
of transition the persons are still the bearers of the objective mind, and
the institutions are for some time still acknowledged as existing legiti-
mately, regardless of how well they serve the individuals subjected to their
influence.
But increasingly the individual persons experience within themselves
each their own life, and have a sense of responsibility with regard to that
inner life. This constitutes the confrontation mentioned above between
the need to contribute toward the continuity of objective culture on the
one hand and the responsibility for protecting and developing the poten-
tials of ones personal life on the other, as ethic of individuality. Simmel
mentions as illustration for the commanding stringency on the culture
side the artist who can only perform under conditions of total devotion
(Hingabe, see K.H. Wolff 1995), and on the individual side the person who
follows his or her conscience in accordance with the inner life as an ongo-
ing project (Simmel 1949: 311). The objective culture more and more evades
any attempt by the individual to fully master it intellectually and thus
tends to be experienced as alien and even oppressive.
Faced with this confrontation Simmel sees the temptation not for
himself but for others like Fichte (17621814) and Tolstoy (18281910) to
take sides against culture and for the individual. He deplores that view of
confrontation between the two and admires Goethe in whom he sees
a personal synthesis between culture and individualism. What matters
here is not, if Simmel was right in this or not, but rather that he did see it
that way. He presents as his normative recommendation a compromise
 the message of interpretation39

according to which objective values of culture ought to be internalized by

individuals so they can contribute toward guiding their personal lives, and
concomitantly subjective guiding principles should become incorporated
into the objective culture in an epoch of individualism to increase the
chances for personal creativity (ibid: 312).
Simmel expects modernity to supply the conditions that make it possi-
ble for the group to try to socialize the individual into becoming its mem-
ber, while at the same time for the individual to defend the uniqueness of
his or her inner life even against the impositions of the group to which he
or she may be deeply indebted for having become an independent person.
While Simmel likes to see that as a process of compromise between cul-
ture and person, he admits that since the 18th century the emphasis was
on individualization. He is critical of Rousseau who found the culture to
do violence against the person, and he is critical of Fichte and Kant who
tended to look at culture simply as created by the person.
In order to base his critique of those greats on a solid foundation Simmel
finds it helpful to think in sociological terms when deliberating a modern
ethic. He sees in individualism both the liberation from the narrow, rather
provincial realm of social relationships, as well as the basis for initiating
contacts with human beings who live far away, with the tendency toward
a global orientation. To him the concept of a world society of mankind is
the consequence of an individuality that is ever more widely extended.
By no longer reflecting predominantly on memberships in groups
within easy reach, a person does not identify primarily as belonging to this
province or that city but rather as that incomparable, unique individual
that only he or she is; to the extent to which this orientation prevails so
the implicit hope of Simmel mankind will grow toward a unified society
that is cosmopolitan in orientation. This process of cultivation, carried by
very individual qualities in every human being, allows a decline in the
importance of those contacts which are organized on a small-scale basis,
and the rise of the feeling of being allied with all people of the world
regardless of where they live. This feeling finds a strong reinforcement
today through the internet as a tool of communication.
Of course, such change takes time, and comes about only slowly and
in consecutive stages. The two-volume introduction to moral science
(Simmel 1983a, 1983b) is important for understanding the continuity in
Simmels thinking. In these volumes he outlines his concept of ethic and
combines it with his theory of evolution in society as the transition toward
the stage of individualism. This transition drew more and more attention
to the relationship between individual liberties on the one hand and
40 chapter one

equality on the other. It leads to the question, if individualism would not

result in too large differences in power and wealth.
At the beginning of this debate stands the knowledge of a discouraging
failure in history. To assume or even dogmatically decree that in a state of
natural conditions all humans were equal, was to Simmel an error of dev-
astating proportions. By contrast he states that in the absence of culture,
naked nature if a condition like that can even be imagined would result
in the most brutal form of inequality. He concludes from that more specu-
lative observation the insight into what he calls the tragedy of individual
liberty: Should it ever become a reality, it would create in its wake such
dramatic inequality that it would immediately have to be revoked and
suppressed (Simmel 1949: 313).
What made things worse was that during the 18th century the errone-
ous idea of innate equality was propagated concurrently with the notion
of natural law. Simmel opposes that because natural law makes individu-
ality disappear (ibid: 314). By arguing along the ideas of natural law people
of that century believed, they had discovered what is essentially and truly
human and claimed for that to be the nucleus of every person. In the pro-
cess they created an abstract human being as the object of natural law and
of human rights. This is close to Platonic thinking. It deprives the individ-
ual of his or her unique and inalienable qualities while reducing the per-
son to a coincidental and peripheral form of existence.
For Kant all individuals are potentially equal and free. The Kantian per-
son has nothing but his or her own representations on the basis of which
everything is given form. The person cannot be formed by anything out-
side itself. Under the influences coming toward him from the 17th century
Kant has accepted the ideas of equality and liberty and developed them
further (ibid. 315). Humans are thus seen as equal by nature, and anything
unequal that is empirically discovered about a person must necessarily be
the result of unfortunate cultural influences. This can then be applied
even to gender.
It is in this context where Simmels critique of Kants categorical imper-
ative is located. While the individual must be free and under no pressure
from any other individual, Kant nevertheless does not want the persons to
be left entirely to themselves. He therefore introduces the imperative to
act freely, but in such a way, that the principles that underlie the action
qualify as general rules that apply to everybody. Simmel rejects that with
the striking argument: Can I not demand more of myself than from my
average contemporary? Should some persons not be looked upon with
more leniency, than would be appropriate for others? It is the 17th century
 the message of interpretation41

notion of equality that Simmel rejects in the ethic of Kant, and with this
rejection he also dismisses the hope that equality and liberty can be rec-
onciled and realized at the same time.
In the course of the 19th century the link between equality and liberty
has broken down. Since then there is equality without liberty as typical
of according to Simmel socialism, and there is liberty without equality
in liberalism (ibid. 316). The inability to reconcile the two principles has
resulted in disheartening political confrontation even until today. Simmel
addresses his lecture of 1913 to nothing less than to this calamity. At the
time he delivers it, he is just months away from the outbreak of the First
World War, and he seems to sense that one of the most terrible centuries
in the history of mankind had just gotten started. Yet he predicts that the
option for liberty without equality will be the dominant direction of his-
tory for some time to come.
Equality had served in a way as crutches on which liberty had been
limping into history in Europe. But once liberty found itself to be strong
enough to stand on its own, it could throw away those crutches (ibid.).
The political cry for liberty had been heard, and thus, the demands for
equality could be muted. The call of the leaders of the French Revolution
to libert galit fraternit is not attractive to Simmel because liberty
and equality seem incompatible with each other, and fraternity is some-
thing we may expect at most in kinship groups and religious circles.
Simmels social theory can justifiably be called critical because by
implication it warned of nave enthusiasms. His remarks about Rousseau
as well as his analysis of the ideological background of the French
Revolution are sobering. To defend the autonomy and dignity of the indi-
vidual was more central to his agenda than emotion-based acclamation of
novel ideas. His treatment of individualism shows again the need for lis-
tening to his message. The divers phenomena which have appeared in his-
tory in connection with individualism seem contradictory on the surface.
They are in need of interpretation, as Simmel has shown.

Looking back at Chapter 1:

Why is the message of interpretation a provocation to some? Simmel does

not attack anybody head-on because that is not his style, but he puts those
in their place who would tend to argue using so-called hard facts to
silence anyone who presents the results of his or her thinking as a judg-
ment that deserves attention. Ethical imperatives based on physical giv-
ens like: avoid this, it is bad for you health, or: you are too young (or too
42 chapter one

old) to do this, do not count for Simmel because they by-pass the process
of interpretation. Preconceived ideas, biases of all kinds come in the dis-
guise of hard facts to cut off discussion. Worse even than that: Hard
facts are produced as reasons for imposing restrictions on other peoples
lives.
Simmel is the spokesperson of freedom, not in the sense though that
anything goes. The critical nature of his work is intended in two directions:
Against those who would impose their indisputable knowledge of facts
on others, but also against those who would rely too much on their spon-
taneous impulses. Human emotions are facts Simmel respects. To him it
is not bad in itself to be emotional. But life progresses according to objec-
tive rules which limit the freedom of the individual, and each person is
called upon to grasp those as well as realize his or her innate potential.
Pragmatism is not acceptable to Simmel unless that insight is part of it,
and liberty is a good thing only as long as it does not destroy the ideal of
equality.
 CHAPTER TWO

THE MESSAGE OF CHANGE: SOCIETY EVOLVES OVER TIME

Evolution and Darwins Theory of Descendency

Simmel knew that one of the reasons why social phenomena are in need
of interpretation is the fact that they evolve and thus change: What was
apparently fully understood and clear at one time, may adopt puzzling
characteristics in the process of its development. This applies for instance
to institutions as it does to marital relationships. The concept of evolution
was central in early sociology and formed an important aspect of theory
formation in the writings of Comte and Spencer. However, it also became
a critical tool in questioning the existence of the status quo in government
and in society, because it was conducive to looking at a given social reality
merely as a transitory stage.
Since in Western philosophical tradition, following Plato rather than
Heraclitus, reality tended to be seen as something constant and unchang-
ing, an evolutionary approach to what people experienced in their daily
lives meant that those experiences lost relevance. That conclusion was
justified like this: Why get deeply involved and why make serious sacrifices
for something which will soon go away? This line of reasoning appeared
again as an argument against empirical social research in the context of
Marxist sociology in Western Europe and in America in the late sixties and
in the seventies: Why perform detailed data collection on conditions that
ought to be overcome as soon as possible?
Several variants of evolutionism were almost common knowledge
among social scientists long before Simmel and up until the beginning of
World War I: From Saint Simon to Comte and Durkheim in France and
characterized by the organism analogy in Herbert Spencers theory of evo-
lution in England. German philosophy of social life was oriented toward
evolutionism as well. Seen this way, Wilhelm Wundt is the Herbert Spencer
of Germany, despite the fact that he criticizes Spencer and his liberal
individualistic ethics. But Troeltsch also sees Wundt as an evolutionist:
He (Wundt) is an evolutionist through and through, as observing, com-
paring, sagacious, universal and constructive as this man [Spencer], but
more successful and energetic in breaking through from the positive
44 chapter two

methods to the ideal and genuine contents of the soul and the history of
life (Troeltsch 1919: 70).
As the founder of ethical evolutionism (Sommer 1887: III), Wilhelm
Wundt (18321920) stirred up a lively debate, and through his Ethics of
1886 (Wundt 1912, 2 vols.) he became very influential. He gained his influ-
ence in the history of thought as a philosopher and experimental psychol-
ogist. This was preceded by his study of medicine and even by a postdoctoral
dissertation in physiology. Among the scholars who were impressed by
Wundt were Simmel, George Herbert Mead (Mead 1906, 1919, 1973), and
Robert E. Park (Park 1904).
What started with Comte and Spencer developed further as various
sociological theories of social change, but by the third decade of the 20th
century the evolutionary wave was in full retreat (Bellah, 1964: 358).
While in the United States there was still some admiration for Spencer, in
Europe, thinking in terms of evolution had become closely connected
with an anti-conservative political camp and was increasingly associated
with atheism and Marxism. It was therefore unpopular in many circles.
Although Simmels evolutionary ideas were designed as a method of
theory construction, they too were interpreted by some to be a political
ideology. The same fate, to be identified with a political camp to which the
author of the idea never wanted to belong, happened to dialectical think-
ing. Whoever witnessed the seventies could get the impression that dia-
lectics were the prerogative of Marxists and might be prone to ignore that
the very conservative Hegel and even the Ancient Greeks used the same
method. Simmel of course was not so much concerned with dialectics but
rather with his own approach to evolutionary thinking.
The two-volume introduction to moral science (Simmel 1983a, 1983b) is
important for understanding what Simmel picked up from Wundt, and for
identifying what continuity there is in his own theory formation. In these
volumes he combines his concept of a dynamic in ethics with his theory of
evolution in society. Innovation does not originate from a change in social
structure but from a new quality of social relations. Characteristic of
Simmels approach to change is his idea of the continuity of culture, the
inconceivability of an abrupt halt of a value system, and the futility of a
total extinction of social forms in a revolutionary action.
The new relations which justify the new acting do not spring forth,
as in original creation, out of the just as suddenly disappearing old
relations, but rather the alteration begins at any point and from there it
takes hold of one area after another and transforms the whole gradually
In other words, the opening up of new relations has to first occur
 the message of change: society evolves over time45

someplace as a deed in its own right, whose generalization would be

neither thinkable nor permissible under the conditions of the old rela-
tions. (Simmel 1983b: 32) This deed will typically be the accomplished by
an innovator with an audience around him. However, any innovator, and
particularly the one with an audience, can be cast in the image of a trouble
maker or a rebel against the established political order.
As we have seen, publishing a theory of change had political implica-
tions, particularly in Simmels time, a time when Karl Marx (18181883)
was forced to live in exile in London because he and other German intel-
lectuals were not allowed by the royal Prussian regime to practice any-
thing resembling freedom of speech, a time when the conservative pupils
of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (17701831) provided the regime with
philosophical apologies for political stability. Therefore Simmel, at the
very beginning of his career as a scholar, approached the topic in an indi-
rect way, by referring to Charles Robert Darwin (18091882) in a learned
text he wrote, and by spelling out in it his disagreement with Darwin in a
marginal matter while tacitly taking over Darwins basic approach to
evolution.
The manuscript in which the reference to Darwin occurred was
intended by Simmel to be his doctoral dissertation, but it was rejected by
the faculty in Berlin. This rejection did occur not explicitly because of its
inherent evolutionist tendencies, but, at least officially as we shall see
for other, more formal reasons. In spite of the initial failure Simmel man-
aged to publish large parts of the manuscript as a journal article on early
history of Music (Simmel 1882) in the year Darwin died. In this text Simmel
offered an abundance of empirical data about the origins of music, col-
lected in order to refute a hypothesis of Darwins. Shocking as that may
have seemed to some at the time, his published article starts with the
name Darwin. Thus, already at the beginning of his career as a 24-year-
old, he stepped onto the slippery ice of the passionate debate about
Darwinism and the theory of evolution, which was then referred to as the
theory of descendency.
One of the high points of that debate was the Munich speech that
Rudolph Virchow (Virchow 1877) delivered as a serious warning against
Darwinism, followed by the written rebuttal from the Darwin supporter
Ernst Haeckel (Haeckel 1878). Virchow expressed his grave concern as
follows: Well, Gentlemen! This may appear ridiculous to quite a number
of you but it is very serious, and I hope that the theory of descendency may
not bring for us all those horrors that similar theories have really caused
in our neighboring country. After all, this theory too if it is consistently
46 chapter two

carried through has a genuinely suspicious side, and I hope that it didnt
escape you that with it, socialism has gained strength like spring sap
flowing into the trees (Virchow 1877: 12). Haeckels rebuttal contains the
sentence: Darwinism is anything but socialistic! If one wants to attribute
to this English theory a certain political tendency which admittedly is
possible then this tendency can only be an aristocratic one (Haeckel
1878: 73).
What seems remarkable from our present perspective of the third
millennium is the close connection between a biological theory and polit-
ical controversy including even a reference by Haeckel to the horrors of
the French Revolution. The dust had not yet settled on the field of the
Virchow-Haeckel tournament when the unknown Simmel had the cour-
age to raise his lance. Whoever had read only the beginning of his music
article (Simmel 1882) would be under the impression that Simmel set out
to refute a very specific (and, incidentally, a very unimportant) hypothesis
of Darwin. Whoever reads through the entire text carefully would have to
realize that this young would-be doctor of philosophy nonetheless found
himself in the camp of the theory of evolution. To stand on Darwins side
meant at that time, as the quotes from Virchow and Haeckel show, that
one was considered to be either a socialist or an aristocrat, and one label
was potentially just as dangerous as the other.
Simmel begins the article with the sentence: Darwin writes in the Origin
of Species (1875, II, 317): We have to assume that the rhythms and cadences
of oratory language are to be deduced from previously developed musical
forces. In this way we can understand how it came to be that music, dance,
song, and poetics are such old arts. We can ourselves go even further and
assume that musical utterances represent one of the foundations for the
development of language (Simmel 1882: 261). Simmels opposition to the
thesis that language has developed in the course of cultural evolution out
of singing, is disarmingly simple: Were that the case, then it would not be
understandable why man ever should have progressed to speech, since he
was able after all to express everything in tones (ibid.: 263).
This more amusing than convincing line of reasoning is then aug-
mented with a reference to the speechless song that would have to exist
if Darwins thesis were correct, but Simmel cannot find it anywhere with
the exception of yodeling (Simmel 1879). If the speechless song would be
that much more natural than language, would it not have survived at least
at the lowest level of culture, such that he (man) somehow, sometime
breaks out in that speechless yodel? (Simmel 1882: 263). Simmel finds,
despite wide-ranging research in the materials of cultural history and of
 the message of change: society evolves over time47

cultural anthropology, everywhere (with the exception of a few areas in

mountainous Bavaria and Austria) the combination of text and song, and
not song without language. He is therefore convinced that music did not
precede language in evolution but rather the other way around, that lan-
guage came first.
What Simmel does not mention in this context is the Psychology of
Music by Johann Gottfried Herder (17441803) as well as Herders prize
winning Treatise on the Origin of Language of 1772 [Abhandlung ber die
Ursprnge der Sprache] (Herder 1772, vol. 5, p. 35). Herder was a progres-
sive protestant minister and high school principal and one of the most
famous students of Kant whose lectures he attended at Konigsberg
University. He also was, temporarily, a close friend of Goethes in Weimar.
Herder was familiar with the work of Spinoza whose influence on Simmel
is obvious. It is quite possible that Darwin was familiar with Herders
writings. Be that as it may, Herder too believed that language developed
out of music (Stolzenberg 2009). Music is a form of emotion based on
hearing, and since hearing to Herder is closest to the soul, it precedes
language in the expression of emotions in communication. That is so
because language relies on symbols representing objects outside the soul,
whereas music operates with tones which are produced inside the person
(ibid: 46).
One may or may not find this interesting. What is essential in the
context of our argument is the method of the young Simmel:

a.He sees culture in analogy to the theory of descendency as having

developed in evolutionary steps, and he speaks in this connection also
about early man and about language as that bridge that leads the
animal to the human being (Simmel 1882: 265). He picks up the
impulses originally emanating from Darwin and applies them to
philosophy; from the start, he orients the method of his own work
accordingly. In terms of methods, the path that Simmel followed in the
course of his scholarly life remains to be researched. But this much
is already clear now: One of his starting points was the theory of
descendency, was evolutionism.
b.In his rejected dissertation, Simmel also raised the question of
how objective culture comes about in the process of formation out of
subjective vital emotions. The model along which he thinks this prob-
lem through is that of interaction or, in the language of Dilthey and
Simmel, of reciprocal effecting [Wechselwirkung] e.g. between a lead
singer and a group of listeners who are emotionally touched by the
48 chapter two

song. Members of the group react to the presentation of the individual

singer by spontaneously singing along: The mode of transformation
whether it be more elementary or highly complex of subjective
experience into objective culture is seen by Simmel as an evolutionary
process. Both methodical concerns the process of formation and
evolutionism are connected here.
c.A third perspective that can be drawn upon to demonstrate the conti-
nuity in Simmels method is that of the dynamics of exchange between
sensory experience and mental formation in the life of the subject.
Simmel expressly compares with each other the formations in art and
science, and he places alongside them, religion and play. But the pro-
cess always unfolds according to the same pattern. Dealing with the
reality that we perceive with our senses requires both approaches
experience and conceptualization. Over time, by going back and forth
between the two, both ways of gaining knowledge continue to grow
side by side. In a circular course, which Simmel lets begin with sensory
perception, experiences develop new concepts and these new con-
cepts enable us to have new experiences. In the same way human emo-
tions shape into forms and these forms in turn create and reinforce
emotions.
For Simmel, the social aspect of the process of formation is placed along-
side the process of objectification. If, for instance, a person weeps, it is an
expression of emotions in a subjective form. If, however, an orthodox
priest performs the funeral liturgy, his wailing my sound like weeping, but
it now needs to follow prescribed tonal sequences. The weeping therefore
becomes objectified and represents no longer a subjective form but rather
has become a prescribed part of a religious funeral. As we have seen above,
Simmel illustrates the process of objectification also with another exam-
ple, that of a lead singer and a group of listeners who are spontaneously
aroused to sing along, interplaying between subjective emotional mood
and the song as an objective form of art. These basic threads of his theory
of the process of formation weave into a unified pattern with his evolu-
tionist approach.

Change as Differentiation and Individualization

Simmels first book that contains a clear idea about gradual social change,
seen as evolution of culture and society (but not yet explicitly as ethical
change) appeared in 1890 (Simmel 1890a). Implicitly, this book on social
 the message of change: society evolves over time49

differentiation expresses high regard for personal individuality in line

with societal development via differentiation. What Simmel introduces as
his general concept of change is tied to the connection between regional
enlargement and individualization. He sees in individualization both the
liberation from the narrow, village type order of social relationships that
provide security because of their limited number, and he also sees in it the
basis for initiating contacts with human beings who live far away with the
tendency toward a cosmopolitan or global orientation.
In contrast to Durkheim, who links up with his positivistic concept of
biological evolution despite severe criticism of Spencer, Simmel does
not associate the processes of differentiation exclusively with the division
of labor and the specialization of occupations. Rather, the thought of indi-
vidualization emerges here as an evolutionary tendency inherent in the
mutual exchange among persons. What is more, with such a differentia-
tion of the social group there will be a growing need and inclination to go
beyond its original boundaries in terms of spatial, economic, and mental
relationships. There will also be a growing inclination to place next to the
initial centripetal character of the single group a centrifugal tendency as a
bridge to other groups, with growing individuality and with the repulsion
of its elements as a consequence. (ibid.: 46).
For Simmel, the quality of unmistakable uniqueness inherent in the
person may either have its origin in characteristics of the individual or in
characteristics of the group to which he or she belongs. In the second case,
group identity is bestowed upon the member as a reward for conforming
to the norms and expectations of his or her group. Thereby in the one
case the whole gains a very individual character but its parts become very
similar to each other; in the other case, the whole becomes less colorful
and it is less formed after an extreme, but its parts are strongly differenti-
ated from each other (ibid.: 49). In his example of the Quakers, Simmel
shows how the close religious ties uniting the faithful tend toward anchor-
ing individuality in the community rather than in the person. They are
therefore individual only in what they share, but socially tied in what they
keep to themselves, and that means: If the circle in which we move about
and in which we exercise our interests increases, then there is more room
therein for the development of our individuality (ibid.).
In this context, Simmel also looks into the phenomenon of fashion.
He deals with it in 1895 (Simmel 1895b), and following in his footsteps
also Herbert Blumer (Blumer 1968, 1969) writes about the subject. Simmel
suspects that a slave-like bondage to fashion (Simmel 1890a: 50) entirely
robs the individual of the quality being special and transfers uniqueness
50 chapter two

exclusively into the social form of the group identified by adhering to

a certain dress code or fashion style to which the individuals subject them-
selves collectively. This is reminiscent of some phenomena in recent youth
culture.
Given Simmels interest in the ambivalent quality of all social and
cultural reality, he considers in addition to the opportunities also the
dangers of promoting individualization. As protection against losing
oneself in loneliness in the midst of the activities of every day in modern
metropolitan life, Simmel points to the family as a safe haven for individu-
ality: Hence while the devotion to a narrow circle is in general less favor-
able to the maintenance of individuality as such, than is its existence in
the largest possible generality it is noteworthy that belonging to a family
enhances individuality within a very large cultural community. Against
the totality of existence (in public), the individual is unable to salvage
himself; only by giving up (in the family) one part of his absolute ego to
a few others, by joining together with them, can he still preserve the feel-
ing of individuality, an individuality without exaggerated seclusion, with-
out bitterness, and without becoming a peculiar loner (ibid.).
Simmel here formulates his concern for exaggerated isolation that may
lead to bitterness and peculiarity. He holds the family in high esteem as an
intermediate social form between the individual and the public. In the
context of his theory of evolution the family is needed to fend off isolation,
which if excessive he thinks will lead to psychic deformation. This is,
however, made possible only by giving up one part of ones absolute ego
to a few others. The optimistic faith in an inevitable movement toward
a world society in which the intellectuals, who are cosmopolitan in
orientation, feel interconnected with each other is just as much a motif
in this chapter by Simmel as it is in later passages by George Herbert Mead
(ibid.: 55; compare Mead 1964: 18). According to Simmel a world society of
mankind (now typically referred to as global), is the consequence of a
developed individuality, a characteristic of the person that will be ever
more widely spread.
To the extent to which a global orientation prevails so the implicit
hope of Simmel mankind will grow toward a society that is cosmopoli-
tan. The evolutionary process of cultivation, carried by very individual
qualities in every human being, allows, as we have seen, a decline in the
importance of those interactions which are organized on a small-scale
basis, i.e., with a provincial orientation. It allows the rise of the feeling of
being allied with all people of the world regardless of where they live.
(Simmel 1890a: 56). This is the dream of brotherhood of all mankind that
 the message of change: society evolves over time51

also finds expression in the text of the concluding chorus if Beethovens

Ninth Symphony, which describes it as the result of joy and happiness.

Competition promotes Evolution

Simmel published a journal article on competition in 1903, one year before

Max Weber started writing down his ideas on the religious components of
modern rational capitalism. Competition is a form of struggle fought by
means of objective performances, to the advantage of a third person
(Simmel 1903b: 1021, Simmel 2008), that third person usually being the
customer. However, it is not as simple a phenomenon as this short defini-
tion by Simmel suggests. Competition can of course be discussed from a
number of different points of view. And in doing that Simmel presented it
as a subject closely related to social change.
Simmel by implication bases his evolutionary approach to competition
on a premise that is also present in the philosophical anthropology of
Max Scheler and Arnold Gehlen: At the animal level control of behavior is
guaranteed via rigid instincts. Among humans in the absence of instincts
there is the freedom of choice between alternative ways of conduct.
That potentially leads to chaos unless culture takes the place of guiding
human action in the absence of instinctive rigidity. Building on this model
of reasoning, Simmel sees a similar shift within the stages of cultural
evolution: early rigidity analogous to instincts, followed by more freedom
of choice. Competition, therefore, becomes gradually more and more
important, because to the extent to which slavery, the mechanical taking
control of the human being, ceases, the necessity arises to win him over
via his soul (ibid: 1013). The more the individual is liberated from tradi-
tionalistic external control, the more he or she becomes in David
Riesmans terminology inner directed, the more the individual person
must be subjected to competition to guarantee continued contributing
toward the community and to avoid being out of control altogether.
There is, to begin with, the evolutionist perspective which ties competi-
tion to modernity. What we are dealing with here are stages of evolution
in which the absolute competition of the struggle for existence among
animals changes gradually toward relative competition. This means that
slowly those frictions and rigid forms of wasting energy are excluded
from the process because they are not needed in competition (ibid: 1018).
In the human past the emphasis was more toward solidarity. But the
last few centuries have, on the one hand, given to objective interests and
52 chapter two

material culture a power and independence previously unheard of; on

the other hand they have given an incredible depth to the subjectivity
of the self (ibid: 1023). As a result competition presents itself as one of
the decisive traits in modern life (ibid.).
In this article on competition of 1903 Simmel repeats his ideas on
evolution, which he outlined, as we have already seen, in his book on
social differentiation of 1890: The process fuelled by competition and
carried by very individual qualities in every human being, allows for a
decline in the importance of those mutual exchanges which are organized
on a village-like basis. The development leads to a dynamic which changes
social structure and requires a new assignment of the many functions
to be performed by the evolving forms of social organizations: Political
action with the goal of economic problem solving will no longer be
successful on the regional or even national level, but rather needs to be
organized and executed on a continental or global scale. Of course, such
change takes time, and comes about only slowly and in consecutive stages.
Characteristic of Simmels evolutionistic approach is his idea of continuity
during change, is the inconceivability of an abrupt halt, of a total extinc-
tion of social forms in a revolutionary action.
Against this background competition is for Simmel an expression of
individualism rather than simply a type of economic behavior. Just as
Money is primarily a form of interaction and a phenomenon of culture,
so is competition. To understand that, we must consider the following:
Marx had reinterpreted Hegels philosophy as esoteric economics. Hegels
world spirit, continuing its autonomous development, is for Marx the
all-powerful force of capital. This unmasking of idealistic philosophy as a
hidden representation of economic life is reversed by Simmel: He describes
economic activity as being determined by the power of human imagina-
tion. His text on competition illustrates that convincingly. Max Webers
famous study on the protestant ethics as the driving force behind modern
rational capitalism can be seen in the continuity of this approach.
Evaluating the ideal of peace depends on the perspective from which it
is seen. In this case as in others we must acknowledge the completely
opposing meanings that can be attributed to one and the same thing
(ibid: 1009). Among the potential critics of the ideal of peace Simmel men-
tions the sociologist for whom a group that simply harmoniously attracts
its members to a centre would be nothing more than an association, not
only empirically unreal, but also lacking any genuine life process (ibid.)
Simmel concludes that society needs a particular quantitative relation-
ship of harmony and disharmony, association and competition, favor and
 the message of change: society evolves over time53

disfavor, in order to take shape in a specific way (ibid.) It is therefore

Simmels intention in his article on competition, to demonstrate how
fighting is woven into the web of social life, how it is a particular manner
of interaction influencing the unity of society (ibid: 1010). Peace in the
sense of the absence of all conflict cannot be a realistic goal. To assure
vitality and progress, some type of conflict is necessary, but what type of
confrontation should that be?
Simmel describes two separate types of conflict: He who fights with
another in order to gain that persons money, spouse, or reputation
conducts his actions in a form, using a totally different tactic, different
from that of him who competes with another for making the money of an
audience flow into his own pockets, for winning the favor of a woman, for
making himself more famous by his deeds and words (ibid.). He who
damages or even destroys his adversary on purpose and directly, is not
competing, rather his direct attack would deprive him of a potential
competitor. Competition is thus an indirect form of fighting.
Next Simmel distinguishes between two types of competition. The first
is different from any direct confrontation in that it does not suffice to be
the winner, to decide the confrontation in ones own favour. What matters
is in addition to win the approval of the customer or other audience to the
struggle between the competitors. Competition of this kind is distinctly
coloured by the fact that the outcome of the fight in no way fulfils the
purpose of the fight, as would apply to all those cases in which fighting is
motivated by rage or revenge, punishment or victory as an idealistic end in
itself (ibid.).
The second type of competition may be seen as one step further
removed from direct fighting. Here no one aims any force or energy against
his opponent but tries to deploy his best possible performance while on
the surface ignoring the competing party. Maximizing ones efforts is
motivated, however, by the mutual awareness of the opponents perfor-
mance; and yet, if observed from the outside, seems to proceed as if there
were no adversary present in this world, but merely the goal One fights
the opponent without turning against him without touching him, so to
speak (ibid.).
Already in these opening remarks Simmel chooses his illustrations
from different venues of social life: from commerce of course and that
was to be expected but also from erotic interaction (two men competing
for the attention of a woman), from religion (two denominations compet-
ing for membership of the faithful), and from the physical performance
in sports. What competitive activities in these various areas of human
54 chapter two

ambitions have in common is the transformation of intentions of the

potentially selfish individual into some common good: In this manner,
subjective antagonistic impulses induce us to realize objective values,
and victory in the fight is not really the success of that fight, but rather
precisely the realization of certain values that lie beyond fighting (ibid:
1011). Simmel sees here advantages for the community, in which the
conflict occurs, advantages that only competition can generate. If, how-
ever, the conflict is of a different nature, and if the prize to be won in the
fight is originally in the hands of one of the two parties (ibid.) rather than
within the domain of the customer or another kind of audience, then soci-
ety is left with only what remains after subtracting the weaker power
from the stronger (ibid.). Competition, of course, leads to better results
than that.
Simmel expands on the idea that activities undertaken by an individual
for purely subjective reasons have the potential of resulting in objective
advantages for society as a whole. This is, however, not merely a confirma-
tion of the invisible hand which Adam Smith saw at work behind the
faade of selfish actions of individuals, it is for Simmel a philosophical
principle of a much more general scope. In fact Simmel illustrates his
point by referring to examples from religion, erotic pleasure (ibid.), and
scholarship. In each of these domains individualistic interests have the
potential of resulting in an increase of the common good. Scholarship, for
instance, is a content of the objective culture, and as such a self-sufficient
end of social evolution, realized by means of individual curiosity and drive
for new insights (ibid.).
All these advantages can only be achieved provided conflict occurs in
the specific form of competition. That means, as Simmel has explained
before, that the goal of competition between parties in society is nearly
always to attain the approval of one or several third persons (ibid: 1012).
It is achieved in part by this incredible effect of socializing people: it com-
pels the competitor, who finds his fellow competitor at his side and only as
a result of that really starts competing, to approach and appeal to the
potential customer, to connect to him, to find out his weaknesses and
strengths and to adapt to them, to find or to build all imaginable bridges
that might tie the producers existence and performance to the potential
customer The antagonistic tension against the competitor sharpens
the merchants sense for the inclinations of the public into an almost clair-
voyant instinct for coming changes in taste, in fashion, in interests (ibid.)
It is the socializing effect of competition that educates people to be
good competitors and thereby to be the producers of valuable services for
 the message of change: society evolves over time55

society through artfully multiplied opportunities to make connections

and gain approval (ibid: 1012f.)
Simmels article becomes more specifically sociological when he
suggests that the structure of social circles differs from one to another,
according to the degree and type of competition they permit (ibid: 1014).
Competition is frowned upon in associations that are based on a shared
origin, like the family. While children may compete for the love of their
parents such occurrences would be peripheral and normally not be
related to the principle of family life. This principle is rather that of organic
life; organic relationships, however, are ends in themselves: they do not
point beyond themselves to an external goal for which family members
would have to compete (ibid.).
The other sociological type that excludes competition is exemplified
by the religious congregation (ibid.) There competing is superfluous,
because, at least according to Christian thinking, there is room for all in
Gods mansion (ibid.). Predating Max Webers reflections on the Puritan
Ethic Simmel here admits, however, that under certain religious condi-
tions people may compete for one particular prize Success is indeed
tied to some kind of previous performance, but the difference in success is
unrelated to the difference in performance (ibid) because it is the result
of either divine mercy or predestination.
Simmel risks the somewhat shocking comparison between the struggle
for salvation and gambling: The chosen as the result of religious predesti-
nation or the winner in gambling will not be hated by him who was
defeated, rather he will be envied; due to the mutual independence of
their performance both are separated by more distance and by a priori
indifference toward each other than is the case if they compete in busi-
ness or in sports (ibid: 1015). This may well be read as Simmels spirit of
capitalism of 1903. In this context it is also an additional argument in favor
of competition, because in the absence of competition envy and embit-
terment will prevail (ibid.).
It is striking, not only how frequent reference is made in this article to
religious phenomena, but even more so that Simmel deals with competi-
tion as a topic in some of his writings in the sociology of religion. This is
the case in Simmels article A Contribution to the Sociology of Religion
(Simmel 1898) and, on a less optimistic note about competition, in his
monograph Religion (Simmel 1906) both available in English (Simmel
1997).
Asking members to forego competition entirely occurs in those cases
where the socialist principle of a unified organization of all labor and the
56 chapter two

more or less communist rule of equality of all labor contracts become

a reality (Simmel 1903b: 1016). Because competition is based on the
principle of individualism and motivated by the self interest of the com-
petitor, it is difficult to coordinate it with the social interest common to
all Therefore competition cannot be confronted and contradicted by
making it face off with the principle of a solely dominating social interest,
but rather by looking for alternative techniques that may be derived from
the social interest, and which we may call socialism in the narrower sense
(ibid.).
Simmel associates with socialism something quite different from how
the term is used by us a century later. He explains in detail that he means
a general suppression of individual impulses and sees it most perfectly
realized among the civil servants of government or among the personnel
of a factory (ibid.). That is what Max Weber was to describe as the trend
toward increasing bureaucratization. Discussing it under the label social-
ism, Simmel writes: This socialist mode of production is nothing but a
technique to achieve the material goals of happiness and of culture, of
justice, and of perfection. It must yield to free competition wherever
the latter appears to be the more practical and more appropriate means
(ibid: 1016f.).
Devoid of any political or ideological point of departure, competition
and socialism to Simmel are alternative techniques of organization.
A utilitarian-oriented person, for whom only the concrete results of
action count, will be inclined towards socialism which emphasizes the
many and propagates desired elements in life, whilst an ethical idealist,
who is committed to the more or less aesthetically expressed form of
doing, is more of an individualist or, like Kant, values the autonomy of the
individual above all. (Simmel 1907b: 287).
In a pragmatic way he wants these alternative techniques of organiza-
tion (competition and socialism) to prove themselves by demonstrating
which of the two is more efficient in a particular historical an organiza-
tional context. In this way Simmel wants the two to compete with each
other for better results. This has nothing to do with political party prefer-
ence, but rather with the question of whether satisfying a need, creating a
value, shall be entrusted to competition between individual energies or to
the rational organization of such energies (Simmel 1903b: 1017). Simmel
suggests a sober rather than an emotional approach toward socialism and
by admitting to the merely technical character of this social order, social-
ism is compelled to abandon its claim of being a self-justifying goal and
arbiter of ultimate values, and thus ought to be put on the same level with
 the message of change: society evolves over time57

individualistic competition (ibid.). Kant and Nietzsche stand for the

highest esteem for the peerless individual; they are the antipodes to the
socialist state of mind. Simmel is obviously closer to them than he is to
Marx.
Simmel moves from the question under which conditions competition
should be eliminated to the empirical and political problem of accepting
competition in principle but as it were purifying it by making certain tools
and practices illegal. This brings him to the formation of cartels a point
at which companies are organized no longer for fighting for a share of the
market, but rather for supplying the market according to a joint plan
(ibid: 1019). Simmel points to the difference between the guilds and car-
tels. He mentions a simple criterion for outlawing certain agreements
between competitors and argues that achieving complete control of the
market results in making the consumer dependent and, as a consequence,
in making competition as such superfluous (ibid.).
Simmel expects governments and ethical imperatives to purify compe-
tition by extracting from it components that are not essential to it. He also
expects them to contribute to modern society by leaving competition
intact and by guaranteeing its continues existence (ibid.) It is Simmels
considered opinion, that society does not want to do without the advan-
tages that competition between individuals entails for it, which by far
exceed the disadvantages it incurs by the occasional annihilation of indi-
viduals in the course of competition (ibid: 1020). To back up this position
he quotes from the code civil of France.
For competition to be able to function in society, it needs to be
governed by prescriptions that originate from legal as well as moral
sources. From both sources, there spring imperatives that regulate human
conduct toward one another, imperatives that are not social in the
conventional sense of the word yet they are sociological and it is due to
them that the whole of human nature finds its proper place in the ideal
form of a thou shalt (ibid: 1022). Here Simmel hints at a fundamental con-
viction of his that ties sociology to ethic. Reality as experienced by humans
is necessarily socially constructed, and the great forms which humans
have at their disposal for such construction include scholarship, art, reli-
gion, and indeed the ideal form of a thou shalt (ibid.) as an integrated
concept of ethic.
This can be understood against the background of his critique of
Kant, particularly his rejection of the Kantian categorical imperative
Whatever advantages accrue to us at the expense of others, whether as
the result of favors others grant us or of opportunities that open up,
58 chapter two

of sheer coincidence or of a good fortune that we may experience as

foreordained, we will take none of these with such good conscience as
when what we have coming to us is simply the outcome of our own doing
This is probably one of the points at which the attitude toward competi-
tion presents itself as one of the decisive traits in modern life. This sen-
tence is the beginning of Simmels last paragraph. It should be read in
its entirety rather than paraphrased because it is such a convincing
conclusion. It summarizes and ends a well organized discussion. Simmel
did not want to leave it stand as part of the text, when his 1903 article was
later included into his large book Soziologie (Simmel 1908). There we can
retrieve the same sentence as a lengthy footnote in the chapter on conflict
Der Streit.

Alternative Theories of Evolution

In his two-volume Introduction to Moral Science [Einleitung in die

Moralwissenschaft] of 1892 (Vol. 1) and 1893 (Vol. 2) (Simmel 1892a),
to which we referred here before, Simmel presents according to the
subtitle A Critique of the Basic Concepts of Ethics. This voluminous
work (ca. 900 pages in two volumes) contains an evolutionistic approach
to ethics. Little attention has been paid to this early and lengthy work;
Kurt Gassen provided many scholars with an excuse for ignoring the work
by remarking that Simmel had distanced himself from it. One reads in
Gassens bibliography: As this writer has personally heard in a seminar
out of Simmels own mouth, he later came to view this work as a philo-
sophical sin of youth and therefore did not permit further editions
(Gassen and Landmann 1958: 314).
It would be quite wrong to doubt this remark by Simmel which Gassen
heard. The question is, however, in which situation, with what degree of
seriousness, and at what time this utterance was made in the seminar; the
remark thus may be open to interpretation: Gassens vague term later
must mean very much later than the publication of the first edition,
considering that Simmels remark would have postdated both the second
and third editions which (according to Gassen) appeared in 1904 and 1911,
respectively. Furthermore, as late as 1910 Simmel, at the end of a longer
footnote in his Main Problems of Philosophy [Hauptprobleme der
Philosophie], mentions his sin of youth without characterizing it as such:
I have undertaken an extensive discussion of the conflict of obligations in
the last chapter of my Introduction to Moral Science (Simmel 1910: 155).
 the message of change: society evolves over time59

Hence, in spite of what Gassen heard him say, Simmel stood by his early
work for about two decades.
In the pursuit of laying a philosophical foundation for the development
of ethical norms, Simmels attempt to keep metaphysics at a distance
which he shares with Dilthey emerges in both volumes in connection
with the evolutionistic method. Simmel believes he can escape the neces-
sity of dogmatically positing a guideline taken from this or that estab-
lished type of metaphysics. This conviction hinges upon the introduction
of evolutionism upon which his approach is based. However, he does not
introduce his theory of evolution as the claim that it describes the course
human history actually took but as an heuristic principle, as a purely
methodical and instrumentally expedient tool (see Simmel 1983b: 6).
Darwin had dissolved the prototype of a static concept, namely species,
into a process of becoming. The deep connection that exists between the
old theory of species and conceptual realism, the estimation of concepts,
permits the latter to enter the debate of the former against evolutionism
(ibid: 34). Simmel takes on this challenge in his idea of ethics: As a founda-
tion of ethical demands, he searches for a dynamic approach to the rules
for human conduct. The traditional ethical systems postulated one ulti-
mate value, from which they then deduced the particular norms. Such
dogmatic imposition, however, was not possible for the highest spokesper-
son or representative group without resorting to a supposedly unchanging
metaphysical system. Simmel, on the other hand, sets out to search for the
highest value within evolutionary development itself.
Whoever remains tied to static conceptual thinking will see in Simmels
approach only the dissolution of all reliable steadiness and will expect, as
a consequence, a relativism that lets the choice of norms for accepted
behavior decline to a mere matter of taste. But Simmel intends neither to
replace one statically conceived ultimate value by another one which is
equally static, nor to de-dogmatize and offer up a colorful bouquet of
static positions among which one can pick and choose. Rather, he wants
to tie the highest and final orientation in ethics to the dynamic of
change and progress itself. One has to understand that, at the end of the
19th century, this was enough to make many of his readers heads spin.
Simmel introduces his evolutionist orientation toward ultimate values
also with the goal to free himself from the disadvantages of being obli-
gated to a fragile metaphysics: While the historical perspective teaches us
to acknowledge everything given as being deduced, it does not thereby
demote it And this historical perspective is now joined by the psycho-
logical perspective, which teaches us that value is nothing objective at all,
60 chapter two

but rather is generated only in the subjective process of evaluation

(ibid.). In the historical as well as the psychological perspective, Simmel
concentrates on the process by which value is attributed, and by which
esteem is generated. This is indeed a very topical project: He wants to
establish his ethics alongside the dynamics of this process. The theme of
this evaluation process then leads him to his Philosophy of Money
[Philosophie des Geldes] as well (Simmel 1900).
Drawing upon Darwin, Simmel sees humans as deficient beings who
are forced to develop culture and society in order to compensate for the
absence of reliable instincts and for their physical inadequacies. In this
way social evolution presents itself as an uninterrupted continuation of
biological evolution: Darwin himself stresses, for instance, that what
humans lack in bodily strength and size has frequently turned out to be
beneficial, because a being that is in and of itself sufficiently endowed
with size and strength to have done well in the struggle for survival would
probably not have become social.
The fact that human beings are compelled to join forces with each
other in order to prevail has increased and refined their intellectual and
moral properties so much that, in the final analysis, it is to their weak-
nesses that they owe their power position which surpasses that of all other
beings. In the same sense it has been claimed that it is exactly to their
weakness that women owe their power within civilized society, and that
emancipation, if it would endow them with the same strength as men,
would let them enter with the men into a fight for existence, whose suc-
cesses at least in several respects would not nearly match the prerogatives
which they right now already enjoy because they declined to participate
in the fight (Simmel 1983a: 109). The refusal of women to enter into com-
petitive struggles with males obviously belongs to the past in the Occident,
but in China that refusal may persist for some time. Unfortunately the tra-
ditionalistic input of contemporary women in modern Chinese culture
has hardly been researched from an unbiased perspective. The Good Earth,
a novel by Pearl S. Buck published in 1931, will hardly suffice as a source of
information.
By clearly distancing himself from the anthropology of Rousseau
(17121778), Simmel subscribes to an image of human nature which is later
adopted by Max Scheler, Helmut Plessner, and Arnold Gehlen. This image
already formed the basis of his Introduction to Moral Science of 1892/1893,
from which we quoted above (Simmel 1983a, 1983b). The contract theories
of Hobbes (15881679) or Rousseau, according to which egotists who lived
separately, deliberately got together to found society in order to gain
 the message of change: society evolves over time61

greater advantages, are not reconcilable with Simmels evolutionism.

Simmels human actor steps out onto the stage of history as anything but
a selfish individual. Why Simmel sees it that way becomes clear in the
following quotation.
Egotism, in the sense that we deal with it in ethics, can only appear if
some kind of human society already exists. We cannot form a specific
image of pre-social man. He must have lacked such essential properties
that the application of the same name for him is of dubious justification.
In society, however, man can only live if he already has restrained his ego-
tism and has learned to more or less live for others. Now it may be that, in
the ideal of the highest cultures, all circumstances are ordered such that
the contributions an individual makes to the survival of society eventually
will benefit himself and that all altruism proves to be a mere means of
egotism; primitive circumstances, however, are definitely a very long way
from reaching this reconciliation; the harder and explicitly the more
unorganized the fight against nature and against hostile groups still is, the
more frequently will the survival of the whole demand sacrifices from
the individual. In order that the circumstances may come about at all,
in which man as such can exist and can unfold his egotism, a certain
measure of altruism must already be present, in exactly the same way as
mentally the consciousness of the ego could only develop through a
separation from and opposition to others (Simmel 1983a: 91).
Simmel viewed the goal of social evolution primarily as an unfolding of
individuality and personality on the basis of the dynamics of interaction.
But in addition he saw the goal of ethical evolution as tied to the process
of attributing value in interaction. This is indeed a long way from tradi-
tional philosophical statements about ethics. When the stoics later
demanded, as an ethical goal, to be in harmony with the general supreme
reason of the world [Weltvernunft], when the Christian ethic depicted the
same as a realization of Gods Kingdom on Earth, then we have to search
for the founder of these objective moral principles in Plato, who for the
first time cut loose the absolute good from the entanglement with human
subjectivity, be it egotistical or altruistic, and who placed that highest
objective idea into the center of the world orbit (Simmel 1983a: 154). It is
one of the striking theses of the founder of Chinese sociology, Fei Xiatong
(19102005) that this turn toward objective moral principles, which
Simmel attributes to Plato, never happened in China (Fei 1953).
In spite of his obvious admiration Simmel could not accept that Platonic
static solution because to him the general supreme reason of the world
too has to be seen in evolutionary terms and in harmony with a context of
62 chapter two

ethics that evolves. He thus subscribes to a supreme reason of development

which, since Darwin, can claim validity. The dynamics here are still based
on the dictum that correct acting follows out of correct thinking, for
Socrates as for Simmel, even if the criteria of correctness have changed to
something that evolves. Correct thinking, however, cannot be the result of
data collection in the day to day world, because by carefully observing
empirical reality the individual in modern times cannot find out what is
right or wrong. Too much uncertainty is imbedded in the daily occur-
rences of contemporary life to deduce a clear ethical guideline from them.
Since, therefore there is no intelligible prescription for what to do in the
lives that surround the individual of the present, Simmel points toward
the future and postulates an ethical vision oriented toward the goals
of evolution, toward what we hope and expect mankind to become.
Accordingly, the modern person who is in doubt about what to do or what
to avoid should according to Simmels ideas form an image of the
potential of humans, devise a visionary plan for how that might be real-
ized, and then ask himself or herself, what they can contribute toward
bringing that to fruition. This is Simmels sketch of an evolutionary ethic.
In addition the two-volume introduction to moral science contains ref-
erences to how he envisioned the transition from one stage to another.
The idea of continuity during change characterizes his dynamic approach:
Certain components of culture continue to exist although they no longer
serve a purpose. Having become technically superfluous does not mean
that they are useless. They may be preserved, as it were in storage, in case
a cultural situation should arise in which society needs to turn back toward
them.
Simmel sees in them that demonic charm of the dogmatic What is
supported by reasons may be brought down by reasons; that which lacks
supporting pillars and doesnt need any, cannot have the supports pulled
out from under it (ibid.). Simmel conceives a cultural element that
becomes rudimentary as especially resistant not in spite of, but rather
because it has lost its functionality: It simply is not useful anymore, yet it
may be experienced as meaningful.
Simmel believes that humans still regard certain values of the past as
important, even if they do not have an effect in their immediate situation
at present. On the basis of this evolutionist approach, Simmel sees the
methodical possibility of an objective reality independent of the subject
in spite of the fact that he gives strong emphasis to subjective experience:
Culture develops in stages or steps (like going up a staircase). If we walk
up the stairs, we want to be able to come down again in case we need to.
 the message of change: society evolves over time63

So, we do not want to completely give up the steps behind us. It can
perhaps be understood against this background that in the evolution of
culture there frequently develops a striking degree of nostalgia toward
outmoded objects and behavior patterns. In order to keep us from com-
pletely letting the steps behind us disappear, we give them a value, inde-
pendent of the current functional needs of the individual. Meaningful
examples may be: Hunting in an affluent society, old fashioned handicraft
like weaving, travel by sail boat, hiking on foot, martial arts, playing music
on ancient instruments, and the interest in archaic unreasonable love
stories like Pyramus and Thisbe or Romeo and Juliet.
The greater the time lapse since humans originally attached interest
and value to an object due to its usefulness or benefit, to the extent that
this has in fact been forgotten, the greater the quality of purity in the aes-
thetic pleasure we experience in the mere form and appearance of this
object, that is to say the more we invest it with a significance which goes
beyond any coincidental pleasure we may take in it, the more we sense the
independent value of this object. (ibid: 24) Where something cannot be
valued on the basis of its being useful, it will then be respected on the basis
of being beautiful. Development, or moving up to a higher step, must be
justified by functionality; it can only become permanent, if it works well.
However, to save the lower step from being destroyed, it may be justified
with reference to its beauty or sacredness (religion), thus preserving an
opportunity for society to revert back to it, in case the dominant culture
disintegrates (Jeremy Trylch: Go back to the default culture) (Trylch: Oral
communication).
The relative speed in the change of mental procedures, the ability of the
mind to conserve the forms of its content while the latter itself changes, as
well as to maintain the other way around, the same content in different
forms, enhances the possibility that its states become rudimentary (ibid.).
Simmels own examples are ritual customs, everyday manners, lore.
These evolutionistic tools used by Simmel are not a pre-formation of a
sociology that attempts to transmit the methods of the natural sciences to
culture and society, but a discipline of the liberal arts in the tradition of
Dilthey, which intends on the basis of epistemological and philosophical
challenges originating with Darwin to enable sociology to be carried out
in an evolutionistic way without thereby becoming an offshoot of biology
or any other natural science.
In addition, a sociology of development as theory of change suggests
ethical consequences if it creates or recreates the awareness that the
cultural history of all of mankind is a unity, that every step onto a higher
64 chapter two

level of ethics remains inextinguishably preserved, that precisely thereby

the path of continuing development can be identified and that as a
result of research in a broadly framed cultural history it can become
obvious which change leads us forward and which leads us backward into
regression, decadence, or atavism. The fact that we change conditions
does not guarantee we improve them. Humanity has suffered through this
sad truth all too often.
Simmel admires Kant for having identified the internal energies
determining knowledge and conduct. Kant explained where sensuality
meets with understanding, where understanding meets with reason,
where reason meets with the drive toward happiness and where individu-
ality meets with the interests of wider company. These tensions describe
the energies, requirements, and meaning of the evolving things them-
selves and accordingly of the development of society.
Simmel felt the need to create his approach to social change also as an
alternative to what was current in his days as the tradition originating
from Hegel and Marx. Their concept of evolution of culture and society,
and in the case of Marx, particularly of the economy, was also indebted to
the sciences, although not to biology but rather to physics. Following the
metaphor of the swinging pendulum the idea of a dialectic movement in
history was proposed, first by Hegel, then by Marx. Hegels writings must
have influenced Marx directly.
But the swinging pendulum returns in the direction it came from, and
this metaphor indicates a fundamental difference between the type of
evolution Simmel preferred on the one hand, and the dialectic type on the
other: The former presupposes a continual journey through history with
no turning back, with the eyes of the travelers fixed on an ultimate goal;
whereas the dialectic expects history to move through circles which,
although distinct in levels of differentiation, return to previous familiar
conditions. This can be exemplified using Hegels Phenomenology of
the Spirit (Phaenomenologie des Geistes), and especially the passage on the
dialectic of the changing relationship between lord and servant. In the
course of the dialectic process the servant takes over the position of being
in command from the lord, but then he rules as a lord, and nothing has
really change in principle. This may also be seen in relation to the linger-
ing question about modern China that puzzles the visitor to Peking who
sees the portrait of Mao at the entrance to the ancient residence of the
emperors.
Hegel had been a protestant theologian. Then he switched from religion
to philosophy and as it were replaced the creator god with what Hegel
 the message of change: society evolves over time65

called the Weltgeist or World Spirit. The text discussed here next as an
alternative theory of evolution has the purpose from Hegels perspective to
show in which various forms the World Spirit can appear in this world.
We shall only look at a philosophical reflection on work, which may have
interested Marx with particular intensity and which he later applied to
economic processes.
Hegel examins a relationship between two persons of whom one works
for the other. The person who accepts the services is the lord or master,
and the other, who works for the master, is the servant. The masters ability
to demand obedience depends on the servants consent, or, in other words,
the servant accepts the rule of his master over him. This relationship can
be stable only if there is an ongoing dialogue between the two. If master
and servant no longer talk with each other, what happens then is called by
Hegel the alienation of the servant.
In the initial stage of the dialectic movement the servant produces
a material product to which meaning is attached by someone else, namely
by the master. As long as this is the case, the servant does not materialize
in his work the content of his own consciousness, but instead the content
of what his master thinks. At first, the servant finds that in order and
does not protest it. The master then has power over the material things
or products which the servant makes via the mediation of his servant.
In addition, the master has power over his servant via the material world.
The relationship between the two is thus asymmetrical but stable.
If at a later stage the degradation imposed on the servant by his master
advances to the point, at which the servant from the perspective of his
master becomes part of the material world, we can no longer look at it as
an interaction between two persons, and we can also no longer expect that
there will be a meaningful dialogue between master and servant. Without
successful communication, however, the consciousness of the master is
no longer tied back to the servant in a functioning feedback and therefore
cannot adjust or initiate any meaningful changes. Thus the master does
not even notice that to him his servant has ceased to be a person and has
been by him pushed into the realm of material objects.
On the other hand, the servant learns more and more to think on his
own, to find meaning in his own work, without any involvement of the
master in his thinking. Eventually then the servant learns to arrive at a
correct judgment of the situation at hand. This gives the servant the
opportunity to become the subject of his own consciousness and to
develop his consciousness in a flexible way so as to correspond properly
with his actual situation. As a result, the servant recognizes that he is
66 chapter two

dependent upon his master, and this insight henceforth becomes the
content and meaning of his work. The things which the servant produces
become symbols of this new consciousness of dependency and he himself,
not the master, now gives the product of his work their meaning. He
no longer needs the master; he himself now has become the master.
At this point a stage has been arrived at in which comes (in German) das
dienende Bewutsein zum Frsichsein, or in English, the subservient
consciousness arrives at existing for itself. That in Hegels reasoning is the
achievement of emancipation as the outcome of a dialectic process.
As Marx studied this text by Hegel, two insights may have occurred to
him. First, the two individuals, master and servant, should be replaced
by two classes, the capitalist class and the working class. Secondly, Marx
realized that Hegel pretended to philosophize about the spirit, but in
reality reasoned about economic facts, like work and wages to be paid for
work, and capital in the hands of a master as the result of somebody elses
work.
In order to illustrate this shift in the thinking of Marx from philosophy
to economics in more detail, we select from the multitude of secondary
literature on the writings of Marx a book by Robert C. Tucker, Philosophy
and Myth in Karl Marx. (Tucker 1963) In it Tucker explains that Marx
connected the idea of alienated man with the notion that the proletariat is
the highest stage of development toward alienation. He sees the proletar-
iat as a class into which the rest of the humans gradually sink by becoming
more and more alienated.
This means that more and more humans become members of the
proletariat as a social class the members of which are fully conscious of
how alienated they are. This form of consciously being dehumanized
brings about the end of dehumanization (Tucker, 1963: 146f, Tucker 2001).
This line of reasoning is reminiscent of Hegels dialectic of master and
servant. All of this is still intellectually created in the context of the philo-
sophical thinking of Karl Marx. But more and more Marx becomes
interested in the economic aspects of alienation. Humans translate what
constitutes their humanity into material objects which become money.
Tucker believes that while thinking along these lines Karl Marx sud-
denly, in late spring or early summer of 1844 arrived at the colossal insight
that the philosophy of Hegel while pretending to be philosophy really
deals with economic reality. From then on Marx reads Hegel with other
eyes, from a different perspective. The famous system of idealistic philoso-
phy had already been unveiled by Feuerbach as really being esoteric
Psychology: Dreamed up pseudo-realities in the imagination of people are
 the message of change: society evolves over time67

not objectively true and existing outside the individual, but they are really
only a symptom telling us something about the state of the psyche of that
person. This is meant by the statement that Hegels metaphysics is in fact
esoteric psychology. Accordingly, if we listen to a person talking about his
imagined metaphysical realities, we find out about his or her psychic
condition. But this is just one step on the way from Hegel toward Marx;
this is the step which Feuerbach had taken.
Marx goes one step further: The idealistic philosophy of Hegel is
really esoteric economics. When Hegel writes about the World Sprit he
secretly deals with the life of the human person involved in economic
production. This notion was inspired by Hegels text on master and
servant, in which due to dialectic evolution the servant ends up being
the master. This Marx has taken over from Hegel. In addition, Marx also
thinks that he can find in Hegels philosophy the key for the critique of the
bourgeois economy. This creation if this idea is according to Tucker
the birth of Marxism in 1844.
The component of Marx theoretical heritage most frequently men-
tioned is historical materialism. It is to Simmel a failed attempt by Marx
to explain social change and in fact to explain the course history has
taken totally on the basis of material, primarily economic, living condi-
tions. We have seen before that historical materialism does not present
itself as a heuristic device, but rather according to Simmel deceives the
reader with the erroneous claim of accomplishing a realistic description
of reality. Simmels own contribution toward a theory of social change
must be seen against the background of this from his point of view
failed attempt.
To clarify his critique Simmel reminds us that the re-creation of reality
in a work of art is an isolating abstraction and thereby comparable with
what the cultural and social scientist has to accomplish when dealing with
his or her objects of study. In art there is also one dimension of meaning
being isolated: Painting is only about what the eye can see, music appeals
to the ear. Reality, however, is multidimensional, filled with noises and
smells. Painting concentrates on the objects of optical perception and it
attempts in this area alone to creatively remold reality. Music is another
example. It focuses entirely upon the acoustical form of sense perception
and it tries to creatively generate reality in this area alone. According to
Simmel, research on culture uses a similar approach and, analogously; it is
entirely legitimate to reduce historical reality to the dimension of the
economy. But Simmels reservations about historical materialism rest on
something else.
68 chapter two

Simmel identifies the mistake which he thinks he has discovered, as a

case of quaternio terminorum. These Latin words mean that four terms
or concepts are seen in a certain relationship, as will become clearer later.
In order to fight that illusion that confuses the idea with causality,
historical materialism calls mechanical naturalistic events immediately
effective causes [unmittelbar wirksame Ursachen]. It can thereby count
upon the basic approval of many intellectuals who, in a science-oriented
atmosphere of being weary of metaphysics, are open-minded toward real-
istic, or rather naturalistic approaches. That makes it easy for historical
materialism to sail under a false flag.
With the opposition between metaphysical ideas as the moving force
of history versus singular natural causes of its singular natural process, his-
torical materialism illegitimately identifies another opposition: Ideal
interests as moving forces versus material interests as moving forces of
history. The restricting of the decisive and solely effective historical events
to the economy is therefore based upon a quaternio terminorum, the logi-
cal mistake of making, out of the restriction of historical understanding
in principle to empirically concrete causes, at the same time a restriction
of these latter to a certain singular province of interests (Simmel
1905: 225).
Here Simmel identifies a fundamental methodical mistake of historical
materialism. The line of reasoning so far helped clarify the importance of
the opposition between metaphysical ideas as the moving force of history
on the one hand and concretely present moving forces in the objective
reality on the other hand. Simmel thinks that this opposition is useful but
he charges historical materialism with illegitimately and surreptitiously
joining it with another opposition, offering it so to speak under a false
label namely, the opposition of ideal interests with material interests,
i.e., with economic needs as ever-driving forces of history. Historical mate-
rialism, according to Simmel, thereby takes advantage of the fact that, at
least since the Enlightenment, there has existed in science the tendency to
eradicate metaphysical connections and to concentrate upon its empiri-
cally perceivable elements in the hope of gaining knowledge about reality
that way.
Historical materialism claims, according to Simmels reading, that it
would be in line with this tendency to separate metaphysics from the
explanatory environment of scientific procedure, if one would see as
driving forces of history no longer idealist interests but only economic
material interests. Simmel regrets that there are far too many people
who believe this and who do not see through to the bottom of this
 the message of change: society evolves over time69

juxtaposition, this block of four terms (quaternio terminorum), in its

complexity. This quaternio terminorum refers to the following four
suggested driving forces of history:

1. metaphysical ideas 2. empirical reality

3. idealist interests 4. material interests

It is here where Simmel sees a logical mistake of making, out of the

restriction of historical understanding in principle to empirically concrete
causes, at the same time a restriction of these latter to a certain singular
province of interests (ibid: 225). We are talked into the notion that
if we dont want metaphysics anymore, but rather to carry on a science
that stays clear of metaphysics, a science that explains reality out of itself
as it is then in order to be empirically consistent we would have to
restrict ourselves, for the explanation of the course of history, to the study
of economic interests as driving forces of the economy.
If we are unable to distinguish between metaphysics as a prejudice
beyond discussion within the process of gaining scientific knowledge, on
the one hand, and the driving forces of ideas in everyday life that are active
by way of religious or cultural ideals, on the other hand, then we fall into
this trap of historical materialism. Simmel is convinced that human beings
who are concretely acting in history can be motivated by religious or other
cultural ideas.
One should not confuse such a conviction, however, with the claim that
history would be driven by the Weltgeist (Hegels world spirit) or by an iron
law; for this would be an impersonal force that intrudes as a deus ex
machina (a Latin term, meaning the god out of a machine in a theater) out
of nowhere into the course of history, i.e., this would be metaphysics.
When Max Weber shows, in his sociology of religion, that the entrepre-
neur as a pious Calvinist can be willing to act ascetically, not to dissipate
his money on luxury but to keep on investing it in the firm he is already
directing, then it follows that the moving force of history may be the reli-
gious motive of the single acting human being.
This is entirely different from metaphysics as an explanatory crutch in
cultural science. Historical materialism, however, takes advantage of the
trend away from metaphysical explanatory tools and toward accepting
only rational causal patterns of explanation; therefore one would also
have to assume, historical materialism suggests, that history is being
molded not by idealists but rather by the agents of economic interests.
This is what Simmel means with the concept of quaternio terminorum.
70 chapter two

His methodological critique of historical materialism culminates in the

reproach that conclusions are jumped to in a logically illegitimate way
[i.e., by skipping a step]. It stands to reason that Simmel, probably for the
remaining decades of his life, carried with him the apprehension that the
arguments of historical materialism could be justified if not philosophi-
cally then at least politically by the increasing number of people whose
actions are purely economically motivated and whom everybody can
clearly observe at work. Be that as it may, the weaknesses, the epistemo-
logical untenabilities of historical materialism were exposed very early
not by putting forth political polemics, but rather by providing with expert
precision Simmels opinion that Karl Marx was a charismatic revolution-
ary but a weak philosopher. This cannot impress contemporary Marxists
in China, most of whom are not familiar with the writings of Karl Marx
anyway (Rockmore 2000, 2002).

Looking back at Chapter 2

Any observation in conjunction with theories of social development

pointing in the direction that change cannot be avoided causes fear among
those who believe different conditions would deprive them of what they
have achieved. The fear of Darwin poses as defense of religious faith, the
fear of Marx poses as defense of political stability, the fear of Freud poses
as defense of a human dignity that would not want to see men and women
subject to sexual drives. The critical nature of Simmels work rebuffs those
who block progress out of fear.
His theory of change is rooted not in Darwin but in Heraclitus of
Ephesus (535475 bc) of whom Plato lets Socrates make the statement:
It was Heraclitus who said: Everything flows on, nothing stays in place
and by comparing what exists to a flowing river, he said that one cannot
climb into the same river twice. From that ancient Greek insight there is a
continuing path of thought all the way to Hegel and Marx. To give Darwin
alone credit for the theory of evolution is the result of a view narrowed
down to the natural sciences as the sole sources of orientation. It is of
course not Simmels view.
Simmel identifies progress with the shift from outside social control by
the group, requiring conformity from its members and in return bestow-
ing identify on them, to internalized self control of the individual striving
to utilized his or her inner resources and finding its personal identity in its
uniqueness. Parallel to this change the importance of competition
increases as a tool society uses to channel individual energies into serving
the community.
 CHAPTER THREE

THE MESSAGE OF INTERACTION: HOW REALITY IS CONSTRUCTED

Sociology as the Study of Interaction

Humans pay attention to each other in what they do, and out of their
actions performed with regard to their neighbors originate lasting rela-
tionships, groups, institutions and social structure in general. These in
turn become points of departure for new actions. It is reminiscent of the
question whether the chicken came first or the egg, to decide whether
sociology ought to start its efforts with the study of social action or of
social structure.
What makes this alternative more complicated it the reality status
ascribed to large scale social structures as either existing as some form of
physical reality or merely as a mental concept in a persons imagination
which produces patterns of conduct. To deal with society as reality and as
an integrated whole is to regard it as a system, and as a consequence one
must then regard the individual as a function of the system, as Durkheim
did. If, on the other hand, one starts with the independent individual in
dynamic interaction with other individuals and considers this to be the
root cause of social reality, then this results in a different type of sociology
where the system is secondary.
In the face of these different approaches, Simmel writes that the choice
to be made here is one of method, and the criterion for this decision is not
inherent in the objects of study itself. If we only consider the given objects
we face in our daily lives, one position is as tenable as the other. Therefore,
to opt for one of these methodical positions remains a task for the sociolo-
gist. Simmel takes sides here in favor of seeing interaction as the root cause
of social reality but he never insists that this the only correct way. The
German language referent to interaction is the word Wechselwirkung
in the writings of Dilthey and Simmel which Park and Burgess in their
path breaking text book of 1924 translated as reciprocity of relationships
(Park and Burgess 1924: 585) and which only later was reduced to
interaction.
We shall take a look at Simmels publications that were crucial for
him in regarding interaction as the point of departure for reality creation.
72 chapter three

The first book to be published after the successful doctoral thesis on Kant,
and the first work of Simmels to include the word sociological on its
title page, was the study Ueber sociale Differenzierung (On social
differentiation) with the subtitle Sociologische und psychologische
Untersuchungen (Sociological and psychological studies), published in
1890, (Simmel, 1890a) as was mentioned here before. It indicates already in
which direction Simmel intends to go. This publication is volume X (ten),
number 1 of a series of studies entitled Staats- und socialwissenschaftli-
che Forschungen (old German spelling! Studies in political and social
science) edited by Gustav Schmoller.
Just as the subject of money had occupied Simmel for several years
(18891900) and in a number of publications, he also examined in tandem
to this from 1894 to 1908 the methodical basis for the new discipline of
sociology which turns out to be his interactive approach. Apart from the
book of 1890, we also have access to the following: Das Problem der
Soziologie (The problem of sociology) in Schmollers yearbook of
1894 (Simmel, 1894a), The problem of sociology of 1895 (Simmel, 1895a),
the lecture which Robert E. Park apparently noted down in when he
listened to Simmel in the University of Berlin in 1899 (Park, 1899),
the incorporation of Simmels manuscript of that lecture in the book
Soziologie (Sociology) with the subtitle: Untersuchungen ber die
Formen der Vergesellschaftung (Studies on the forms of socialization)
in 1908 (Simmel, 1908a, Simmel 2009), and finally the publication in
Chicago in 1931 of Parks lecture notes of 1899 (see above). It is possible to
use these texts to trace the development of Simmels thought between
1894 and 1908.
In the introduction to Ueber sociale Differenzierung (On social dif-
ferentiation), entitled On the epistemology of the social sciences,
Simmel introduces sociology as a science of the second order with the task
of developing new hypotheses. There is another important factor relating
to sociology. It is an eclectic science insofar as the products of other schol-
arly disciplines provide its material. It processes the results of historical
research, anthropology, statistics and psychology rather as semi-finished
products: It does not address itself to the original material which other
sciences deal with; instead it is a science of the second order, so to speak,
in that it creates new syntheses from that which is already synthesis for
the other disciplines. In its present state it merely offers a new perspective
for the examination of well-known facts (Simmel, 1890a: 2).
Thus sociology does not have its own object of investigation, but it does
have a method of treatment, distinctive and peculiar to itself, which it
 the message of interaction: how reality is constructed73

applies at a typically high level of abstraction. Simmel describes sociology

as a field which uses the results of other branches of scholarship rather
like semi-finished products. The other disciplines like history or cultural
anthropology are suppliers of components, so to speak, and the final
assembly takes place in the great manufacturing hall of sociology. The
basis for the production is provided by the research results of historians,
psychologists, statisticians, ethnologists, and others all of whom work at a
much more concrete level. The sociologist must accept these, since from
Simmels point of view he has no other data which might provide him
with a new source of knowledge, only facts which somebody else has stud-
ied previously. Facts, known due to the work of other disciplines, are raised
by the sociologist to a new and higher level of abstraction of knowledge.
They are thus given a new conceptual form to produce new insights based
on the creation of reality in interaction.
In principle this is not peculiar to sociology, because Simmel reminds
us that ultimately the content of any scholarly discipline does not consist
of mere objective facts but always contains an interpretation and shaping
of these facts according to categories and norms which are a priori for the
individual discipline concerned (ibid: 3). The formative process is neces-
sary even in those fields working at the source of data. But for sociology or
for the social sciences generally, he regards the process of construction as
being particularly important. As far as the social sciences are concerned,
there is simply a quantitatively larger proportion of the element of mental
construction as compared to other fields of scholarship. One is thus espe-
cially justified here in seeking to bring to theoretical consciousness the
principles according to which that construction process occurs (ibid.).
One important question of method is the construction of unity out of
isolated empirical data. The scholar involved in research in sociology looks
for the links between contributing components to form an image of real-
ity. Those components would otherwise be left unrelated, since their inter-
relationship is not inherent but the result of a constructive process. Hence
one is justified in asking the question: Is it legitimate to construct unity
even where empirical findings suggest unrelated diversity? One can plau-
sibly show that the world possesses ultimate unity, and that all individual-
ization and differentiation is mere illusion, just as one can plausibly
believe that each and every element of the world is absolutely distinctive,
that not even one leaf of a tree is exactly the same as any other, and that all
efforts to impose unity on it is a subjective addition imposed by our minds,
merely the result of a psychological urge to integrate and unify for which
there is no objective justification (ibid: 4).
74 chapter three

These reflections are directed to what happens in the workshop of the

sociologist, not primarily to the dynamics of everyday life. But while to
Max Weber the construction of ideal types is the prerogative of the
researcher, in Simmels perspective there is not really that much differ-
ence: Reality construction to him occurs in everyday life as it does in the
study or in the library. Thus he draws his readers attention to the impor-
tance of creative combinatory techniques or formative interactive pro-
cesses also to be accepted as a methodical feature of the social sciences.
In his attempt to determine a legitimate task for sociology in the family
of related academic disciplines, particularly in connection with research
on history, Simmel points out that the position of methodological individu-
alism (preferred by Max Weber) has become unsustainable. This raises the
question of whether Simmel position on these issues is contradictory
for the following reasons: He describes social development as a gradual
increase in individualism, and at the same time he justifies sociology
as the study of historic forces rooted in classes, nations and other collec-
tive bodies instead of in the actions of lonely heroes. At the same time
Durkheim criticizes the consequences of excessive individualism and
points to the social defects he described as anomie which he sees resulting
from over-individualized conditions. Simmel by contrast predicts more
individualization as progress, but then on the level of method Simmel
declares that the individualistic perspective has been superseded
(Simmel, 1894 a: 271). Nonetheless, even if individualism is going to domi-
nate modern life, it does not follow that methodological individualism is a
useful way of doing sociology.
The essay which opens with the striking statement that the individual-
istic perspective has been overcome, was published in translation in the
USA in 1895 (Simmel, 1895a). Simmel backs it up with convincing argu-
ments: In research about the starting points of historical events he thinks
that the epoch of individualistic thought has come to an end in which
individuals were seen as initiators of historical developments and changes.
Hence sociology had become necessary in order to shed light on those
supra-individual forces which were from then on to be regarded as the
driving force of history: The overthrow of the individualistic point of view
may be considered the most important and fruitful step which historical
science and the humanities [Geisteswissenschaften] 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
and national movements as the real determining factors. Out of these
forces the parts which individuals play cannot be evaluated with complete
 the message of interaction: how reality is constructed75

definiteness. The science of human beings has become the science of

human society. (Simmel, 1895a: 412).
Simmel rejects any definition of sociology as a collective term for the
accumulation of certain facts, empty generalizations, and abstractions.
This accumulation of empty concepts detached from concrete life has
brought about the doom of philosophy (Simmel, 1894a: 272) and would
mean exactly the same ruination for sociology. Almost prophetically, he
anticipates the dead end which certain areas of sociological theorization
would reach. If sociology is to establish itself as a serious and respectable
discipline, it must differentiate itself within the broad field of the social
sciences, which includes economics, psychology and history, and be in a
position to emphasize the distinctiveness of its interactive method of see-
ing reality located in relationships.
For this there are enough worthy examples within the sphere of the
other humanities: Economic history, for example, accordingly isolates
from the totality of events everything which is connected with the physi-
cal needs of man and the means of satisfying these needs even though
there may be nothing within this totality that is in reality not connected in
some way with these needs. Similarly, sociology as a distinctive discipline
will adopt the same procedure: It detaches for separate consideration the
purely social aspects from the totality of mankinds history, i.e. the events
in society; or, to express it with rather paradoxical brevity, it investigates
that which is society in society (ibid: 274f., compare: Hoefnagels 1966).
Simmel takes examples such as religious community, band of con-
spirators, and other social groupings in order to identify the phenomena
they all share: In all of them there is some kind of leadership, there is the
definition of membership to distinguish the insider form the outsider etc.
These phenomena are objects of sociology at a high level of abstraction
not customary in other disciplines: If we examine social groupings of the
most diverse purposes and moral character, we find that they display the
same forms of subordination and domination, of opposition, of division of
labor, we find the formation of a hierarchy, the representation of the
group-forming principle in symbols, separation into parties, we find all
degrees of freedom or subjection of the individual to the group, cross-
connections or stratification of groups, certain types of reaction of these
to external influences (ibid.: 273). This catalogue of research tasks for
sociology was way ahead of its time in 1894.
From our point of view today, all this is taken for granted, at least as far
as the sociologist is concerned: In spite of the huge differences between
social groupings, all of them share domination, competition, the search
76 chapter three

for solidarity. Simmels problem was that his contemporaries at the uni-
versities believed all specialists fields were clearly and conclusively delin-
eated. Individual disciplines were separated according to their object of
study and not according to methods or degree of abstraction. Thus there
was no object left which had not already been assigned to an academic
field: The authority lay with the discipline of whatever specific subject was
in question be it history of art, history of religion or history of econom-
ics. Simmel accounts for the need for sociology by introducing a new level
of abstraction, and at this level there would be an opportunity for develop-
ing for example a sociology of domination and subordination (Simmel,
1895a: 415) as Max Weber was to do later.
The philosophers and historians who took any interest at all in sociol-
ogy during this period (18901900) understood it to denote either the posi-
tivism of Comte and Spencer (as for example the early Dilthey did) or the
theory of Karl Marx. In the face of this kind of confrontation, Simmels
emphasis on interaction showed a third path that would neither side with
positivism nor with Marxism. Simmel accused his critics of narrow-mind-
edness for not recognizing the wealth of research questions that can be
generated from the perspective of interaction: The scope of this academic
field is moreover in no sense so narrow, as it appeared to a number of my
critics The importance, for example, of a common mealtime for the
cohesion of individuals is a real sociological theme, likewise the differ-
ences in socialization which are connected with variations in the number
of associates; the importance of the non-partisan in the conflict of mem-
bers (in German: Genossen); the poor as organic members of societies;
the representation of corporations by individuals; the primus inter pares
(the first among equals) and the tertius gaudens (if two quarrel, then the
third will be happy). (ibid. 422).
It is hard to judge the influence of this work by Simmel on the develop-
ing American sociology of the time. However, Simmel quite clearly argues
once more at the end of the essay that it is time to get out of the dead-end
of historicisms and its constant referring back to art history, economic his-
tory and other specific branches of history; he argues that the research
program relating to interaction and pursued by sociology should not just
be tolerated but given full recognition. Sociology is always sociology of the
social (Hoefnagels, 1966); it may not have its own empirical, concrete
objects, but it does have its own method of investigation, for example the
subject of power and domination (bearing in mind that these occur both
in church parishes and in criminal gangs); sociology must develop this
level of abstraction for itself as a source of its identity.
 the message of interaction: how reality is constructed77

Just as economic history interprets historical objects by abstracting

from the wealth of actual events that which is important to its own par-
ticular path of enquiry, so sociology must draw out those forms which are
produced as a result of dynamic interaction. It is in the nature of the task
of sociology to show the particular forces at work within groups which are
completely heterogeneous in material terms as an area of study which jus-
tifies abstraction, socialization as such and its forms. These forms develop
from the interaction of individuals, relatively independent of the reasons
for this interaction; the sum of these forms is that which is denoted by the
abstract term society (Simmel, 1894a: 273).
The abstract concept society does not denote the sum of unrelated ele-
ments for Simmel, but rather as its main object it is for sociology a unified
whole. His theory of the formative process gives rise to a meaningful con-
cept of society, which corresponds to the underlying principles of his epis-
temology. Whereas in a work of art, culture is objectified as the result of
the creative activity of an individual, the formative processes in society
take place as a result of a large number of interactions, to which Simmel
assigns the status of objective reality. He derives his notion of how social
reality comes about, from the thesis that reality is embodied in relations.
And indeed the interactions between individuals constitute life itself.
The reality with which social science is therefore concerned does not only
consist of elements which are, as it were, anatomically dissected, lifeless
entities; instead we are to perceive life as a unified whole, integrated
through interaction. This approach applies to the psychical unity of the
individual as well as to the unity of society and other complex social
groupings which sociology investigates.
Simmel finds it necessary to define further criteria for correct methodi-
cal procedure relating to this perspective: A selection must be made from
amongst the immense diversity of possible interactions between those
which are to be singled out for consideration and others which must be
disregarded. As a solution to this methodical problem, Simmel suggests
searching in society not for laws as in the natural sciences which he had
explicitly rejected but for interactive relationships which occur with cer-
tain regularity as trends or tendencies.
Following this line of thought, Simmel comes to a tentative conclusion
as to the question of the status of the objects of sociology in terms of real-
ity: He still regards physical, material reality as being of primary impor-
tance. In this context each thing stands for itself and by itself. A secondary
element, of a different quality but nevertheless unquestionably a part of
reality, is the sphere of the interaction of parts; this interaction is a dynamic
78 chapter three

process producing relationships as phenomena to which sociology must

address itself if it is to fulfill its task properly and fully. Sociology then has
as its topic of study what goes on between persons.
If interaction constitutes unity, would not unity come about also in con-
frontation or conflict which can also be regarded as a form of interac-
tion? If two societies come into hostile contact with one another, do they
then not become parts of a larger unit which encompasses both of them?
There is agreement with this view in the literature on conflict theory, and,
what is more, Simmel is specifically referred to in this context. However, if
we read Simmel carefully, we see that his reflections on the unifying effect
of conflict are expressed only as a tentative experimental argument; at
the conclusion of this experiment he puts forward reasons which show
that this idea is mistaken, and should therefore be rejected.
As far as Simmel is concerned, conflict is a case of interaction for which
his definition of a whole, a unity formed by interaction, is simply inap-
propriate (Simmel, 1890a: 15). One would have to look for the specific
difference to be added to the concept of interactive individuals or groups
in order to reach the common notion of society as opposed to that of
antagonistic groups. For example, one might say that it was an interaction
in which acting for ones own good also promotes the good of others at the
same time (ibid.). He elaborates on this idea in his text on competition,
but in conflicting encounters of large groups as in wars, this condition of
promoting the good of others while promoting ones own interest is clearly
not met (even though war propaganda typically suggests that).
Simmel returns to the problem of creating reality in interaction: One
can perhaps perceive the limit of social being as such to be at the point
where the interaction of individuals amongst themselves does not only
manifest itself in a subjective state, but creates an objective form which
possesses a certain independence from the individuals partaking in it. In
other words, where there has been a unification or integration of which
the form remains even when individual members leave and new members
join; (ibid: 16). Here, then, social being as such is defined as the cre-
ation of objective forms which, as far as Simmel is concerned, exist when
the individuals involved can leave the social group due to death or deser-
tion without the group itself ceasing to exist. Interaction may have stopped
but it leaves its traces behind.
The principle of interaction transcends the idea of a duality between
the individual and the group. In 1908, Simmel explicitly rejects this choice,
according to which an idea either exists in the mind of an individual or in
a social mind of a group (Simmel, 1908c: 287). This simple choice of one
 the message of interaction: how reality is constructed79

or the other Simmel regards as fragile. There is in fact a third element: The
objective intellectual content (ibid.) like the rules of mathematics.
Simmel mentions language and the legal code as examples of such objec-
tivity. And it is indeed true that the classical languages remain intellectual
realities, even though they are no longer spoken in any living society. They
are of course not the object of sociology, but they are an objective intel-
lectual content (ibid.). The key criterion for deciding what should be
considered as sociological and what should not is the relationship in inter-
action or mutual influence. If for instance statistical data are arrived at
that a particular phenomenon occurs in 20% of the population, this by no
means guarantees that it is a sociological fact. It will only be sociological
insofar as it is the result of interactions (ibid: 290).

Society Emerges in Interaction

The most complex form under study in sociology, society, too emerges
from the processes of interaction. Simmel defines it as a living whole. But
instead of merely presenting his own ideas and disregarding other schol-
arly viewpoints, he undertakes to describe and tentatively represent the
positivistic position in opposition to his own, with the predictable result
that he refutes them in the end: The concept of society obviously only has
meaning if it stands in some kind of contrast to the mere sum of individu-
als; if society was merely this, then it could surely only be the object of a
science in no other way than for example the night sky is the object of
astronomy; whereas in fact this is only a collective term, and what astron-
omy actually researches is the movements of the individual stars and the
laws governing such movements (Simmel, 1890 a: 10).
Simmel compares sociology to the natural sciences, particularly astron-
omy. The night sky as a whole is not astronomys object of investigation;
it is merely an unspecified collective term embracing the specific ele-
ments, which can alone be objects of research, specifically in how they
relate to each other. Society, on the other hand, is real as a totality, and it
ought to be possible for the sociologist to show that society is more than
the sum of its parts. If society is just our way of considering individual
elements together, whereas individual elements are what constitutes real-
ity itself, then it is these elements and their behavior which form the
actual object of scientific investigation, and the concept of society
disappears. And this does indeed seem to be the case (ibid.). When
Simmel writes, that this seems to be the case he indicates that it is in fact
not so.
80 chapter three

There are of course branches of sociology which adopt an analytical,

rather than interactive, approach and conduct empirical research accord-
ingly, typically at the micro level of small groups. This produces results for
which Simmels words are true: The concept of society disappears, because
such a concept is not assigned any reality of its own. The positivistic posi-
tion, which Simmel does not wish to adopt, is outlined by him as follows:
That which exists empirically is nothing but individual people, their con-
ditions and movements: Thus it can only be a matter of understanding
these, whereas the idea of society is then an intangible product of purely
conceptual synthesis and ought not therefore be the object of any enquiry
which seeks to investigate reality (ibid.).
What Simmel described in these sentences coincides largely with the
point of view of the English and French sociology of the late 19th century,
which Dilthey (Dilthey 1883) rejected as methodically impossible. Aware
of the objections raised by Dilthey against a sociology conceived along the
lines of the natural sciences, particularly physics and biology, Simmel sets
out to argue in favor of a social science as an area of study following the
path of research in history or economics, or a psychology not based on the
natural sciences.
We must indeed distinguish as sharply as possible between real things,
which we can regard as objective unities, and their combination into com-
plex entities, which only exist as such in our synthetic thinking (ibid.)
What the analysts propose to do, what seems appropriate to the advocates
of a sociological nominalism is quite right for them as a basic idea. Simmel
does not in fact adopt the distinction between a correctly perceived reality
on the one hand and terms which are stuck on rather like labels on the
other hand; he considers the distinction between these two views as a rec-
ognition of two types of reality, rather than as two alternative methodical
positions. Thus to Simmel, they are both real, but each is real in a different
way. This conviction about two types of realities leads him to distinguish
between real entities, which we can regard as objective unities such as
individuals or small groups and the combination of these into complex
entities, which as such only exist in our synthetic thinking. Simmel sees
this distinction as valuable and necessary for defining his own concept of
society.
But when methodical individualism turns this critique against the con-
cept of society, one need only reflect at greater depth to realize that, in so
doing, it is only condemning itself. For even an individual person consists
of components, that are not united beyond any possibility of disintegrat-
ing. But such unity would be required by a type of knowledge willing to
 the message of interaction: how reality is constructed81

accept only ultimate reality. To comprehend the multiplicity as such which

even the individual displays in himself is, as I see it, one of the most impor-
tant requirements for a rational basis of sociology, which I would thus now
like to go into further (ibid.: 10f.).
Simmel calls individualism what he rejects here as a method. Again, he
criticizes his opponents on their own terms. He takes the arguments in
favor of methodical individualism seriously so seriously that he is able
finally to turn its own reasoning against this position. He shows that the
idea of the distinctiveness of the individual has religious roots: As long as
mankind, just as all organic species, was regarded as Gods creation, a
being which entered the world ready-equipped with all its qualities, it was
obvious and almost necessary to regard the individual person as a com-
pletely integrated whole, an indivisible personality whose unique soul
found expression and analogy in the uniform identity of its physical
organs. The view of history as a development renders this impossible.
(ibid: 11).
Simmel explains how that which is indivisible in religion, an indi-
vidual fixed for all eternity, becomes after Darwin an isolated moment
within a process of evolution. This applies to both Darwins view of bio-
logical evolution of mankind and to the development of the individual in
the course of a lifetime. From this perspective, we combine without
being conscious of doing that into what we experience as individuals, an
immense diversity of socialization effects, together with information
passed down to us in our genetic make-up. Thus Simmel draws the conclu-
sion that the multiplicity of specific data is just as impenetrable or com-
plex, or at least similarly complicated, at the level of the individual as it is
at the level of society.
At both levels, the formative process produces a unity that does not
exist by itself. Accordingly, a scholarly point of view, like methodical indi-
vidualism, will contradict its own premises if it limits its concept of reality
to an unambiguously fully-unified pre-existing whole. For in this case,
even the individual would slip through the analysts fingers and dissolve
into an unintelligible multiplicity of isolated details. This argumentation
deserves attention as a rarely presented plea in favor of the position of
realism and thus of interpretive sociology which sees society emerge as
the result of interaction.
The question of unity as the fundamental problem of a concept of
society remains an issue throughout Simmels work, and he eventu
ally asks the question in this form: How is society possible? This
occurs in the introduction to the first chapter of his book Soziologie.
82 chapter three

Untersuchungen ber die Formen der Vergesellschaftung (Sociology.

Studies of the forms of socialization; Simmel, 1908a, Simmel 2009). This
work was originally published in 1908.
In order to give sociology a well defined content, Simmel mentions soci-
ety as its primary field of investigation. And the most thorough method to
clarify what he understands by society is to enquire into the preconditions
for its existence. In his answer to the similar question how is nature pos-
sible? Kant had sought to identify the forms which make up the essence
of our intellect, (Simmel 1908a: 28) claiming nature, for instance, is
nowhere to be found as a given but as a form is always the product of intel-
lectual activity. By posing the analogous question for society, Simmel
emphasizes that the forming process does not follow the same path as in
Kants description of nature.
Therefore he points to the completely different methodical intention
(ibid: 30) of this question relating to society in comparison to the question
relating to nature. I stated that the function of realizing synthetic unity
lies, in the case of nature, in the investigating subject, but in the case of
society has been passed on to its own elements (ibid: 31). What are the
mental processes which individuals, as the elements of society, must have
undergone in order for society to be possible?
The philosophy of nature is concerned with processes which do not
directly influence nature, because the components of nature are uncon-
scious. Social philosophy by contrast must take account of processes of the
conscious minds of humans, processes which themselves are already
social reality. Transitioning from nature to society, epistemology becomes
empirical science. Simmel says that one might well call this the episte-
mology of society (ibid: 32). By 1908, his epistemology had reached a form
which was capable of immediate adaptation to a theory of society and
henceforth be valuable as sociology. Simmel attempts in the following to
outline some of these a priori conditions or forms of socialization
[Vergesellschaftung] (ibid.).
The qualitative threshold that divides natural philosophy from social
philosophy can be described like this: When dealing with data relating to
nature, unity is merely created in the mind of the researcher and the
objects of research remain unaffected by this. Society, in contrast, consists
of conscious individuals, and their mental constructs create a unity (in
circumstances that are the very object of investigation) not only within
the individual but also as the immediate reality Simmel calls society.
What then are the cognitive processes, which individuals, as the ele-
ments of society, must have undergone in order for them to make society
 the message of interaction: how reality is constructed83

possible? Simmel attempts to outline some of the a priori conditions or

forms of socialization that must exist in order to make society possible.

a.The image, which one person gains of another person through interac-
tion is skewed in the direction of generalization using familiar catego-
ries. This image cannot be the mirror-like reflection of an unchanging
reality, but is socially constructed in a particular way. That is a neces-
sary consequence of the fact that complete knowledge of the individu-
ality of others is not accessible to us. For society to be possible, we form
generalized impressions of our fellow humans and assign each of them
to a general category despite the singularity of each. It is then possible
to designate each person to a particular sphere. Within the spheres of
military officers, people of religious faith, civil servants, scholars, and
family members, each individual makes a certain assumption in how
he or she sees the other person by implying: This person is a member of
my social circle.
b.Every individual is not only a part of society but also something else
besides (ibid: 35). There can be no total social engulfment; the indi-
vidual must always hold back a part of personal existence from total
identification with society or else risk pathological developments both
in the person and in social structure. Simmel sees the relationship
between personal existence on the one hand and identification with
society on the other as a dynamic process leading to a wide variety of
different forms. In the context of those the nature of ones being social
is determined or partly determined by the nature of ones being not
completely social. This means, how I appear in interaction with others
depends on how I cultivate my independent, individual existence (ibid:
36). Simmel illustrates that in his studies and mentions as examples the
stranger, the enemy, the criminal, and the poor as forms of interaction.
The quality of the encounters of people within social categories would
be quite different, were each person to confront every other person
exclusively as what they appear to be in a particular category, as repre-
sentative of the particular social role one happens to be seen in. But
that is not the case: The waiter who brings my food in the restaurant is
something else besides being my waiter, and I am of course aware of
that.
c.Society is a combination of dissimilar elements for even where dem-
ocratic or socialist forces plan or partially realize an equality it can
only be equality in the sense of being equal in value (ibid: 41). There
can be no question of the elements (and by that Simmel means the
84 chapter three

individuals who together form society) being homogeneous in the

sense of having identical qualities. In this diversity lies the prerequisite
for cooperation. The a priori principles Simmel is leading up to here are
1) the assumption that each individual can find a place in society, and
2) that this ideally appropriate position for the individual in society
does actually exist. This is the condition upon which the social life of
the individual is based, and which one might term the universality of
individuality. The category of occupation (vocation) derives its mean-
ing from this a priori as well but it is, of course, not limited to the world
of working life.
It may be appropriated to state that Simmels account of social a prioris
does not possess normative status. He also repeatedly mentions that those
theoretical fundamentals do not describe social conditions. He thus nei-
ther requires that these a prioris should empirically exist, nor does he
claim that they do. If in any concrete individual case the condition of the
a priori is not fulfilled, then that particular person does not contribute
toward constituting and stabilizing society. But society as a whole is only
possible because people generally speaking realize these a priori condi-
tions through the way they interact with each other.

Religion as Interaction

To believers, religion becomes reality as a result of the interaction they

engage in with a person in the beyond. A god or other immortal is real only
to those faithful followers who interact with him or her. To others his real-
ity status is like that of Cinderella or of Santa Claus, not reality, but fiction.
Any conceivable relationship between God and the world must be real! In
mysticism this is the form adopted by the ens realissimum, replacing the
objective God with a relationship with God the one religious fact that
offers itself as the most immediate objectification of the subjective life
process of religion (Simmel 1997: 150).
Like society, religion is possible because the content of the conscious
mind not merely reflects on something untouched by thought, but itself
contributes to the shaping of reality. Thus religion and society are not dif-
ferent in principle; religion too is a social formation. Its specific effect is
that it serves as a bridge between the here and the beyond. The question
How is religion possible? is answered by Simmel thus: Religion is possi-
ble because human beings, associated in lively interaction, give concrete
shape to religious forms on the basis of social forms.
 the message of interaction: how reality is constructed85

The sacred texts which Jews and Christians share, contain the two
books of Samuel. In the first one of those, the third chapter reports about
a dream which occurs to young Samuel three times in a row (1 Samuel 3,
318). The first two experiences he interprets as dreams, but then in a con-
versation with the aged office holder Eli, Samuel is instructed by Eli to
approach a possible third occurrence not as dream but rather as a real
encounter with the deity (ibid, verse 9). Thus Samuel is confronted with
three comparable events, and defines the first two as dreams and the third
one as reality, the change occurring as the result of his interaction with Eli.
From a sociological perspective the initiative to create religious phe-
nomena by means of the formative process does not emanate from an
outer-worldly sphere as theology would teach but from the shared
experience of social life, in our illustration shared by Eli and Samuel. For
the sociologist who studies it, religion is reality because it is not disprov-
able; for the religious person habitually experiences things in such a way
that they cannot be any different from what his religiousness allows them
to be (Simmel, 1906: 16).
Simmel compares the religious person to somebody in love: It has
often been observed that the emotion of love creates its own object as an
object of love, the beloved is always the creation of the one who loves. In
love, a new form emerges, which, though of course bound to the fact of a
personality, nevertheless lives in a world which is completely different in
essence and conception and totally separate from the actual reality of this
person. (ibid. 31).
Simmel draws this comparison between the creativity of love, which
enables love itself to generate a new form, and the creative act of the
religious person necessary for the content of faith to become factual.
Of course, the believer links faith to concrete phenomena open to varying
interpretations guided in part by emotions. As a consequence religious
feelings and faith are never a necessary conclusion to be drawn from the
facts, contrary to arguments seeking to prove the existence of God; the
adoption of faith is a free choice, in fact the question of whether a person
is able to adopt such faith is a question of his or her own experiences and
feelings.
Simmel also describes the reactions of human emotion to fate Hope,
despair, rebellion, and satisfaction all these are emotional reactions to
experienced events. Whether any reaction has a religious quality or not, is
a matter of the persons own creative interpretation of the reality of his or
her life. Simmel notes here that this is a matter of a particular quality of
emotion (ibid: 16). In interaction with fellow believers the faithful create
86 chapter three

their own religion as if resulting from sensory perception. However our

emotions may react to fate; whether submissive or rebellious, with hope or
despair, with need or contentment this reaction may be completely irre-
ligious or else entirely religious. (ibid. 15).
According to Simmel the religious quality does not emanate from a
believed transcendental power onto experience, but is a particular quality
of emotion itself a concentration or impulse, dedication or remorse
which is religious as such; this emotional quality creates a religious object
as its objectification, a separate entity, just as sensory perception has its
object which is separate and yet is filtered through it (ibid.: 15f.). The
expectation of some good in everything the faithful encounters influences
perception and interpretation in such a fundamental way he actually sees
what he expects to see; in the words of William I. Thomas, he defines the
situation according to what he expects.
If one were only to read Simmels book Die Religion, one might be
confused or entertained, but it is the authors epistemology which provides
the explanatory background to the book. One example of this is the sen-
tence: Just as knowledge does not create causality but causality creates
knowledge, in the same way religion does not create religiousness but reli-
giousness creates religion (ibid: 17). The causality of scientific phenom-
ena exists prior to and independent of the knowledge of it. Therefore
Simmel claims that knowledge does not create causality, but that, on the
contrary, causality exists and hence provides the potential of gaining
knowledge of it. He draws a comparison between this relationship and
that of religion and religiousness, and states that religion does not exist in
the natural world perceivable by the senses, like causality, but is only pos-
sible as a result of the impulse given by mans religiousness.
Religion and society have in common that they are conceivable as social
realities only. They are objectified forms resulting from interactive pro-
cesses. Simmel illustrates this by pointing to social norms which were
developed into religious norms. Everywhere in society there are condi-
tions which, without their social significance, would never have developed
further to become religious in character. And it is in the course of this
development that they acquire energies and forms deriving from their
inner tension and meaning, not from some transcendental source. These
conditions would not have claimed this transcendental association just
as many other often parallel norms have not done so if their specific
emotional state, their power of integration, their particular constraints
did not make them project these norms onto a religious level by their very
nature. (ibid. 22) In ancient Judaism, hygienic precautions are seen to be
 the message of interaction: how reality is constructed87

a divine command at the religious level, princes demand obedience since

they claim to rule by divine right, etc.
Simmel includes in his sociology of religion the confrontation between
objectivity as an opposite pole to subjectivist, interactionist thinking.
The wording they would never have claimed this transcendental
association (see above) assumes the existence of an autonomous tran-
scendental field which is summoned up in the process of mans inter
preting the world around him, like a shaman summons up the soul of a
deceased. Accepting or rejecting a world of social experience happens first
and then it may or may not subsequently be assigned religious meaning.
Simmel quotes an author here without specifying his source: The arche-
typal religious community was the tribe, and all the duties and obligations
amongst relations were also components of religious life. Even if the tribal
god was almost forgotten, the main essence of tribal religion asserted itself
in the strength of the blood bond (ibid: 24).
The social and the religious are mutually dependent. For Simmel, reli-
gious formation is not conceivable without social formation as a basis and
a parallel process. This leads him to a conclusion which is surprising,
though plausible in the light of his premises: Buddhism should not be
described as a religion, for this reason: It completely lacks the social
aspect it teaches complete withdrawal from social life. Self-redemption
here is merely separating oneself from existence, whether social or natu-
ral: Buddhism knows no duties toward itself But then Buddhism is
not a religion. It is the doctrine of that type of salvation which is to be
gained in complete isolation through sheer individual will and thought
(ibid. 25).
As far as Simmel is concerned, the condition for interaction being
objectified into a religious form does not pertain to Buddhism. He per-
ceives no social dimension in Buddhism. Whether he is right or not, we
shall leave open. What is important for our purposes is that his concept of
religion can be derived from the epistemology he has adapted as sociology.
We can see quite clearly what Simmel means by religion when he describes
specific features: Otherwise, in every religion, and especially ancient
Semitism, and the Greek and Roman religions, the religious duty to sacri-
fice and pray, in fact the entire cult, is not a personal matter but the respon-
sibility of the individual as a member of a particular group, and this group
is then seen as responsible for the religious failings of the individual (ibid:
26). Religiousness is a creative contribution of the individual to the reli-
gious interpretation of the world, but ritual and sacrifice, etc. are the
responsibility of the community. By placing himself in this community,
88 chapter three

the individual can take part in the interactive processes, which provide his
religiousness with concrete objects.
Interaction as a social reality does not only apply to empirical persons
in this world. In fact, Simmels definition of religion includes the relation-
ship between deity and believer. He shows this in his concept of faith.
Faith is not merely a matter of theoretical content of a theological and
dogmatic nature, but is, first and foremost, a feeling of vital and personal
closeness. Simmel points out the importance of mans social-emotional
commitment; for we feel that when a religious person states I believe in
God, this does not mean that person merely considers the existence of
God to be a fact. It does not mean that this existence is accepted even
though it is not strictly provable; what it means is a certain inner relation-
ship toward God, a spiritual dedication to him, an orientation of life
toward him. (ibid: 34).
Social reality only arises from living relationships. Simmel defines real-
ity as existing within relations: For the person of faith, it is thus not merely
a question of whether this God exists somewhere or not, but whether or
not he has a certain inner relationship to him (see above). The presence
or the lack of such a vital relationship is the key criterion for the existence
of religiousness. Hence Buddhism is for Simmel a subjectivist doctrine of
salvation, but not a religion. Simmel draws a line between what humans
experience as given externally on the one hand and how they think about
what happens to themselves as an inner event on the other. His view of
faith is subject to the epistemological transformation from intellectual-
theoretical reflection on something external (in the case of the deity
external to the world) to direct formation within subjective experience.
As an illustration we may consider the following: I cannot sit opposite
someone who is personally close to me or indeed any fellow human
being and merely engage in theoretical reflection on this person. This
would be just as (or even more) inconceivable in the case of a god who is
seen to be a member of the community. Practical faith is a basic attitude
of the soul which is in essence sociological, i.e. realized as a relationship to
a being facing the self. This is based on the fact that it is possible for man
to split himself is a result of his ability to divide himself into subject and
object and to view himself as he does another person. This ability is a phe-
nomenon which has no analogy outside humankind; it determines the
entire form of our thought as social (ibid: 38). Simmel explains that there
is a built-in social dimension in the human being because of his or her
ability to conduct an inner discourse. Thus humans have the potential to
interact with themselves as they can do with a god.
 the message of interaction: how reality is constructed89

Faith then as seen by Simmel is not merely theoretical but a form of

behavior; it is in essence sociological (see above). Faith thus creates a
lasting relationship that is personal rather than rational. Similar to Max
Webers reflections on the legitimacy of domination as being rooted in
the faith the dominated person has in his or her ruler, Simmel writes:
Relationships requiring the obedience or subjection of one party to
another, for example, are very often not based on the knowledge that the
other person is rightfully superior, nor are they based on love or sugges-
tion, but instead on this belief in his power, merit, irresistibility and
virtue, a belief which is by no means mere theoretical, hypothetical sup-
position but a quite distinctive spiritual pattern which develops between
individual human beings in interaction (ibid: 38f.).
The relationship between two people is described by Simmel as a men-
tal pattern, a formation which results from interactive processes. Not only
is faith, seen in this way, endowed with a relational quality, but also the
deity. Simmel in no way denies the possibility that a given deity possesses
the quality of being real. But this reality, conceived of as a point of depar-
ture for action, is not something which the deity has on its own, but rather
as the consequence of a relationship between people, particularly as
members of a group. It is not the individual member but the group as
such which is under a particular god; and this group shows that in the
god, a unity is being expressed which collectively binds the individuals
together. The god is the name given to the sociological unity of the group,
so to speak (ibid: 44). Almost the same wording is used by Durkheim
(Durkheim 1912).
The image of the deity as a member of the community is in keeping
with the idea that religion is a social form. Simmel examines the transition
from the empirical-sociological unity of the social group to the absolute
unity of the concept of a god: This progression has a stage which is often
characteristic of the pre-Christian eras. For here the deity is not a separate
entity from the individual and his sphere, but is included in the latter, an
element of the immediate totality of life upon which the individual is
dependent. In ancient Judaism, for example, the god of the victim of sac-
rificial slaughter sometimes participates in the feast, so that the latter is
more than simply a tribute. In all cases there is a direct relationship
between the god and his worshippers. And wherever the god is tribal
father, king or indeed in any way the god of this particular social group or
city whereas other gods of equally unquestioned existence are peculiar
to other groups in all such cases, the god is a member of the community
(ibid.: 49).
90 chapter three

As the highest member of the community, the deity can potentially

have a dynamic relationship to its believers indeed the deity must main-
tain such a relationship in order not to lose its quality of realness. However,
whether or not this relationship is actually maintained depends on the
believers. In keeping with the idea that deities are members of their com-
munities, transcendental societies like Olympus or whatever the respec-
tive heaven may be called have social structures identical to those of
mortal society. The beyond of feudal stages in history is not egalitarian but
knows distinctions in rank like those between angels and archangels.
In Greece and Rome, where the monarchy was overpowered by the
aristocracy at an early stage, an aristocratic order imposed itself on reli-
gion too, with a hierarchy of several gods of equal standing In Asia, on
the other hand, where the monarchy remained powerful for much longer,
the form of religion tends to consist of a god with monarchical power.
Indeed, the strength of tribal unity which dictated the social life of the
ancient Arabs itself prefigured the monotheism of that group (ibid. 50).
An important factor in the social life of the Syrians, Assyrians and
Lydians was the psychological blurring of gender differences, and this
finds expression in deities who uniformly integrate such differences
within themselves: The half-male Astarte, the male-female Sadon, the sun
god Melkarth who exchanges gender symbols with the moon goddess.
This is not merely an illustration of the trivial saying that man projects
himself into his god which is of such generality that requires no proof.
We must appreciate that gods are not merely an idealization of individual
characteristics strength, moral or immoral qualities, the likes and needs
of individuals but that inter-individual forms of social life often deter-
mine the form of religious images (ibid.: 50f.).
Thus Simmel sees these gods represent qualities of relationships. These
inter-individual forms of social life (see above) become the content of
religious faith. It is for this reason that certain cultures are not yet able to
accept certain beliefs (a theme of mission studies), or are no longer able
to accept them (e.g. the decline of Christianity in industrial societies):
This is bound to occur in the absence of a minimum level of compatibil-
itybetween the secular social forms and the transcendent dogmas taught
by the respective religious body.
Having outlined observations on faith referring to religions in general,
Simmel turns to the particular qualities of Christianity which distinguish
it from other religions. One of the a priori conditions for society to exist
is that the individual must reserve a part of his or her being to himself
in order to keep from being totally absorbed by the social environment.
 the message of interaction: how reality is constructed91

This was the second a priori requirement which Simmel formulated in

answer to the question How is society possible? He applies this to reli-
gion which for Simmel shares with society the quality of being a social
form. The churches and communities devoted to Christianity have been
confronted with the conflict between their teaching freedom of the bap-
tized individual on the one hand and the conformity required of him or
her by their community on the other.
Because the freedom we have in mind cannot simply mean that some-
thing arbitrary should happen independent of social control, indeed its
meaning amounts to full self-responsibility, which we strive for but only
possess when our individual actions are the pure expression of our per-
sonality. This is the case if our self is expressed in what we do, unaffected
by any authority or influence external to ourselves. We desire that the
periphery of our existence be determined by its centre and not by external
powers, with which our existence is bound up, and which are then trans-
formed into inner impulses of our own being; and yet often enough we
sense that such impulses do not originate from our self. (ibid: 53).
The freedom of the individual means that he or she can determine their
existence from the center of their being, and that this existence is not sub-
ject to the peripheral influences of an external power: A human being can
subordinate himself grudgingly to a powerful deity (or government), but
then that deitys influence remains at the periphery of the believers exis-
tence. Religion which is adopted in freedom, on the other hand, according
to this conception of Simmels, requires that the deity concerned is at the
very center of the individuals existence, which is clearly only possible as
the result of a vital and positive exchange or interaction involving the
persons center.
The question of freedom of course extends to the relationship with god:
Can or should a part of personal existence be held back from total identi-
fication with this relationship? Simmels ideas on the subject needs no
comment: The dignity of individual freedom, the strength and defiance
of self-responsibility, desiring to bear the full consequence even of sin,
conflict with the relief of this burden from the self by a supreme divine
power, with the sense of comfort or even ecstatic release in the knowledge
that one is a part of an absolute whole, imbued and borne up by its power
and will (ibid: 54).
But if salvation is to consist of nothing but that each and every soul
should express and become totally immersed in its innermost being, the
pure image of itself whose contours are imposed invisibly upon its mortal
imperfection how, then, is it possible to reconcile the infinite variety of
92 chapter three

souls in their stature and depth, breadth and limitations, brilliance and
darkness, with equality of religious accomplishment and equal worthiness
before God? How, if our concept of salvation singles out as its very vehicle
those elements of a persons being which are most individual and which
distinguish him most from others? Indeed, the difficulty of reconciling
equality before God with the immeasurable diversity of individuals has
led to that uniformity of religious achievement, which has turned a good
deal of Christian life into mere schematism. (ibid: 64). This is a sharp, but
convincing critique of decades or even centuries of mistakes made in
institutionalized religion.
We (Christians) have failed to take account of all the individualism
inherent in the Christian concept of salvation, the idea that each person
should make the most of his own potentials; we demand of everyone a
uniform goal and identical behavior, instead of asking every person simply
to give of himself. It is impossible for anything, which is globally uniform,
to be an integral part of an individuals personality (ibid: 64). Here, the
idea of center and periphery is extended to the consequence that any ten-
dency to make everybody equal or to blur individuality, will necessarily
externalize or shift attention to the periphery. At the center of his being,
man is unique and totally distinct from others, and therefore anything
which is intended to move his innermost being must be tailored to his
own individual character.
Simmel also addresses the problem of the universality of a god: As soon
as the god worshipped by a particular group has a relationship to this
group which excludes all other gods, the religion must recognize that
there are other gods the gods belonging to other groups. The worship-
pers of one particular god are not allowed to worship any other gods, not
because they do not exist but to put it somewhat paradoxically because
they do exist (otherwise the danger would not be so great) but are not
the real, genuine gods for this particular group (ibid: 71).
Simmel is convinced that the Christian religions claim to universality is
one of the main reasons for its special status in comparison to other world
religions. It states that their God is not a tribal or national god of a limited
population, but a god responsible for the whole of mankind. It is only the
Christian God who encompasses both those who believe in him and those
who do not. Of all the powers within life, he is the first to break out of the
exclusivity of the social group, which until then had bound together all
the interests of its individuals in a single spatial and temporal unity. It is
thus contradictory that the relationship to the Christian God should exist
indifferently alongside the relationship other people have with other gods.
 the message of interaction: how reality is constructed93

In fact this is a positive offence against his claim to be absolute and all-
embracing; the belief in other gods means a rebellion against him, since
he is in reality also the God of the unbeliever (ibid.: 72).
In keeping with his evolutionist ideas Simmel shows the peculiarities of
the Christian religion as being the final stage of a long historical develop-
ment. (A consistent application of this is the idea of Christianity possibly
dissolving into individualism, which appears in the later writings of Max
Weber.) Thus it might well be that the sociologically developed image of
God grows in such a way as to expand his being to embrace more and
more, thereby increasing his stature. However, as soon as this process
reaches its final stage in the Christian God, the content of religion then
changes to the very opposite of that sociological character which provided
the exclusivity originally integral to the idea of god (ibid.: 73f.).
Simmel considers faith in a god as dependent on being a member of a
group. To a large extent in anticipation of Emile Durkheims sociology of
religion, he regards such membership of a group as being identical to
interacting with the deity specific to that group. But when in Christian
ity this deity is universalized, with group membership theoretically
extending to all living human beings in the world, the group boundaries
disappear and with them the clear identification of a god who is the repre-
sentative of a concrete group as a clearly delineated part of humankind.
Thus Simmel indicates that the only potentially global religion may have a
mechanism of self-destruction or self-dissolution built into it.
This prediction of a possible demise of the Christian religion is of course
very low-key compared to the critique of religion in general that was cur-
rent in the nineteenth century. Sociology had the reputation at first of
being a discipline primarily atheist in orientation. And against that back-
ground, Simmels writings on the subject appeared to be pro-religion. Yet
in his sociology of religion he took over some of the views that had been
published and received considerable acceptance, namely some of the
ideas of Feuerbach and Marx.
Philosophy was an important area of scholarly activity during Simmels
lifetime. In Germany the names of Kant and Hegel signal, that great man
of international acclaim had been working in philosophy with consider-
able success and influence. When Marx decided to give up being a student
of law and become a philosophy student instead, one of the crucial prob-
lems in 19th century European society was the loss of tradition and stabil-
ity. Many ideas that had been considered firm and reliable for centuries,
now became questionable. This was true in the 18th, and even more so in
the 19th century in which Marx lived. The implicitness was lost, according
94 chapter three

to which decisions were taken as a matter of course and never questioned.

This had the ambivalent effect of producing much more freedom, but also
much more uncertainty and fear.
Before Marx and Engels together wrote the Communist Manifesto,
Marx alone wrote a philosophical text in 184546, which (like the earlier
text, which he co-authored with Engels and which was never printed) he
called The German Ideology (Marx 1964). In this publication which was
produced early in his life, Marx dealt with the philosopher Ludwig
Feuerbach (18041872). In 1823 Ludwig Feuerbach (and there are other
famous Germans by the name Feuerbach) started to study Protestant the-
ology at the University of Heidelberg, but after only one year there, he was
frustrated by that field of study and went to Berlin to hear lectures by
Schleiermacher and Hegel. He admired Hegel very much and considered
him somewhat like a second father. As was typical for students at that
time, he changed universities again and continued his academic work at
the University of Erlangen near Nurnberg. In Erlangen he received his doc-
tor degree in 1828.
Two years later, in 1830 Feuerbach published his first book, but because
of the intolerance of the Prussian state, it was published not under
his name, but anonymously. The title was: Gedanken ueber Tod und
Unsterblichkeit or in English: Thoughts about Death and Immortality.
In this book Feuerbach denied that there is something immortal about
the human being which will live on even after the body dies. He tried
to prove that the religious belief in life after death is wrong. This
was an enormous provocation of the official state church in Protestant
Prussia, and the police started looking for the man who wrote this book
as they would try to find a criminal. As a result, like Karl Marx, he no
longer had a chance to become a professor of philosophy for political
reasons.
Marx, 14 years younger than Feuerbach, felt attracted to the man
because of his new ideas. Marx knew of course the two important books
by Feuerbach, Das Wesen des Christentums or in English: The Essence
of Christianity from 1841, and his critique of Hegel in Grundstze der
Philosophie der Zukunft, or in English: Foundations of the Philosophy of
the Future in 1843. It is easy to imagine how Marx could have been
influenced by Feuerbach, because in the book of 1843 Feuerbach wrote:
While the old philosophy started out with the sentence: I am an abstract,
merely thinking being, my body is not part of my existence; the new phi-
losophy starts out with the sentence: I am a real, a sensual being, the body
belongs to my essence; indeed, my body in its totality is my self, my very
 the message of interaction: how reality is constructed95

essence. Marx most likely agreed with that statement by Feuerbach,

which may be seen as the beginning of 19th century philosophical
materialism.
Marx rejected the dualism that coincides with the distinction between
this world and the world beyond. The objects of religious thought, gods in
the beyond, and souls of people who have died, angels or spirits and saints,
all these objects do according to Marx not exist. They are not a real
world, which under certain conditions we may experience in the beyond;
they are for Marx fantastic attempts to cope with problems that exist
in this world. But Marx is of the opinion that Feuerbach accepts that dual-
ism between this world and the beyond in principle. This point of view
led Marx to want to go even beyond Feuerbach, as we shall see in the
following.
Feuerbach does think that concepts like gods and spirits stem from the
fantasy of individuals, but he gives them the status of a reality of their
own. They are then to Feuerbach a reality into which human persons
project all those hopes and wishes which they fail to realize in this world.
Theology or the thinking about religious subjects is then for Feuerbach
a process in which humans have the chance to recognize themselves, and
the results of theological efforts demonstrate not what gods or spirits are
like, but rather under what conditions humans live. Feuerbachs approach
can therefore be described as an anthropologization of religion: Religion
does not tell us something about gods but it tells us something about
humans. This way of looking at religion has deeply influenced Marx as
well as Engels. It was the step from religion to philosophy, Marx first
important step, to which later followed his second step from philosophy
to economics.
Marx thought that Feuerbach was on the right path, but that he did not
go along that path far enough. To think that there are two types of reality
is not acceptable for Marx. There can be no dualism, because to Marx
there is only one reality, the reality of this life in which we eat and drink
and sleep. Therefore any type of beyond, in which spirits and gods may
live, cannot be real to him.
The text The German Ideology by Marx contains several theses on
Feuerbachs work, and in his fourth thesis Marx writes: Feuerbach starts
out with the fact of religious alienation, or of the duplication of the world
in a religious world and an empirical world. Feuerbachs achievement is to
dissolve the religious world into its empirical foundation. However, the
fact that this foundation produces out of itself an independent empire of
ideas up in the clouds, this fact can only be explained by looking at how
96 chapter three

torn apart and how full of inner contradictions this worldly foundation is.
It must therefore be understood in itself in order to explain its inner con-
tradiction as well as its need for revolutionizing it in its practice. (Marx
1964: 340).
For Marx, the contents of human thinking which are called religious
should not be considered as part of another world, which is separate from
our empirical world, instead for Marx religion is an aspect of this
empirical world, and moreover it shows, how sick this world is. In order to
illustrate that, he writes at the end of his fourth thesis, from which we
already quoted: Thus after for instance the worldly family has been dis-
covered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must be annihilated
theoretically as well as practically (ibid.).
Apart from the aggression and the fighting spirit which characterizes
the young Marx, the following can be maintained as the sober outcome of
his thinking: Religion must be overcome because it keeps people from
forming a correct image of the real world. Human persons cannot act ade-
quately unless they have a clear and correct image of reality. Because reli-
gion stands in the way of forming such a correct image, it must be done
away with thinks Marx.
If we contemporary academics today, more than a century after his
death, look at modern society from the perspective of the concepts and
theories of Karl Marx, we see people in the developed nations of the West
work and live under the conditions of capitalism. One of the characteris-
tics of capitalist society is from the perspective of Karl Marx the social
stratification in two conflicting classes. The members of one class are own-
ers of the means of production, and they are called capitalists, the mem-
bers of the other class are excluded from ownership of the means of
production, they are the wage earners, who are called the working class.
The theoretical division of the members of society in wage earners and
capitalists or to use the political terms instead of those oriented toward
the economy the division in the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is
according to Marx the result of the way in which humans deal with their
material environment.
But class struggle or class conflict not only creates the division of soci-
ety in two classes, it also leads to the end of the condition, due to the dia-
lectic of its own inner tension. According to historical materialism
capitalism will be overcome the sooner, the quicker human persons recog-
nize its unjust and inhuman quality. Religion has the potential of hiding
from persons the shortcomings of capitalism, and therefore religion must
be done away with.
 the message of interaction: how reality is constructed97

The attitude which Marx took toward religion was in agreement with
the view held by most cultural anthropologists in the 19th century. Almost
all of them were evolutionists who looked at the undeveloped societies,
which were discovered during the lifetime of Marx, as precursors of highly
developed cultures. Religion to them was a form of human thought
that was left over from primitive times as a transient substitute for scien-
tific knowledge. Due to the progress of science, religion would soon
be superfluous and slowly disappear. This consensus among intellectuals
was widespread before and during the activities of Marx, and his own rea-
soning fit well into the spirit of the time. He therefore had a very good
chance to find acceptance among his contemporaries, particularly among
the highly educated persons and the intellectuals of more than a century
ago. Simmel needed to take that into consideration when describing
religion as a form of interaction that appeared to be part of the human
condition.

Strangeness as Form of Interaction

Encounters between Alien Populations

Simmel examines the status of religious, racial, or ethnic minorities in
society under the concept of the stranger. He sees a remarkable dynamic
in the contact between two groups, the natives and the newcomers,
which are initially distinct, but as the result of increasing contact between
them each group provides the other with individual aliens, first as visitors,
then as permanent guests. This dynamic process initiates change in both
groups with a compelling predictability. William Isaac Thomas (Thomas,
1966: 9) later adopted this idea. Simmel writes of the convergence of hith-
erto separated circles (Simmel, 1908 a: 710), and he illustrates that in some
detail:
Let us imagine we have two social groups, M and N, which are sharply
distinct from one another, in terms of both their typical characteristics
and their attitudes and beliefs, but each consisting of homogeneous and
closely related elements within them. The quantitative extension of such
a group gives rise to an increasing differentiation: What were originally
minimal differences amongst individuals, in terms of outward and inner
disposition and its expression, become more exaggerated by the necessity
of surviving in the face of fiercer competition with increasingly uncon
ventional means. This competition induces individual specialization in
proportion to the numbers involved. However different the points of
98 chapter three

departure may have been in M and N, the two will gradually come to
resemble each other. However, there are only a relatively limited number
of essential human formations available, and their number can only be
increased at a slow rate.
The more such formations are to be found within a group, i.e. the greater
the homogeneity of M or N in themselves, the greater the probability that
there will be an increasing number of formations which are similar to
those of the other group: the departure from the hitherto valid norm
within each group, the development away from it in all directions, must
necessarily bring about a convergence of the members of one group to
those of the other a convergence which will initially be qualitative or
ideational (ibid: 710).
Simmel here returns to his theory of cultural and social evolution.
The elements of this theory are as follows:
a.Two populations are distinct from one another in important character-
istics; that is to say that all the members within each group are similar
to each other in one particular respect and different from the members
of the other group. The requirement of solidarity within each of the
two groups initially means members must suppress personal peculiari-
ties or distinctive features and preferably demonstrate those qualities,
showing them to be typical or even model representatives of the par-
ticular group they belong to. They would thus be required to dress and
behave in a uniform manner.
b.The increase in population intensifies competition in the struggle to
survive. Under the influence of this increased competition, individuals
gradually develop much more distinctive characteristics of their own.
This happens in both of the originally distinctive groups in a similar
way, since, according to Simmel, the number of human formations is
limited. This fiercer competition thus forces both groups to depart
increasingly from their traditional uniformity, so that these various
human formations can assert themselves as individual deviations
from the group norm.
c.This process of departure from uniformity in a process of increasing
individualization affects both groups of this theoretical model in the
same way, and thus brings about a decrease in the differences between
them. Almost totally independent of the original nature of the differ-
ence between the two populations, therefore, eventually considerable
convergence occurs between them.
 the message of interaction: how reality is constructed99

The Stranger as Innovator

The stranger plays an important part in this process of change. Depending
on his or her origins, he may come from a faraway country, and yet he is
now close at hand. He demonstrates different forms of life in a concrete
and practical way that, not only as a distant, utopian theory but personi-
fied in the here-and-now as an alien person. The stranger thus signifies
broader horizons to the native.
Of course, the benefit in terms of new life forms as represented by the
very presence of the stranger also involves a loss of uniformity, consensus,
solidarity and inner unity of the groups. To use a textile metaphor, one
might say that the groups become frayed at the edges. Since the peculiari-
ties of the groups become increasingly worn away, they become so similar
it almost does not matter to the individual whether he belongs to one
group or the other. The population becomes individualized and the state
of being a stranger more or less applies to everyone.
In Simmels now famous Exkurs ber den Fremden (Excursus on the
stranger; Simmel, 1908a: 685689, Simmel 2009), the author defines the
state of being alien as a particular form of interaction (685f.). Wherever
and whenever human beings come to encounter one another, Simmel
assumes that elements of closeness and distance are both present. Set
against this general assumption, the interaction between native and alien
represents a rather exceptional and particularly interesting case. The
integration of closeness and distance contained within any interpersonal
relationship here reaches a constellation which might briefly be put as fol-
lows: The element of distance within a relationship means that something
close is distant, whereas being confronted with something alien means
that something distant has come close (ibid: 685).
Thus as far as Simmel is concerned, a stranger is a person from afar, now
close at hand because he has come to stay, although he might possibly
leave again. The concept of two populations, which originally inhabit their
own living spaces, underlies these reflections on the phenomenon of
being a stranger. The individual newcomer is thus regarded as a stranger
insofar as one sees in him a representative of the other group. Initially, this
quality of being the representative of the other population suppresses the
perception of any individuality. While a confrontation with the whole of
the other group would presumably be considered threatening, contact
with an individual representative is interesting, perhaps instructive, in any
case out of the ordinary.
100 chapter three

In the literature of the ancient classics, the figure of the wanderer

Odysseus is presented as an impressive personality who appears as a
stranger to his various hosts, for example Nausikaa and her father
Alkinoos (Clarke, 1967). Thomas Bargatzky has examined The role of the
stranger in cultural change (Die Rolle des Fremden beim Kulturwandel;
Bargatzky, 1978) drawing on several case studies from the 18th and 19th
centuries, showing the transformations caused by Europeans in Hawaii,
the Iles de la Socit, Samoa, Tonga and Fiji and (the only example from
outside Polynesia) in Buganda. Bargatzkys empirical findings illustrate
Simmels theses concerning the stranger and point to Robert Ezra Parks
marginal man as a modified version of Simmels concept. (Park, 1928;
Levine, 1977).
The stranger is not the wanderer who comes today and goes tomorrow;
he is the one who comes today and stays tomorrow the potential wan-
derer, as it were (Simmel, 1908b: 685). His status in the social environ-
ment he has joined is characterized by the fact that he does not originally
belong to it, and that he brings qualities to it which do not and cannot
originate from this new environment (ibid.). As a potential wanderer, the
aliens consciousness and forms of conduct are not limited to a particular
locality. He has no home, so to speak, or, to put it positively, his home is
nowhere, in the land of Utopia (which should actually be called A-topia,
having no topos = location). This is why the strangers thought can
be u-topian, not bound to any topos that is to say not bound to any
restraints of locality.
The arrival of the stranger repeatedly shatters native societys sense of
being a universal society. Self-satisfied society witnesses how the alien,
who has joined it unexpectedly, cannot be forced to acquiesce in its order.
His very presence thus makes society see the falsehood of its claim to uni-
versality. In the presence of the stranger, a supposedly universal orienta-
tion is revealed as locally restricted and provincial. Thus the alien has
both a destructive and constructive effect at one and the same time,
as a representative of alternative patterns of thought and an initiator of
social change. He destroys for many what Karl Mannheim called instru-
ments of concealment in everyday life, which cause the coincidental
nature of everyday existence to become solidified into an absolute value
(Mannheim, 1929: 43). The stranger reveals this as an ideology, a false
awareness by which the native population delude themselves into believ-
ing they have achieved their goal as a society. At the same time, as an alien
he or she also provides a new, constructive goal, demonstrates a Utopia to
them toward which they can orientate their future efforts. Thus while pro-
viding an impulse to innovation the stranger can also cause offence.
 the message of interaction: how reality is constructed101

Initially and principally the host society does not integrate the alien
individual, and very often he does not wish for such integration. In many
historical instances he will compensate for the burden, which this places
on him with a strong belief in predestination or divine election. Alfred
Weber has examined this phenomenon and describes the historical
events, which led to the Jewish people appointing themselves to be the
guest population of the whole world (A. Weber, 1950: 105).
In this way, Jews have become universal and permanent strangers
(except in the state of Israel, which Alfred Weber did not discuss). They are
popular and sought-after individuals in the established social orders, just
like the great example set by Joseph in Egypt as advisor to the Pharaoh. As
a religious group, they form that unique collective unit, which maintains
itself precisely because it can only organize temporarily and potentially in
the world. Unable to develop a concrete structure which might degenerate
to a fetish, the people no longer physically journey as nomads, but spiritu-
ally travel toward the advent of its Messiah, not regarding itself as having
achieved its goal because it has not yet arrived.
Alfred Weber examines the particular features of the ancient Jews and
asks: What distinguished them from other Bedouin peoples who had pre-
viously moved into these areas from different directions, and who had all
been sucked in by the apparently captivating power of this atmosphere
within a short time and had all become totally devoid of any individuality
as a group? (ibid: 96) There may be an important difference between the
Jewish culture and other nomadic cultures. The former gained its particu-
lar identity by going back and for through the ages between temporary
settlement and nomadic life. Thus both these sources of strength that of
being attached to a particular locality and that of travelling, have been
adopted by this culture in what seems to be a unique combination. It is
quite clear that, in his essay on the stranger, Simmel has the Jew in mind
and therefore himself.
The renunciation of a long-term abode has important social conse-
quences, which Simmel describes. The effect of wandering on the form
of association is typically as follows: suppression or suspension of any
inner differentiation within the group, therefore a lack of political organi-
zation as such, though this can often coexist with monopolistic, despotic
power (Simmel, 1908a: 671). The lack or low level of differentiation in
political or other social structures protects the collective unit, united only
by tradition and faith, from becoming self-sufficient individuals and from
having its social forms degenerate into fetishes.
Marx and Simmel are both strangers who emerged from this cultural
tradition. No matter how extreme the difference between them, whether
102 chapter three

in aims or method, nevertheless they have a remarkable intellectual abil-

ity in common, the ability to detach themselves from the general tendency
to substantialize social forms. Of course the difference in their respective
personalities means that this detachment is expressed in a completely dif-
ferent way by each man: Marx expresses it as a bitter critique of capital as
a self-sufficient dynamic which has broken away from the acting subject,
and as a rejection of objective conditions; Simmel, writing at the turn of
the century, expresses it as a critique of philosophical realism and a repu-
diation of any approach that describes social interactions merely as
manipulations of physical realities.
Late in his life, and having experienced the First World War, Simmel
generalizes Marx concept in a more pessimistic way, embracing not only
economic life but culture as a whole. The fetish character which Marx
attributed to economic objects in the era of industrial production is sim-
ply a specifically modified form of the general fate of the contents of our
culture. The material of which culture consists is subject to a paradox
the more advanced a culture happens to be, the greater the paradox: It is
true that the contents of culture have been created by and for subjects,
and yet, in the transitional objective form which they adopt before and
after this subjective state, they pursue a certain immanent logic which
alienates them from their origins as well as from their purpose (Simmel,
1919b: 246).
In his book Philosophie des Geldes (The Philosophy of Money; Simmel
1900) Simmel addressed this process of alienation in the context of indus-
trial production and the economy as a whole as a specifically modified
case of culture. In that work, he shifted his emphasis from interaction as
source of reality, which still is his point of departure, to the social con-
struction of value and to the problem of reducing relationships to things.
As shall be discussed in the next chapter, this process is identified as alien-
ation because the creation of value is not seen or not admitted by its
creators as an effect of their own activities.

Looking back at Chapter 3

Reality is created in interaction, it is co-created. In the influential textbook

assembled by Park and Burgess and first published in 1921 (Park and
Burgess 1924) the distinguished editors prefer to call reciprocity of relation-
ships what later is commonly referred to as interaction. Simmel describes
social forms, religion, and even society as being co-created in interaction
 the message of interaction: how reality is constructed103

as the result of the reciprocity of relationships. His interactionist theory of

the macro-structure should be read as critical alternative to the function-
alist naturalism that persists from Durkheim to Parsons. There society is
some kind of super-organism reminiscent of the Leviathan, originally a
sea-monster, but better known as title of a book of 1651 by Thomas Hobbes.
It presents a pessimistic description of the necessity to establish human
government following the pattern of the natural sciences.
The critical nature of Simmels interactionism is directed against that
and at the same time against the methodological individualism of Max
Weber. Simmel raises sociological theory to a higher level of abstraction,
showing for instance that domination is a phenomenon occurring in
church parishes as well as in criminal gangs. He uses everyday experience
as point of departure for his view of society. The parent who tells his off-
spring: Do not play with those children! knows full well that interaction
creates social reality. Finally, being a stranger, means participating in a
relationship marked by the quality of strangeness. That quality too has
been co-created due to the reciprocity of relationships.
 CHAPTER FOUR

THE MESSAGE OF ALIENATION: MONEY AND POLITICS

Money as a Paradigm of Cultural Processes

Like a father in denial who begets a child and then pretends to have
nothing to do with it, humans attribute value to banknotes and then claim
to be disassociated from the process of valuation. Simmels theory of
valuation would compare to genetic testing with the goal to identify the
originator of value as the begetter of the worth of money. The fact that
money is typically looked at as value in its own right is to Simmel the
most striking example of alienation. He reveals this by pointing to
the importance of interaction as a precondition for attributing value to
money. In the absence of interaction with reference to the money in
question, it turns out to be worthless because nobody uses it and nobody
wants it.
Leading up to this insight Simmel dealt with the subject of money in his
book Philosophie des Geldes (The Philosophy of Money; Simmel, 1900)
because of its obvious importance for the functioning of the modern
economy. The book gave him the opportunity of looking at money and the
economy as a specific case study of culture. Producers and consumers do
of course engage in activities, which one can rightly term economic, but
how they do it whether with enthusiasm or indifference, dedication or
inner detachment is not something decided within the economic sphere
alone. Every individual belongs to a particular culture, which influences
his character and which he passes on to others. The attachment of the
individual to his or her culture determines which notions of economic
activity they have. Their notions may not at all be taken for granted by
people with different backgrounds. Therefore, what money means to this
or that person is relative to culture-specific contexts of interaction.
The frequently heard reasonable explanation for the use of money
describes it as an activity to provide oneself with goods, rights and services
possessing a positive value beyond combating the feelings of hunger
and thirst. For this reason, too, economic activity and culture are closely
associated. On being introduced to a particular type of culture, a person
learns to assign values to certain things, and his or her activities in the
106 chapter four

economic sphere are determined by such evaluation. Of course, nobody

can (or should) confine his life to economic activity alone. The tendency
to do so, we can describe as pathological, because the ultimate meaning of
economic activity is rooted in vital interests external to the economic
sphere. It would thus seem appropriate to examine the phenomenon of
money in the context of culture, since every person engaged in economic
activity has noneconomic motives, for example, economic success may be
important for the sake of another member of the family whom that person
loves, or for the sake of an acquaintance he wants to impress or even for
the god he or she worships.
The Philosophy of Money (1900. 4th edition 1922a) is primarily a
reflection on highly complex forms of interaction. The social principle by
which interactions between subjects (persons or companies) have the
effect that objects are considered valuable, acquires a concrete form in
money. Peoples shaping sensory impressions into objects by telling stories
or painting pictures about them, allows them to experience reality;
their distance or detachment from objects means that, in their wish to
overcome this distance, they experience the value of an object: The harder
it seems to get it, the more valuable it seems to be. Since in exchanging
objects they assess the expectations of the individuals involved of
overcoming the distance and since they then compare values, they become
aware of the value relations of the goods exchanged. These relations will
be separated from the goods whose comparison they originated from, and
will appear as an independent factor: They are given the form of money.
To put it briefly: money is the expression and means of the relationship
and interdependence of people, their relativity, by which the satisfaction
of one persons wishes is always mutually dependent on another person
(Simmel 1922a: 134).
Money is the most general form of social relationship. The conscious
mind, occupied with the social construction of reality, makes money
appear with such a well-defined sense of independent existence, that peo-
ple forget what the origin and effect of money is: An expression of the
interdependence of people. Where interpersonal relationships are not
social, where individuals are not interactive and do not enter into
exchanges with one another but instead treat each other as objects, money
becomes meaningless. In Simmels opinion the same applies to law: It is
nothing but an empty abstraction until it becomes the form of a living
relationship. People can only treat each other rightfully or do each other
wrong if they are interacting with one another. In reality, law is merely
a relationship between people and is executed only in the interests, objec-
tives or power play (ibid: 95 f.).
 the message of alienation: money and politics107

In his review of the book Philosophy of Money (Simmel, 1900), Gustav

Schmoller recalls a presentation about the psychology of money that
Simmel gave in 1889 in Schmollers graduate seminar (Schmoller, 1901).
A journal article with this same title appears in the same year (Gassen and
Landmann, 1958: 325). In 1896, Simmel gives a talk about Money in
Modern Culture to the Society of Austrian Economists (ibid: 326). In 1897
the journal Neue Deutsche Rundschau publishes his article, The
Importance of Money for the Tempo of Life. In both of the years that
follow, there appear parts of his coming book as Fragments from a
Philosophy of Money (ibid: 327f). In the introduction to an English
translation, it is correctly noted that Simmel had spent 11 years thinking
about the topic of money before this voluminous book appeared at the
outset of the new century (Bottomore, 1978: 1).
Another prominent reviewer of this book, George Herbert Mead,
understands the methodological motivation of Simmel: The starting
point of the discussion lies in the contrast between the objective charac-
teristic and validity of value and the subjective characteristic of desire and
the impulse from which it springs (Mead, 1901: 616). Mead points to the
fact that, in his Philosophy of Money, Simmel continues to struggle with
the subject-object problem. As was self-understood for American scholars
at the time, Mead had read and reviewed the original German text.
The characteristics of translating and the dependence upon translation
are often a serious source of errors. Mead, as a former student at the
University of Berlin, was spared such erroneous translations as changing
effective phenomena (for Wechselwirksamkeiten) and eternal constella-
tion (for Formzusammenhang) (Bottomore, 1978: 25, 31).
In justifying this large-scale project of his, Simmel recommends close
collaboration between the various scholarly disciplines due to the
diversity inherent in the nature of reality; for none of these disciplines can
fully treat the issues relating to this subject. According to Simmel, there-
fore, the task must be distributed amongst the various academic fields,
with each specialized area concentrating on the particular aspects within
its scope. This can only be done if other aspects are neglected, however.
Thus scholarly analysis creates an object which does not in fact exist in
reality. Simmel illustrates this with the example of the exchange of goods
without the use of money: Thus it is true that the situation of two people
exchanging their products with one another is by no means only a
phenomenon relating to economics; such a phenomenon, which is fully
defined as relating to economics, does not exist. An exchange can just as
legitimately be treated as related to psychology, history of ethics or even
aesthetics. (Simmel, 1907b: VII).
108 chapter four

To treat the subject of money as might be appropriate to the perspec-

tive of what today we call macro-economics is for Simmel a reduction of
reality to a small section of it. This view only takes in the faade of real
life. Simmel does not object to drawing attention to economic activity,
bringing it to the foreground, as it were, in areas where it might otherwise
remain hidden at first sight. The aim and purpose of the whole under
taking is simply to draw a connection between the surface of economic
activity and the ultimate values and underlying influences of everything
human (ibid.).
The methodical ambition to see through the faade, to penetrate
the surface of the phenomenon of money as an expression of economic
interaction, and to reveal the real diversity of the subject leads to a
confrontation with the sheer multiplicity of the various aspects. If cultural
problems and political and religious influences are to be incorporated,
the area of study soon becomes unwieldy and impenetrable. Thus the
question arises of how to avoid losing the unity of the phenomenon of
money in the very analysis of it. In his cultural sociology, Simmel states
that the search for the meaning of life unifies the diverse aspects of the
economy (ibid: VIII).
The concrete quality which might be attributed to a service or
merchandise can be described by scientific analysis. That quality, just as
its weight or color, does not depend on cultural context. In the process of
interaction meaning is ascribed to it like a stuck on label. It is this process
of attributing value, so important to culture in general, that Simmel exam-
ines in money as the process of evaluation. This process has relevance
far beyond the economic sphere. Simmel studies money to increase under-
standing of culture as a whole, of which the economic sphere is only one
sector. The drama of evaluation finds a particular concentration in money
and its dynamic, a drama in which we participate as actors on the stage
of culture. This is why sociology of the economy can and should be
conducted as sociology of culture; hence Simmels Philosophy of Money
is at the same time a Sociology of Money.

Evaluation and Alienation

Money becomes a facet of culture by being assigned to two separately

conceived levels: On the one hand to the level of natural events as a
dynamic of physical reality, on the other hand to the level of value attribu-
tion as a cultural process. The two levels are of course insolubly bound up
 the message of alienation: money and politics109

with one another, and one must first examine how this association of
thing and meaning comes about. One could give an absolutely complete
description of all the events of the natural world without mentioning the
values which things possess just as our scale of values maintains its
significance and meaning independently of how often or whether at all its
content actually occurs in reality (ibid: 4).
The conceptual separation of the area of material reality from that of
cultural values is characteristic of Simmels method. Material objects can
generally be described without value judgment. On the other hand, values
do not depend on physical reality, and they cannot therefore originate
from material things alone. In fact they are the result of cultural processes,
they are judgments which people make about things and which then
come to be directly applied to these things. A thing does not gain any new
quality if I judge it to be of value; for it is valued according to the qualities
it already possesses; its intrinsic nature, already completely defined, is
raised into the sphere of value (ibid: 5).
The process of evaluation does not bring about any change in the
existing physical qualities of the object concerned; it is simply placed in a
different context just as one might take an object off a table to place it
inside a cupboard. As long as an evaluation does not occur, because an
object that can potentially be evaluated is not related to a subject, one
can conceive of a neutral and purely factual description of the object.
This is, however, purely theoretical, since objects typically have a history
tying them to people as subjects that have had an influence on their
evaluation.
On the scale between the highest and lowest value Simmel allows the
possibility of indifference as a neutral transitional stage in the middle.
However, this neutral stage cannot permanently avoid the inevitable
process of evaluation; for indifference means declining to attribute a
value to something, and can thus be of a very positive nature, underlying
such indifference is always the possibility of interest which is simply
not being made use of at that moment (ibid.). Its function is then that of
providing a potential for future value attribution, maybe like a storage
space in the warehouse of culture. The subject can ignore things it has no
need for at any given moment. These things are then akin to a reserve of
objects not needed to relate to in the immediate present, but known to be
there, and that one day, at some particular time, his interest may turn
toward them. Even this potential interest means that these objects are
included indirectly in the context of the subjects action and cannot there-
fore avoid being evaluated.
110 chapter four

The distinction between two levels of reality, the level of objects and
that of subjects may be possible as an intellectual experiment; however, as
a real fact such a separation is inconceivable. For if there were no subjects,
there would be no-one to have real experiences; if there were no objects,
the subjects would have nothing to encounter as reality. Just as reality can
only come about as the result of subjects and objects being in a state of
dynamic co-existence, it is also true that evaluation can only take place
within the context of this co-existence. Simmel distinguishes between
reality and value as the results of different processes, but he also sees
certain prerequisites as applying to both.
We base our experience of reality on a chain of objects. We claim that
one thing is real because we already know that something else is real
which is related to it. This second thing is also only real because again
something else is real which is related to that. Simmel sees a long chain of
associations by things being related or connected to one another confirm-
ing each others reality status. And for the whole to be experienced as real
there must be a final link at the beginning of the chain which was
originally experienced as real: A person who has never undergone the
experience of reality as a living certainty must surely doubt the reality of
the whole of his or her own experience.
Just as the experience of reality as actual fact is a subjective feat
which each individual may or may not achieve, the same can be said of
value. The individual can only experience something as being of value if
he can relate it to other experiences of value. At some point he reaches the
final link, and this must be where the person originally underwent a
feeling or experience that there are such things as values. He can only
attribute value to other things if he has had this experience of value.
If there is a value in the first place, then the ways in which it is realized
and developed can be rationally comprehended, for from this point
follows at least partially the pattern of reality itself. The fact of the
existence of value, however, is a primordial phenomenon (ibid: 6).
In this quotation, the term primordial phenomenon reminds us again
that Simmel was an adherent of the theory of evolution. Darwins idea that
the forms of life as described by biology evolved apart from one another in
the course of an inconceivably long process, is applied by Simmel to the
components of human thought and to culture in general. By tentatively
tracing human thought backwards in time, he comes upon the idea of a
primordial, archaic form of consciousness, which was characterized by
the fact that reality as an objective fact on the one hand and value as a
subjective-creative feat on the other were not yet experienced as separate.
 the message of alienation: money and politics111

From the perspective of primordial humans they still formed a single

unity. And also, from this evolutionist point of view, this state of conscious-
ness existed prior to the division of subject and object, as is the case in
a small child who experiences the objects as out there, but does not expe-
rience himself as perceiving them.
This division is introduced gradually step by step into the life of the
individual in the course of the various stages of socialization: As we saw,
we assume that a young child has not yet acquired the consciousness of
separating his own individuality from the wealth of sensory experiences to
which he is exposed. Simmel relates the tension between subject and
object to that between reality and value; or he adds to the opposition of
thing versus subject that of being versus value. In whatever empirical or
transcendental sense one might talk of things in contrast to the subject,
value is in no sense a quality of them, but instead a judgment made by
the subject and remaining in the subject (ibid: 8). What then leads to
alienation as seen by Simmel, is the individuals inability to recognize, or
his or her unwillingness to acknowledge, that a judgment was made in the
first place.
Simmel does not feel at ease with the dichotomy between existence
and value, between thing and subject. For him, reality manifests itself in
relations. Value results from the dynamic interaction between things and
the subject. The separation of subject and object is not as radical as the
quite legitimate division of these categories, which both the practical
and the theoretical world would have us accept (ibid: 8f.). The separation
of subject and object is thus a conceptual trick. The same is true of
value. The origin of value is a judgment the subjects make themselves,
yet they persuade themselves that value is an inherent quality of given
objects, denying that value exists primarily as a construct of human
consciousness.
Without shaping or molding objects in consciousness, it is, however,
impossible to have experiences: Experience means our consciousness
shapes sensory data to objects. In the same way the possibility of desire is
the possibility of the objects of desire. The object created in this way
characterized by its distance from the subject, which both registers the
desire for the object and seeks to overcome this desire is what is meant
by value. (ibid: 12).
With this remarkably brief definition of value as action, Simmel comes
back to the idea that the separation of subject and object is a conceptual
feat. Value is a side effect of this separation. Experience means the ability
to shape sensory data into objects. The experience of a value results from
112 chapter four

the subjects effort to establish and overcome a distance between itself

and the object. This assigns a value to an object. The value, importance,
and meaning something has for a person depends on what he intends to
do with it, what distance he plans to overcome between the object and
himself. Not until he has experienced the division between subject and
object as painful and felt a strong desire to overcome it, is he able to call
the content of this experience value. It is thus not difficult to obtain
things because they are valuable: It is instead the case that we describe
those things as being of value for which there are obstacles blocking our
possession of them. The fact that this desire is obstructed or delayed, so to
speak, means that they gain an added importance, which the unobstructed
will would never have apportioned them (ibid: 13).
Just as objects can only be experienced because of the subjects ability
to shape them, value can only be experienced and for Simmel this
is always meant in a concrete sense because the subject perceives the
distance between itself and the object and attempts to overcome this
distance. Simmel sees consciousness as creating an objective value, based
on the facts that are actually experienced, just as consciousness creates
objective reality. The conscious mind uses its ability to disregard itself in
order to hide the fact that any objective value can only be the result of
subjective experience. This denial of the creativity of the conscious mind
is alienation, is ascribing being the father of valuation to another source.
This kind of value theory does of course have important consequences
for the sociological interpretation of economic activity. It can be pursued
right down to the economic quantum of value, which we attribute to
the object of an exchange, even if no-one is willing to pay the price in
question, indeed even if it remains generally unwanted and unsalable.
Here, too, this fundamental power of the mind asserts itself: The power to
separate itself from the elements of its imagination, to imagine things as if
they were independent of such imagination. (ibid: 14).
Precisely this imagined independence is the root cause of alienation in
Simmels sense. In totally different contexts he will apply this insight as
well: In his sociology of love he explains that the extremely high value
and uniqueness of the beloved person is quite obviously the result of the
process of value attribution performed by the lover, who, however, will
strenuously maintain that he or she simply discovered an innate goodness
and beauty that was already a quality of the other person before falling in
love. Whether or not he or she still see it that way in case the relationship
breaks up, is another matter. We may be happier with, than without our
illusions.
 the message of alienation: money and politics113

As the argumentation moves to money and therefore to economic

values an analysis needs to be made of the quantitative aspect of value.
At first it was apparently the experienced distance between subject and
object which determined the measure of value, and it seemed that the
value quantities of this obstructive distance were proportional. In dealing
with concrete experience, applying his value theory to the economy,
Simmel modifies and refines this concept of proportionality by introduc-
ing the idea of a U-shaped curve.
The distance between the self and the object of its desire can be
extremely great whether because of the physical difficulty of obtaining
it, the exorbitant price, or reservations of a moral or other nature which
hinder its being acquired. This distance may in fact be so great that there
is no act of volition as such, but that instead the desire either disappears
completely or remains merely a faint wish. Thus the distance between
subject and object, which, at least in the economic sense, increases value
the greater it is, has an upper and lower limit; and so it is not in fact true to
state that the measure of value is the same as the measure of resistance,
which prevents the subject from gaining the desired objects. (ibid: 20).
From a psychological point of view, this is immediately plausible. At the
same time, his point of view rejects those theories of value close to Karl
Marx, which mechanically state that the measure of value is determined
by the quantity of work invested. In order to illustrate his thesis of the
U-shaped curve tracing the relationship between value and resistance to
its fulfillment, Simmel cites the example that people virtually prevented
from being able to acquire gold legally, eventually stop wanting to acquire
it (ibid.).
Although Simmel wants to anchor his value theory in subjective
experience, he does not leave it at that. He leads his reader on to the
question of whether or not objective values exist, regardless of whether
these are subjectively recognized or not. According to Simmel, just as
there are sentences which we imagine to be true and at the same time
produce the idea that their truth is independent of this imagining in the
same way we feel that things, people, or events are not only felt by us to be
of value, but that they would be of value even if nobody appreciated their
worth (ibid: 13). Against the background of his theory of evolution,
Simmel undertakes to examine the origins of potentially superior values,
which might be independent of subjective judgment and thus possibly
represent the exceptions to a rule.
The whole of mankinds cultural history is present when the subject
undergoes experiences and feelings. That which possessed functional
114 chapter four

significance in the very earliest stirrings of the history of man for the
purpose of prolonging life and preserving the species, for example might
have actually lost its functional use since the primitive age, or else the
awareness of it may have been lost. Nevertheless, Simmel believes that
humans still regard certain values of the past as important, even if they do
not have an immediate positive effect in their present lives.
On the basis of this evolutionist approach, Simmel sees the methodical
possibility of an objective reality independent of the subject. He illustrates
this in a religious context. He takes the example of the deistic view of
God the creator as a watchmaker who constructs the world like a watch,
sets it in motion, but then leaves it to tick away on its own and does not
interfere with it any more: This image allows him to summarize once again
how he models his theory of reality on his theory of the processes of
consciousness.
It was said of the divine principle that, after it had invested the
elements of the world with their forces, he stepped back and left these
forces to interact with one another, so that we can now speak of an objec-
tive world, which is tied to its own relations and laws; the divine power
elected to extract itself from the world in this way, since it considered
this the most effective way of fulfilling its purpose with the world most
completely. In the same way, we invest the objects of the economy with
a quantity of value as if with a quality of their own, and then we leave
them to the processes of exchange. These processes constitute a mecha-
nism objectively determined by the values the objects have been assigned,
a series of reciprocal relationships based on these impersonal values. The
objects then return, enhanced and more intensely pleasurable and desir-
able to their ultimate purpose which was their starting point: The feelings
of the subjects (ibid: 28f).
For Simmel the feeling and experiencing subject has the creative power
to assign value to economic objects, just as in a religious metaphor God
has the creative power to originate the world. The person has the ability to
invest things with value, things which then become more intensively
pleasurable once they find their ultimate purpose and meaning in the
feelings of the subjects (ibid.).

Construction of Value in Interaction

When the processes of value attribution are examined in the context of

the interaction between subjects, transitioning from the psychological to
 the message of alienation: money and politics115

the sociological dimension of money, Simmel turns his attention to the

topic of exchange. At the beginning he asks how it was at all possible for a
self-contained sphere consisting of the reciprocal giving and taking of
goods to develop. Economic activity becomes possible in that a realm
of values (ibid: 30) receives such a degree of independence from the
subjects by way of the processes of objectification and alienation that
it becomes more or less completely separated from its subjective-
personal base (ibid.).
From the point of view of Simmels method, therefore, the question
arises of how, in the context of the economy, this realm of values gains
such a degree of objectivity, and why it becomes so independent that the
individual is left with the choice of either subjecting himself to it or
else at least in theory withdrawing from any participation in economic
activity altogether. In answer to this question, Simmel cites the objectify-
ing effect of exchange based on the arguments mentioned in connection
with the theory of evolution. The object does not gain its actual value just
by being desired, but by being desired by another person. Its value is not
characterized by being related to the sensitive subject, but by the fact that
this relationship is only achieved through a certain sacrifice; whereas this
sacrifice is seen by the other side as a desirable value, the subject itself sees
it as a sacrifice. In this way, the objects gain a quality of reciprocal balance,
and this particularly makes their value appear as a quality which they
objectively possess (ibid: 31).
The quality upon which the economically evaluated objects resistance
to the individuals desire is based and which appears to be objectively
possessed (ibid.) is real because it appears to be real. The relationship
between object and subject which has already been referred to becomes
doubled in an exchange, since there are now two subjects and two objects.
Thus the economically evaluated object becomes part of a twofold value
relation: From the perspective of its original owner it possesses a value not
only due to the benefit it provides him, but also due to the benefit he
expects to gain from the object by exchanging it. When in the course of the
exchange the benefit derived from the originally owned object is given up,
Simmel terms this sacrifice. The subjects involved will only carry out the
exchange if both judge the required sacrifice as being less than the
expected benefit provided by the newly acquired object.
Of course, the significance which objects acquire in an exchange is
never completely isolated and separated from their direct subjective signi
ficance which originally determined their relationship to the subject; in
fact, the two are bound together like form and content. It is the objective
116 chapter four

process, very often asserting itself more strongly within the individuals
consciousness, that abstracts the idea that the objects consist of values,
acquiring its own distinctive nature from the equality of these values
rather like geometry focuses its attention on the sizes and proportions of
its objects, without taking account of their substance or material though
the existence of such objects in the real world can only be realized in
material form. (ibid: 32).
Here, Simmel believes he has revealed the origin of objectivity
emerging from the development toward a neutral relationship between
objects over and above personal relationships (ibid: 30). The direct and
subjective (ibid: 32) significance of the objects is incorporated in the
objectified exchange relation and contained within it rather like the
content of a form. And this form the exchange itself Simmel regards
as a product of consciousness, whereby the creative contribution of con-
sciousness remains invisible since it abstracts the form exchange from all
the subjective elements. But Simmel does not only see the importance of
exchange as purely economic. Instead he sees this formative process of
consciousness, presenting itself as objective reality, as a universal social
phenomenon.
We must realize that most relationships between individuals can be
regarded as an exchange; exchange is the purest and most sophisticated
form of interaction which goes to make up human life, in the search to
acquire material and content. For example, it is often overlooked that
there are many instances where we might first assume that merely a one-
sided influence is being exerted, whereas in fact an interactive dimension
is at work: The speaker and his assembly, the teacher and his class, the
journalist and his audience in each case the former appears to the latter
to be the sole influential force; and yet in actual fact, anybody in such a
situation senses the very strong determining and guiding influence being
returned by the apparently passive group (ibid: 33f.).
From the point of view of economic activity, of course, there is a very
clear-cut distinction between exchanging an apartment in the city for
a small house in the country, and the situation of the teacher giving a
lecture. In the economy, the exchange refers to physical objects, which
only the rightful owners can legitimately control; an intellectual exchange
involves ideas or concepts, which may belong to any person and never
to the teacher in a material sense. In the course of such interaction,
therefore, the teacher gives of something he himself does not possess.
Simmel is particularly concerned not to limit his observations to the
physical-material sphere. The personal feeling of the individual involves
 the message of alienation: money and politics117

the spontaneous, subjective component, and this undoubtedly distinctive

personal element every individual puts into an exchange, conveying it to
the other and receiving their commitment in return.
Yet the person so deeply involves his own consciousness in the process
of creating objectivity that he completely conceals involvement. Thus
exchange is made onto a thing removed from the individuals involved and
personal participation seems unimportant. By combining the two acts or
changes of condition which actually happen within the single term
exchange, there is an obvious temptation to regard the exchange itself as
separate or distinct from the process which occurs within one or other of
the individuals involved (ibid: 35).
In continuation of this constant effort to clarify the relation between
subjective and objective components, Simmel returns to the previously
developed thesis that value is a consequence of the distance between
subject and object and the desire to overcome this distance. In exchange,
i.e. in economic activity, the values of the economy are created because it
is this exchange which produces the distance between subject and object,
thus transferring subjective feeling into objective value Objects can be
part of our experience and experienced by us, because they are images
within us, and because the shaping and fashioning of these images is
an expression of the same force as that, which shapes and determines
experience. In the same way we can state here: The possibility of economic
activity is at the same time the possibility of economic objects (ibid: 45).
This quotation demonstrates Simmels method quite clearly. Marx
had reinterpreted Hegels philosophy as esoteric economics. Hegels
world spirit, continuing its autonomous development, is for Marx the all-
powerful force of capital. This unmasking of idealistic philosophy as a
hidden representation of economic life is reversed by Simmel: He describes
economic activity as being determined by the power of human imagina-
tion. This unmasking enables him to reinterpret Kants statements on
epistemology as points of reference for the understanding of economic
activities, leading him to link the mental exchange of ideas with
the exchange of things. For if materialism states that mind is matter
transcendental philosophy states that matter is also mind (ibid: 158).
Marx turned Hegel upside down; Simmel sets him back on his feet.

Money as a Means of Exchange

Simmel develops the concept of money gradually and in a number of

stages of discourse. His epistemology serves to explain how reality can be
118 chapter four

experienced. He derives his theory of value from his theory of reality and
truth. He then extends his theory of value to a theory of exchange and
finally comes to a definition of what we now understand by the concept of
money. The exchange of goods by payment, though moneys prime value,
is not the only purpose of money; it also transfers and conserves value:
The value of money as such is acquired through its function as a means of
exchange; where there is nothing to exchange, money has no value. It is
quite clear that its importance as a means of transferring and conserving
value does not share the same origin as its exchange function, but is a
derivative thereof (ibid: 134).
Money acquires a concrete form through interactions between people.
The social principle of culture empowers them to invest objects with value
in money. Shaping sensory impressions into objects allows persons to
experience reality; their distance or detachment from objects means that,
in their wish to overcome this distance, they feel the value of an object.
Therefore, value is not a quality of an object but a judgment about it.
Since in exchanging objects, people assess the expectations of overcoming
distance and then compare value; they become aware of the value rela-
tions of the goods exchanged. These relations then become separated
from the goods whose comparison they originated from, and appear as an
independent factor: they are given the form of money.
To put it briefly: Money is the expression and means of the relationship
and interdependence of people, their relativity, by which the satisfaction
of one persons wishes is always mutually dependent on another person;
accordingly there is no place for money in a situation where there is no
interdependence among people whether because one desires absolutely
nothing of other people, or whether one stands in complete supremacy
above them in other words in which one is in no relation to those
below and one can thus satisfy any desire without giving anything in
return (ibid.).
Money is the most general form of social relationship. The conscious
mind, occupied with the social construction of reality, invests money
with such a well-defined sense of independent existence that due to the
process of alienation we forget in the course of everyday life what the
origin and effect of money is: An expression of the interdependence of
people. Where interpersonal relationships are not social, where individu-
als are not interactive and do not enter into exchanges with one another
but instead treat each other as objects, money becomes irrelevant, it loses
its meaning. Money is a solely sociological phenomenon, utterly mean-
ingless when limited to a single individual, and it can therefore only bring
 the message of alienation: money and politics119

about some change to a given status as a change in the relationships

amongst individuals. The increased dynamism and intensity of activity
following a plethora of money is caused by the fact that this leads to an
increase in the desire of individuals for more money (ibid: 143).
This statement points to the sociology of money. In order to interpret
money as a paradigm of the objects and processes of culture, Simmel
decides to present once more the epistemological starting point of his
theory of money. The value of things ethical and eudaemonistic, reli-
gious and aesthetic hovers over them like Platonic ideas above the world:
Alien to the things themselves, intangible, a realm ordered according to its
own internal norms, but nevertheless giving the other its contours and
colors. Economic value is derived from these primary, spontaneously
sensed values by weighing up these objects against one another, insofar as
they are exchangeable (ibid: 135).
Value is a universal cultural phenomenon rooted in spontaneous
feeling, and economic value is a specific form of it, since the desired
objects are experienced as being mutually exchangeable. An exchange
does not necessarily have to take place; the very assessment or weighing
up of potential exchange value is sufficient to create an awareness of the
value relations of goods. Simmel regarded value not as a quality of things
but as a judgment of them. Money then, is an expression of the relations
between such judgments. In money, consciousness creates a yardstick
for the relative weight of these judgments. Thus money is a paradigm of
culture: In money, the world of values and the world of concrete things
converge.
Simmel held the view that Platos realm of ideas was a theoretical
construction intended as an instrument for the acquisition of knowledge;
Simmel believed that Plato deluded himself as far as this process of
construction was concerned and erroneously held that he had simply
discovered objective reality. Simmel applies this critique of Plato as a
conceptual motif to his criticism of the substance theory of money.
If money really were nothing but the expression of the value of
things separate from itself, it would be related to these things like the
Platonic idea which Plato also sees as material, as a metaphysical
entity relates to empirical reality. Its movements compensation, accu-
mulation, expenditure would be an exact reproduction of the value rela-
tions of things. The world of values, hovering apparently unconnectedly
and yet exercising absolute power, would thus have in money the repre-
sentation of its pure form. And just as Plato, having developed ideas from
an observation and sublimation of reality, then interprets reality as a mere
120 chapter four

reflection of these ideas in the same way, the economic conditions,

levels and fluctuations of concrete objects appear as derivatives of their
own derivatives: That is to say as vague, shadowy representations of their
monetary equivalents (ibid: 136).
This is a convincing rejection of reification and alienation as a
consequence of ignoring the origins of ideas. Simmel applies his critique
of Platonism to the subject of money because he wants to show that
money does not have its own material value, but that its importance stems
from its suitability as the form of a relationship. Nevertheless, it cannot
shake off a limited quantity of material value (ibid.). This much Simmel
concedes, but it remains a phenomenon of only peripheral importance.
Not the physical quality of money, so to speak, is important but its effect as
a form of social interaction in which value relations are expressed.
However, in the history of theories of money, the biased emphasis of the
material value of money as a precious metal has tended to dominate, and
this gave rise to ethical ideas relating to interest and usury. All the misgiv-
ings of the Middle Ages concerning the charging of interest arose from the
fact that money appeared at that time to be much more rigid and material
and as having its own separate identity in comparison to other things;
in the modern period, however, it creates the impression of a more
dynamic, fluctuating, and adaptable force (ibid: 152).
Simmels epistemological approach also allows him to interpret the
historical development of money. Plato had held the realm of ideas to be
metaphysical reality; Simmel saw this as a theoretical construct. This step
from Plato to Simmel is an instance of philosophical progress. In analogy
to this: Most monetary theories of the past have seen only the material
value of money, whereas Simmel discovers its symbolic and social func-
tion. This step is progress in the theory of money. Money as a material can
be owned, kept, or given away by one person. The point Simmel makes
about money as a relational tool is that two people conjointly make it
become real, expressing their relationship within it.
An interest ban, as was justified by Christian as well as Islamic
teachings, must have a discouraging effect on the creditor. Simmels theory
of money illustrates the force which money develops due to the double
existence of loaned money (ibid: 155). It can be effective firstly in its
imagined form as the creditors claim against the debtor, and secondly
as a reality in the hands of the debtor (ibid: 156). It is thus active with
both: By being loaned, therefore, the effectiveness of money is split into
two parts and the productiveness of its economic energy is remarkably
increased.
 the message of alienation: money and politics121

But the intellectual abstraction which brings about this split can only
come into effect in the context of a social order so well-established and
refined as to make the lending of money a relatively secure transaction
and making it possible to base economic actions on these specific func-
tions of money (ibid.). Above all the legal system must be sufficiently reli-
able to provide the lasting security without which monetary and capital
transactions would not be possible. But law is subject to its cultural con-
text just as the economy is, so that social change as a form of cultural and
social evolution can be studied by analyzing the development of economic
activity.
Max Weber pursued this course of enquiry both in his studies in social
history and in his writings on the sociology of religion. These sophisti-
cated phenomena demonstrate particularly clearly just how little the true
nature of money is bound to its physical substance; but as it is completely
and utterly a sociological phenomenon, a form of interaction amongst
men, it adopts a purer form the more condensed, reliable, and unforced
the associations within society. Indeed, the general stability and reliability
of the economic culture shows its effects right through to the very external
aspects of money (ibid.).
The associations within society also become more reliable, more
unforced (ibid.) as an expression of political renewal, and Simmel looks
forward optimistically toward the time of democratic political orders.
He pursues the development of political history from the perspective of
the extent to which the individuals opportunities for self-fulfillment can
be realized: When liberal tendencies led the state into an increasingly
freer flow, an increasingly unhindered adaptability and an increasingly
unstable balance of its elements, the material basis for Adam Smiths
theory was provided: Gold and silver were mere tools, no more than cook-
ing utensils, and their import for its own sake did as little to increase the
prosperity of nations as would the increase in the number of cooking
utensils increase the amount of food (ibid.: 158). Simmel himself gives his
program a name: He calls his own cultural-sociological theory of money
transcendental and writes: Adam Smiths view set the course for the
theory of money put forward here, which, in contrast to the materialistic
theories, can be termed transcendental (ibid.).
Simmels is constantly able and willing to see the ambivalence of
historical processes. Here is another example: Money allows the emer-
gence and development of new forms of human co-existence within
society. This brings about liberation and widens the individuals scope
for action, but at the same time releases him from protective support and
122 chapter four

creates a sense of alienation. Simmel avoids both a naive belief in progress

and a polemic critique of the money economy. He examines the opportu-
nities afforded for the individuals personal fulfillment by economic devel-
opment. All advanced economic technique is based on the development
of economic processes to becoming self-contained, distinct phenomena:
They become abstracted from the spontaneity and directness of personal
interests, they function as if they were ends in themselves in a mechanical
fashion, less and less affected by the irregularity and unpredictability of
personal elements (ibid: 358).
Here we see Simmels view of the human condition: The element of
individual personality is ambivalent too, a factor which must be con-
strained if a rational money economy is to develop. And this is precisely
what money alone can do. It is only when the companys profit takes a
form which allows it to be transferred to any other point that it creates a
distance between proprietor and property; it is this distance which gives
both sides a high degree of independence, of freedom of movement, so to
speak; For one it means the possibility of being managed solely according
to its own functional requirements, for the other it means the possibility
of organizing ones life without having to take account of the specific
requirements of ones possessions (ibid.: 359).
Alienation as the growth of detachment is obviously not always
something of negative value in Simmels view, but is also characterized by
ambivalence: Property and proprietor are separable from one another,
under the conditions of the money economy they are not eternally shack-
led to one another, come what may. And Simmel continues moreover to
view the industrial workers development of their relations with their
superiors as an ambivalent one. Taking the example of the German iron
and steel industry, Hans Paul Bahrdt, Heinrich Popitz, Ernst August Jres
and Hanno Kesting clearly showed (Popitz, Jres, Kesting, Bahrdt 1957a,
1957b) how hierarchically delegated authority was being substituted by
the dictates of technology; Simmel formulated this in theoretical form at a
time when such a development was far from apparent:
The economic organization of the early centuries, and now the
surviving forms of it in the crafts and in small trade, are based on the rela-
tionship of personal subordination of the apprentice under the master,
the employee under the shop owner, etc. Thus the economy functions
according to the interaction of very direct, personal factors; it is the supe-
rior who imposes his will in each individual case, with the remaining indi-
viduals dominated by this subjective element. This relationship acquires a
different character in an era when the objective, technological elements
 the message of alienation: money and politics123

gain in importance over the personal elements. The production supervisor

and the lower workers, the director and the salesman in a large store
both sides are now equally subject to an objective purpose, and it is only
within this joint relationship that subordination remains as a technical
necessity in which the requirements of an object production as an objec-
tive process find expression (ibid.: 361).
While remaining aware of the ambivalent tendencies of the money
economy, Simmel also perceives the opportunities it affords for the
objectification of the relationship between employers and employees, in
the sense that it favors the development of individuality and personal
value: The growing confidence of the modern-day worker must have
something to do with this: He no longer feels subordinated as a per
son, but provides a service precisely fixed according to the monetary
equivalent which allows a greater degree of freedom at a personal level,
the more impersonal, technical, and neutral the work he is doing and the
company which it supports (ibid: 362). This was visionary at the time it
was written, because it predicted the disappearance of the working class
as it existed in Western societies a century ago.

Socialism as Result of a Forming Process

Like religion, the stranger, and money, Simmel sees socialism as a form
that emerges out of an interactive context, real only in living relations.
In his essay on competition he compares socialism and competition as
alternate techniques of organization in the public realm. This allows us to
consider the effect of his method on a sociological approach to politics as
another area of possible alienation. That is also justified because he is
aware that socialism, just as religion and money, tends to become a thing
in itself: substantialized. He voices his protest against tearing social reali-
ties out of the interactive contexts within which they could stay alive and
retain their ability to develop. Accordingly he warns against reducing rela-
tionships to a substance. The methodical contrast between a relational
and a substantive approach becomes his instrument for criticism.
Simmel remonstrates party politicians who support socialism for
allowing their concept of order to attain absolute proportions, reducing
order to a thing, a fetish. This occurs, for instance, with the contrast of
individualistic and socialistic tendencies in society. There are historical
eras during which the latter dominate the circumstances not only in
reality, but also as a consequence of idealism and as the expression of a
124 chapter four

social constitution continuously progressing toward perfection. However,

if party politics at such a time conclude that, since all progress now
depends on the growth of the socialist element, the most progressive
and ideal state will be the most perfect form of domination by that
element, then they overlook that the whole success of socialism depends
on integrating it into an economic system which is otherwise still
individualistic in nature. (Simmel, 1907b: 147f.).
The success of socialist party politics in Simmels days was in his
opinion dependent upon the existence of the predominant economic
system, which as Simmel writes in 1900 was in opposition to socialism.
Arguing in favor of thinking in relationships, coupled with a criticism of
the tendency to substantialize, Simmel also rejects the socialist doctrine
in which value appears much like a physical quality of material goods,
similar to their color or weight.
The phenomena of money and socialism, not seen as things but as a
social reality, occur only in the vital interaction of those exchanging goods.
The exchange itself is not material, but a form of interaction. Law for
instance, is nothing but an empty abstraction until it becomes a living
relationship. People can only treat each other rightfully or do each other
wrong if they are interacting with one another. The error arising from this
substantializing point of view is methodically the same as if one were to
claim a direct connection between an individual and the content of a
particular law in such a way that the disposition of that person, being the
way it is, irrespective of anything beyond himself, would have a just claim
to this sphere of competence as has indeed happened in the individual-
istic concept of Human Rights. In reality, Law is merely a relationship
between people and occurs only in the interests, objectives, or power
play (ibid: 95 f.).
Socialism, like law and religion, is one such form of relations. Simmel
compares cultural formation to the processes of artistic creativity. He con-
ceives the shaping of such forms in relation to social aspects, which in the
course of interaction assume a religious quality, for instance. He then sees
socialism as a form of interaction, colored with a particular political hue.
Socialism is first and foremost a phenomenon of political and intellectual
culture. I believe that this secret unrest, this confused urgency beneath
the surface of consciousness that drives people today from socialism to
Nietzsche, from Bcklin to the Impressionists, from Hegel to Schopenhauer
and back, is not a result of the outward haste and exaltation of modern
life but, vice versa, it is often the expression, the manifestation and the
discharge of that inward state (ibid: 551). Socialism belongs among the
intellectual forms with which it competes as a political alternative.
 the message of alienation: money and politics125

According to Simmel, sociology would have to show the concrete

interactions in society that induce us to create that characteristic form of
relationship we call socialism. In fact, Simmel sees the economy as the
root cause, not so much with regard to the conditions of production,
but rather in the uniformity of the products. Large-scale industry is
an encouragement for socialism, not just because of the situation of
the workers, but also because of the objective quality of its products:
Modern man is surrounded by so many impersonal things that the
concept of a completely anti-individual order of life must appear increas-
ingly attractive and of course also the opposition to such a concept
(ibid: 520).
Simmel considers the money economy like many other things
with ambivalence: On the one hand it facilitates an ever-increasing degree
of substantialization and, at the same time, greater internalization.
Money (as relationship) becomes the guardian of the innermost depths
(ibid: 532). However, whether it allows the person concerned to become
more refined, unique and differentiated or, conversely makes him or her
into a tyrant over other people precisely because of the easiness with
which it is obtained has nothing to do with money, but people. Here,
too, the money economy appears in its formal relationship to socialist
conditions (ibid.). Both forms of relationship that of money and of
socialism are expected to bring the same blessing: Deliverance from the
individual struggle for existence (ibid.). They can be substituted one for
the other: He who has money does not need socialism.
Money on one hand and socialism on the other, both have positive and
negative consequences: When money works well, it leads to autonomy of
the individual, negatively, it leads to isolation; when socialism works well,
it leads to solidarity, negatively, it leads to uniformity with loss of the
opportunity of self-development. Simmel scans the culture of his time for
the mental fields from which such states of mind arise. Herein lays the
most profound connection between Nietzsches theory of values and
his aesthetic state of mind: In his opinion the quality of a society is
determined exclusively by the elevation of its values, irrespective of how
isolated those may be who represent them. Thus it is not regarded accord-
ing to how widespread its calculable qualities are; just as the significance
of an artistic era is not measured by the standard and quantity of good,
average performances, but by its highest achievements. A utilitarian-
oriented person, for whom only the concrete results of action count, will
be inclined toward socialism which emphasizes the many and propagates
desired elements in life, whereas an ethical idealist, who is committed to
the more or less aesthetically expressed form of doing, is more of an
126 chapter four

individualist or, like Kant, values the autonomy of the individual above
all. (ibid: 287).
Simmel feels that where concrete results of action count (cf. above)
socialism is the obvious mode of being, whereas when the emphasis is on
aesthetic expression in the form of doing (cf. above) preference is given
to the mode of being geared to individual autonomy. Kant and Nietzsche
stand for the highest esteem for the peerless individual; they are the antip-
odes to the socialist state of mind. What distinguishes Nietzsche from all
socialist values is most clearly illustrated by the fact that for him it is only
the quality of humanity that is of significance. This means that the value
of an epoch depends on the single best example, whereas in socialism it is
the overall distribution of desired conditions and values which counts.
(ibid: 293) In the socialist mode of relationship, supreme happiness as
a political goal must be reformulated as the happiness of the greatest
number. For Nietzsche it is not the numbers that count, but the highest
possible degree, and it is sufficient if it is realized in one individual only,
representing the whole of the human species.
The great number of those who do not stress their diversity by any
marked differentiation makes it easy to order them according to rational
criteria, e.g. in hundreds (ibid: 556) or in some other symmetrical order
which is easy to distinguish and control. For this reason both despotism
and socialism have strong inclinations toward symmetrical constructions
in society; in both cases it is because a extreme degree of centralization of
society is involved, for the sake of which the individuality of its forms and
circumstances have to be leveled down (ibid: 556). The tendency toward
uniformity is a characteristic of socialism which marks not only the
cultural side; it also causes in it the tension between the rational and the
emotional.

Socialism on Happiness

Referring to the supreme happiness of the greatest number, Simmel points

out that apart from the material dimension (availability of food, clothing
etc.), happiness as an experienced social reality has not just a political
but also has an emotional dimension. As everybody knows, a modest
person with a minimum of material possessions can be happy, while
another, more demanding type can be miserable even in the most luxuri-
ous surroundings. Given this, problems inevitably arise for socialism in
the implementation of its goal of a social equality which has only rational
 the message of alienation: money and politics127

roots. By implication peoples experiences of happiness can gradually be

made more and more similar to each other.
However, because it is always only a question of distribution, or
equalization of the external causes of such feelings, one is immediately
faced with the fact that different people react differently to the same
conditions of happiness (Simmel, 1894b: 264). If, however, the rational
goal of equality should be an equal degree of a sense of happiness, then,
with regard to the amount of material goods to which the individual is
entitled, in view of the great differences in the subjects predispositions,
one would be forced to the conclusion that the external distribution of
this amount would have to be very unequal (ibid.).
Clearly, mans happiness is not only dependent upon the provisions for
his material well-being. The ideal of equality propagated by socialism
(both Marxist and Christian) always strives toward eliminating the suffer-
ing, which is engendered by experiencing asymmetrical interaction in
power relationships of subordination and domination. This inequality,
experienced particularly at work has painful emotional components as
long as the position within the performance hierarchy is the measure of
personal value.
According to Simmels analysis, the advance of the money economy
offers the chance that the general trend toward objectivity, inherent in the
interactive form of money, applies to the achievement-oriented, employer-
employee relationship. Superiority and subordination at work, and within
similar functional relationships, would thus become de-emotionalized
and more objective when converted to the social form money and the
positive consequence would be the avoidance of suffering.
By thus giving performance and its organizational prerequisites an
objective status, all the technical advantages of the latter could be retained,
whilst the disadvantages in terms of subjectivity and freedom could be
avoided, which are today the basis for anarchism and, in part, for social-
ism. This is the general direction of the culture, which, as we saw above, is
preparing the ground for the money economy. The separation of the
worker from his means of production, i.e. the question of possession,
which is considered the crux of the social dilemma, could then be seen to
be a form of liberation in a different sense, provided the worker as a per-
son is regarded as being totally separate from the purely material condi-
tions into which the technology of production places him. (Simmel,
1907b: 365).
To give performance an objective, measurable character, which Simmel
regards as a possible solution, is unthinkable in socialism, since socialism
128 chapter four

is at war with money as a form of interaction (at least in Simmels days).

A plausible motive for this battle is the degree of objectivity the money
economy brings to social forms. Ferdinand Tnnies describes this battle as
the era of community (Tnnies, 1887). Thus associations, in which being
emotional was traditionally expected, become stripped of their emotional
component with all its positive and negative consequences.
However, the nature of the special-purpose association, which com-
munity life is increasingly assuming, makes it become more and more
inanimate; the whole heartlessness of money is thus reflected in the social
culture it determines. It may be that the force of the socialist ideal is at
least in part a reaction to this; by declaring war on the money system it
seeks to overcome the isolation of the individual from his group, which
the special-purpose association symbolizes. At the same time it appeals to
all the loving and enthusiastic feelings for the group, which can be aroused
in the individual. (Simmel 1907b: 375 f.). Simmel makes very clear the
contradiction, which exists between rationalism and emotionalism within
the socialist forms of interaction. In the course of this analysis, he discov-
ers components in the object of his study which he calls communist.
Socialism is, indeed, geared toward rationalizing life, toward dominat-
ing its accidental and unique elements by means of the intellectual capac-
ity to recognize patterns and make calculations; however, at the same
time, it has an affinity with the dull, communist instincts still lurking in
the farther corners of the mind, the heritage of times long gone. This dual-
ity of motives, the psychological roots of which are diametrically opposed
to one another, and, which on the one hand makes it the most extreme
product of the rationalist money economy, and, on the other, the personi-
fication of undifferentiated instinct and emotional life, probably accounts
for its unique powers of attraction: It is both rationality and the reaction to
rationality. (ibid: 376).
The yearning for community-type social relationships is one of the
powerful driving forces behind the socialist search for solidarity the
search for a form of familism beyond the family. Money as an expanding
system increasingly represses these forms, stimulating the polarization
between private and public, enhancing the tension between community
and society. Simmel sees communal forms being pushed completely
inward (family, friendship) or completely outward (humanity). Socialism
has found reason for enthusiasm in the antiquated order of the clan with
its communist principle of equality, while the money system makes the
individual revert to concentrating on him or herself, leaving him or her, on
 the message of alienation: money and politics129

the one hand only the closest individual relationships, e.g. family and
friends as objects of personal and emotional devotion and, on the other,
the very largest unit, such as ones country or the whole of humanity
(ibid: 376).
The inner contradictions of socialism become more and more critical
because they radiate a strong drive toward rationalizing production.
As Simmel goes on to show, the factory worker is for the most part
prepared to accept standing at a machine. However, in the production of
agricultural goods, great value is still placed on the non-rational compo-
nents of the work process. A further major theme of modern socialism is
to confront the old-fashioned landowning-collective with something
utterly heterogeneous and which completely alienates the farmer from
his innermost inclination in life; namely the perfect domination of pro-
duction by reason, willpower, and the human capacity to calculate and
organize Such absolute mastery of overall production by reason and
willpower is, of course, only feasible if the means of production are com-
pletely centralized in societys hands. (ibid: 384).
One rational aspect of socialism is its character as a scientific form. It is
precisely this aspect which appears to provoke Simmel to criticism,
because he sees it as a challenge in his own field. The protagonists of
scientific socialism are social philosophers like Simmel himself and their
inclination for this (socialist) kind of interaction is mainly at home in the
emotional realm. In the same way that religious feelings create their own
object, a political conviction will give rise to a scientific form. There are
today extreme individualists who are nevertheless practical adherents to
socialism because they regard it as an indispensable preparation and
extremely rigorous school for a purified and just kind of individualism
(ibid: 407). This means that Simmel saw in his days contemporaries who
sided with socialism for other reasons than purely political. Their motif
was also based on the hope to overcome the feudal order existing in
Europe at the time.
In the same context Simmel wrote: I am well aware that contemporary
scientific socialism rejects the mechanical communist form of egalitarian-
ism, seeking only to achieve the equality of working conditions as a basis
for the different talents, strength and endeavor to give rise to different
positions and pleasures. (ibid: 460 f.). However, Simmel has no doubts
about the causal relationship between historical materialism and social-
ist theory, and Simmels misgivings about the former will be explained
here later.
130 chapter four

Machine Factory Government

As a political form of social construction in interaction, socialism, as

Simmel saw it in his days, plans activities intended to reshape society, and,
in particular the state. Simmel infers the distinct content of the action
program from the fact that machine, factory, and state have become paral-
lel. It has to do with exactly the same aesthetic appeal as emanates from
a machine. The absolutely functional nature and dependability of the
movements, the extreme avoidance of resistance and friction, the harmo-
nious coordination of the smallest and the largest components: All this
gives the machine its very own kind of beauty, which is perceptible even at
a glance. The factory repeats this on a larger scale and the socialist state is
meant to repeat it again on an even larger scale (ibid: 561 f.). Today the
sense of beauty is hardly inspired by either machinery or political organi-
zations, but the principle of absolute predictability and reliability coming
at the price of total rigidity has spread to additional areas of experience,
including computer software.
The interesting conclusion at which Simmel arrives by lining up the
three complexes: machine factory state, is that socialists do not reject
conditions because they oppose them, but rather they adapt to innova-
tions of which they are by no means themselves the initiators. Simmel is
convinced that there is a congruity between the functionalizing of human
beings in their jobs in modern industry and the regulation of individual
behavior in state socialism.
The modern division of labor causes the numbers of dependencies to
increase and makes personalities disappear behind their functions
because it allows only one aspect to flourish whilst all those others have to
yield which together go to make up a whole personality. The social struc-
ture, which would be bound to evolve if this tendency were pursued,
would exhibit a definite, formal relationship to socialism. For the latter it
is of the utmost importance to transform all forms of activity that involve
social aspects into objective functions. A civil servant today assumes a
position which is objectively pre-shaped and allows flexibility only for
specific aspects or energies within his personality. Similarly, an absolute
form of state socialism would raise a world of objective forms of socially
effective behavior above the world of personalities; this world of objective
forms would allow and demand only totally accurate and objectively
correct statements; this world would relate to the first rather like a
geometrical figure to empirical bodies. (ibid: 313).
 the message of alienation: money and politics131

By mentioning the civil servant, Simmel conjures up the modern state

bureaucracy; Namely the fact that the political organization of production
as the aim of socialism entails not only central planning but, indeed, a
central, state administration of all professional work. Consequently, the
state must be organized just as rationally as a machine or a factory.
The theoretical impulse emanates from the labor theory of value which
requires the centrally controlled deployment of all labor. This shows the
profound connection between the labor theory of value and socialism,
which indeed aspires to a situation in society in which the utilitarian value
of objects, related to the working time required to obtain them, represents
a constant factor. In the third volume of his The Capital Karl Marx states:
The basic requirement of all value also in labor theory is being of
practical use [Gebrauchswert]. This simply means that the amount of
the overall labor time of a society is used for a given product, which is in
proportion to its practical significance (ibid: 476 f.).
Put into practice, this kind of theory would require the elimination of
differentiations with the consequence that society would change beyond
recognition. Work would no longer be an expression of the lives of unique
individuals, but a homogeneous stockpile, comparable with a nations
wealth measured in terms of money. This homogenized reservoir of
nationalized (and thus impersonalized) work is then administered by the
State. Thus a kind of qualitatively uniform overall requirement is postu-
lated for a given society. This is in keeping with the motto of the theory of
labor: Work is work and, as such, of equal value; similarly, need is need
and, as such, of equal value. The equality of all work is achieved by work-
ing only so much to precisely fill previously defined demand. Under such
circumstances, of course, no kind of work would be less useful than
another (ibid.).
This, indeed, is society transformed into a machine. Simmels thesis of
the contradictory nature of adaptation on the one hand and the imitation
of technical, rational structures in state and society on the other is strong
enough to support his line of reasoning. The necessary order, which would
have to be enforced politically, cannot be founded on this or another vari-
ant of rationality alone. From the point of view of the emotional values of
experience, the morphological triad (machine, factory, government) would
find little support. It would have to be enforced by suppression irrespec-
tive of any feelings of the persons involved.
The objective would be an economic system in which all work is done
according to a plan and in absolute knowledge of the demand and of the
132 chapter four

amount of work necessary for each product the kind to which socialism
aspires. The only approach to this utterly utopian state which would seem
technically possible is for only those things to be produced which are
definitely indispensable, i.e. indisputably vital. Only where this is the case
are all jobs equally necessary and useful. However, as soon as one aspires
to higher realms, where on the one hand, demand and the evaluation of
the utilitarian aspect are inevitably more individual, and, on the other
hand the degree of intensity of work is measurable, no kind of regulation
of production quantities will be able to achieve an overall equality in the
ratio between demand and the amount of work done (ibid. 478).
Simmel integrated his analysis of the efficiency of the centrally planned
economy within his philosophy of money in 1900. In his lecture on
Socialism in 1918, Max Weber voiced his agreement with Simmel with
regard to mistrusting the administration of enterprises run by the govern-
ment. Weber also agreed with Simmels findings: In public and special
purpose enterprises, it is exclusively the civil servant, not the worker
who, in the case of a strike, can achieve far more than in private industry.
The dictatorship of the civil servant is at least for the time being on the
advance. (Weber, 1918: 22) Weber of course was alluding to the dictator-
ship of the proletariat, which to him was far less likely to happen than a
domination of society by civil servants.

Looking back at Chapter 4

The main thrust of Simmels critical stance may not be directed against
any particular view or way of doing things but against the general shallow-
ness of human thinking. He is particularly upset about the ideas people
commonly have about money and about how value is attributed. Value to
him is the most general form of social relationship and it is constructed in
interaction. Money has the potential of enabling a welcome distance
between capitalist and wage earner; they each deliver performance and
payment respectively in exchange and otherwise enjoy having nothing to
do with each other.
Socialism too is the result of interaction. Simmels recommends in
vain as we know to beware of formalistic notions of equality. If people
are expected to be equally happy they cannot be expected to feel comfort-
able under identical external conditions, like the same uniform in China
under Mao or the same amount of pay in Western countries. Modern man
has been fascinated by the way a machine works, he has been organizing
 the message of alienation: money and politics133

factories according to that model, and he tends to expect government too

to operate like a machine.
Imposing uniformity on the person appears plausible against that
background. This coincides with the bias in favor of the natural science
and their application in factory-technology. Simmels warning of that
trend is clear enough. It comes of course with a heavy load of responsibil-
ity for the humanities in general and for sociology in particular to spread
the messages Simmel has for us: Reduce alienation by increasing the level
of awareness.
 CHAPTER FIVE

THE MAIN THRUST OF THE MESSAGES CONTRA MARX AND WEBER

Simmels main Thrust against Marx

In several segments of our report here on the messages which Simmel has
been sending, reference was made to the work of Karl Marx. The lives of
these two overlapped: Marx was 40 years old when Simmel was born in
1858. The first volume of Das Kapital was published in 1867. The other two
volumes appeared from unpublished notes after Marx died (1883): Volume
II in 1885, the year Simmel started teaching at the University of Berlin as
Privatdozent, and volume III in 1894. Intellectuals and labor leaders in
Europe and beyond engaged in heated debates about these books, and of
course Simmel got involved in the discussion. The intolerant Prussian
monarchy had censored what Marx published as a journalist in Germany
and forced him into emigration. It was probably this shared fate caused by
political backwardness which created sympathy and a feeling of solidarity
with Marx in Simmel no matter how much division there was otherwise in
political opinion.
In spite of obvious difference there must have been a shared hope for
change. Simmel, Marx, Engels and other great names of that period were
clearly members of the bourgeoisie. Simmel and Engels as sons of suc
cessful business men, Marx as son of an attorney, and both of them were
well equipped with academic credentials. The difference between them
started with the expectation in the case of Marx and Engels that the labor
class would bring about change, while Simmel and many others expected
the bourgeoisie to lead toward freedom and democracy. This distinction
amounted to the following alternative: Marx and Engels planned to
become revolutionaries as leaders of a class to which they did not belong,
whereas Saint-Simon, Simmel and others as intellectuals felt it was their
responsibility to raise the consciousness of the bourgeoisie to the level
where it would take over political power from the ruling nobility.
Keeping in mind this point of departure, it is understandable that
much of traditional sociology has been identified as bourgeois thinking.
From the perspective of the class consciousness of the proletariat that
bourgeois thinking appeared as reactionary, from the perspective of the
136 chapter five

then existing feudal system ruled by members of the nobility, it was dan
gerously progressive. That is why Simmel could perceive his own work as
bourgeois and as progressive at the same time.
But it was not only the question of which class will lead toward change
that separated Simmel from Marx. Simmel resented the reductionist
method used by Marx leading to the central thesis of historical material
ism according to which the human condition is determined by material
interests. According to this Marxian notion religion was merely a source
of misperception, nothing but opium of the people. The idea that history
might have been influenced or even shaped by religious interests would
have meant acknowledging an aspect of the human condition that Marx
wanted to overcome. Marx could not interpret religious interest in any
other way than as delusion because he was convinced he knew that there
was nothing real in a beyond to which religion could reasonably refer.
Simmel by contrast left himself more open on that front: If the human
ability of perception and critical thinking were unable on methodological
grounds to prove that the content of religion was real, then Simmel con
cluded they were also unable to prove that there was nothing there to
believe in. It was to him simply not the business of scholarship to prove
or disprove the existence of God. Then, in conjunction with developing
his version of pragmatism, Simmel recognized that religious ideas create
forms of conduct, social structure, and even types of societies that become
very much a reality. The genesis of those, however, cannot be explained by
historical materialism. According to that school of thought capitalism will
be overcome the sooner, the quicker human persons recognize its unjust
and inhuman quality. Religion, on the other hand, has the potential of hid
ing the shortcomings of capitalism even from persons affected by it, and
therefore religion must be done away with.
To claim, as Marx has done, that history is determined by economic fac
tors alone, is plainly absurd to Simmel, because countless historical devel
opments have religious or other non-material causes. Yet Simmel is willing
to acknowledge that to study history as if the economy were in fact the all
decisive source of development is to Simmel a very fruitful and legitimate
approach. Accordingly, while Simmel rejects historical materialism as a
description of history he applauds it at the same time as a heuristic tool and
source of novel insights.
One of the methods used by the humanities prior to the 18th century
was metaphysical explanation. That procedure meant the philosophical
inquiry of a non-empirical character into the nature of existence. But the
striking success of the natural sciences based on empirical research as well
 the main thrust of the messages contra marx and weber137

as the expectation of rendering detailed and precise description of the

object of study in history, cultural anthropology and other humanities has
united the leading scholars in their increasing rejection of metaphysics.
It is Simmels conclusion that Marx took advantage of that trend away
from metaphysical explanatory tools and toward accepting only empirical
and rational causal patterns of explanation by erroneously identifying
non-material interests that people may follow in real life with metaphysics
as well. Simmel, however, wanted to make a distinction between religious
motivation in a persons daily life on the one hand, and the use of religious
explanation in philosophy on the other. Marx saw no reason to make such
a distinction. According to him it is safe to assume, that history is being
molded not by idealists but rather by the agents of economic interests,
which alone are free of metaphysics.
In addition, Simmel and Marx disagreed on the concept of alienation. It
originated in ancient Latin legal language as a description of transferring
property rights from one person to another. Simmel saw alienation occur
as mental activity of a person producing something which that person
then refuses to acknowledge as his or her creation. Projecting evil inten
tions into another who is perfectly innocent or defining a normal and
average contemporary as extremely lovable would be examples of alien
ation in Simmels thinking. They are not alienation because they may be
unfounded but because the producer of the respective value judgment
refuses to see the cause of his evaluation anywhere else than in the other
person. Transferring as it were property rights from the prejudiced accuser
or the blind lover to the person he or she is facing is in analogy of the
ancient Latin wording, alienation. While Marx considered alienation a
deplorable defect of the production process in capitalist society, Simmel
saw in it the inevitable mark of the human condition in general.
In the continuity of this thinking Simmel also developed his concept of
valuation as alienation. His most striking example is of course money. The
bank note and even the coin minted of a precious metal have no innate
value. Rather value is attributed to money in the course of a process of
social construction. Yet none of the persons involved in the construction
process acknowledge their own creative contribution. To Marx, by con
trast, the value of money depends on the blood, sweat, and tears invested
into the material production process by the members of the working class;
it represents their labor, and alienation is the result of them being
exploited.
The political answer to that deplorable condition was of course social
ism. Simmels use of the word had very little to do with the meaning it has
138 chapter five

taken on in current political discourse. It was then in his view one of the
two paths humanity was in a position to take toward social development.
The other was the one Simmel clearly preferred: competition. The latter is
for Simmel an expression of individualism rather than simply a type of
economic behavior. Just as Money is primarily a form of interaction and a
phenomenon of culture, so is competition.
It does not seem convincing at first sight, how Simmel could put social
ism and competition side by side as alternative tools for achieving prog
ress. They can indeed both be seen as types of social control, socialism
functions via external control of the person, competition by internalizing
social norms that lead to individual success or failure and at the same
time urge the individual to perform in the service of the community.
Simmel suggests, as we pointed out above, a sober rather than an emo
tional approach toward socialism and by admitting to the merely techni
cal character of this social order, socialism is compelled to abandon its
claim of being a self-justifying goal and arbiter of ultimate values, and
thus ought to be put on the same level with individualistic competition
(Simmel 1903b: 1017). Kant and Nietzsche represent the highest esteem of
the peerless individual; they are for Simmel the antipodes to the socialist
state of mind. Simmel is obviously closer to them than he is to Marx.
Simmel, the Protestant who late in his life left his church, had high
regard for religion. It is to him one of the three great forms, next to art
and scholarship, which can capture the whole of reality on their specific
terms. Since there is no division of labor between them, since they are
responsible not for a certain segment of the world but rather for repre
senting the whole in their own way, it follows that there can be no conflict
between them, just as it would be pointless to argue whether a painting
or a poem dealing with the same topic was more correct. There can be
as little conflict for instance between religion and scholarship as there
can be twee tones (in a composition) and color (in a painting) (Simmel
1906: 8).
As we have seen, to Simmel we as scholars cannot decide if there is
anything in the beyond, what it may be like, or if there is nothing. For Marx
religion is an aspect of this empirical world, and moreover it shows how
sick this world is. It can be compared to a fever or any other symptom that
signals the presence of a disease. Religion must be overcome because it
keeps people from forming a healthy and correct image of the real world
requiring change. Human persons cannot act adequately unless they have
a clear and correct image of reality. Religion stands in the way of forming
such a correct image, it must be done away with. It seems to be on the
 the main thrust of the messages contra marx and weber139

issue of religion that the difference between Marx and Simmel is most
explicit.

Simmels main Thrust against Weber

As is well known about the time Weber and his wife spent in Berlin, they
both were frequent guests at gatherings of intellectuals and artists in the
home of Georg and Gertrud Simmel. What influence went back and forth
between Weber and Simmel, both only about six years apart in age, is of
course impossible to tell. However, Simmel, not only slightly older, but
also well versed in philosophy, may have contributed to giving Weber, the
specialist in the history of law, a philosophical foundation for his work. It
is in line with this assumption when Weber writes about his own method
ological position: The logically most developed approach to the theory of
verstehen can be found in the second edition of Simmels The Problems of
the Philosophy of History (pp. 2762) (Weber, Knies and the Problem of
Irrationality [Knies und das Irrationalittsproblem], 1905, quoted from
Weber 1951c: 92). But this closeness beween the two does not last. In man
uscripts later to be incorporated in Webers Economy and Society, written
in 1911 or later (Weber 1956) Weber inserts several passages documenting
that he now disagrees with Simmel. It can be shown that these differences
are not superficial, but that they follow consistently from the respective
theories of knowledge of the two authors.
In Webers text on basic concepts in sociology (Weber 1951d) we read
about Simmels method (as he uses it in his book Soziologie as well as
in Philosophy of Money) Webers statement that he does not intend to
follow Simmels usage of the term meaning. Contrary to Simmel, Weber
announces that he will make a clear distinction between meaning that is
subjectively ascribed by the acting individual from meaning that is objec-
tively valid (ibid: 527) no matter who accepts or rejects it. This distinction
is then tied to the special approaches of different academic disciplines:
The empirical sciences of social conduct (sociology and history, ibid: 528)
are given the task to determine which meaning is subjectively ascribed,
whereas the dogmatic fields of learning: Law, logic, ethic, and others must
direct their research toward finding the true and valid meaning of a given
phenomenon (ibid.).
According to Simmel every type of meaning is by necessity the result of
a construction. He does not deny the existence of an objectively given
truth, but to him we cannot access it without changing and forming it in
140 chapter five

the process of trying to grasp it. Weber now, in the years between 1907 and
1911, allows such a construction process only in the special case of creating
the tool of an ideal type and recommends using it as a heuristic tool.
Simmel by contrast claims that constructing and ascribing meaning is all
we ever do, whether we admit it or not.
Simmel and Weber can also be compared on how they approach the
subject of music. Since neither Simmel nor Weber wanted to be consid
ered as musicologists, it must have been a matter of course to both of
them, to write about music with an intention that went beyond the art of
music. Music gave them an opportunity to test a hypothesis and try out a
method. Simmel was working on a philosophy of forms mediating between
subject and object: The work of art is always an objectification of the sub
ject and finds its place beyond that reality which is attached to the object
as such or the subject as such. However, as soon as it gives up the purity of
this otherworldly position, be it to simply display an object, be it to merely
address the subject, it slides in this very measure out of its specific cate
gory and becomes reality ( Simmel, 1919a: 29). This sliding back to the
level of reality means that there are still audible sounds, a real cheer or a
real sob, but not music as art form anymore, or depending on the per
spective taken they are not yet music as art.
Weber is still read primarily as a theorist of rationalization despite
some notable corrections by Martin Albrow (Albrow 1990) and others. For
him, music is an example to show that certain steps in the process if ratio
nalization were completed only in the West. But he also wanted to point
out that the unique form of art there, as everywhere else, escapes com
plete rational systematization. In music, there are mathematically describ
able regularities, but the art component itself remains elusive at least with
a non-rational remainder.
Simmel was inclined to see the process of creating art in analogy to the
construction of scholarly theories. He illustrated that using the work of
the historian undertaken by him to produce the historical truth beyond
subject and object: The historical truth is not a mere reproduction, but a
mental activity, creating something from the given material accessible as
internal replica which that material is not as such, not only by systemati
cally summarizing its details, but by confronting it with questions, by
coordinating individual facets into a meaning of which often the hero of
that historical truth himself was not even conscious, by digging up its
meanings and values, and thus forming this past into the presentation of
an image that is worthwhile for us (Simmel, 1923: 55). This description of
a scientific activity has clear echoes of artistic creation. While Simmel
 the main thrust of the messages contra marx and weber141

examines music to find parallels between art and scholarship, Weber uses
the case of that art to demonstrate the limits of its scientific treatment. For
Simmel, even scholarship is an art; for Weber art can never become a
science.
In his study of music Weber examines the issue of rationalization at
two very different levels: at the level of musicology as the theory of
harmony and at the other level as tendencies in the evolution in music.
It is rather obvious that the two influence each other, but equally of
course, is their treatment as separate trials of a scientific nature. The self-
rationalization of music necessitates a narrowing of affective expression,
but it also enhances the chance of transition to harmony and musical
notation. The rationality of harmony triggers distinct boundaries and
produces in some areas its own failure. This happens if rationalization
approaches art with the implicit claim to make it scientific.
Simmel and Weber differ in their understanding of scholarship. For
Simmel science is a way of seeing reality. At least at this point it is compa
rable to art. Therefore, Simmel looks at music as an art, and believes the
humanities can learn from how art works. Weber sees science as the duty
to rationalize its objects under study and shows where this duty meets its
limits on the specific features of music.
The difference between Simmel and Weber can also be seen as follows:
Weber promoted methodological individualism. Only the individual
person is real, associations are mere images existing only in the heads of
people. For Simmel in culture and society all mental and social reality
exists as imagined. If those phenomena cannot be found in anybodys
mind, they simply do not exist anymore. Because of this, the distinction
between types of meaning proposed by Weber does not make any sense
for Simmel.
A specialist in the history of philosophy in Europe and particularly
Germany may someday follow up on what here can be presented merely
as a rather vague hypothesis: The climate of philosophical debate between
1900 and 1910 was impacted by the condemnation of modernism by the
pope in Rome. An encyclical letter starting with the words Pascendi domi-
nici gregis was promulgated by Pope Pius X in September 1907. It had been
preceded by various restricting and condemning actions by the Catholic
Church against catholic scholars who tended to emphasize the relativity
of knowledge and the process of construction and evolution. On the other
hand, according to the pope, the Church cannot err in interpreting scrip
ture. Much of what went on in philosophy at that time was seen as a threat
to the faith and accordingly condemned as modernism.
142 chapter five

Catholic monthly periodicals which we researched had been carrying

consistently positive book reviews of Simmels publications until that
time. After 1907 we found negative comments on Simmel in the same
monthly journals which had praised him for years. This may have influ
enced the scholarly dialogue between Simmel and Weber, even though
neither of the two was a catholic. Anyone wanting to follow up on this
speculation is referred to a well researched publication on the subject
(Neuner 2009). The book by Father Neuner has the advantage of present
ing an inside view of events which even a century later represent a consid
erable embarrassment for the Catholic Church.
But Simmel does not confuse churches with universities. Those two
venerable institutions ought not to be confronted with the same episte
mological rigor. Maybe churches must claim to be able to tell their follow
ers what is real objectively. However, to Simmel reality is too vast and
too complex for the human mind to grasp. Many of his critics would
reject that because they do not share Simmels modest expectations of
what scholarship and the university can achieve. The only chance men
and women have therefore for Simmel, is to create tools for selecting,
describing, and placing in context those segments of reality that corre
spond to their interests and emotions.
The construction of ideal types as recommended by Max Weber is for
Simmel essentially all university work amounts to: Scholarship is
whether admitted or not the creation of heuristic tools. This controver
sial insight and the message that reality is socially constructed are rooted
in Simmels epistemology. This message is welcome to some but a provoca
tion to others. And it seems that Weber identified with it in his twenties
and thirties, but distanced himself somehow during his forties when he
became more realistic.
It is of course the prerogative of anyone to change his views during his
or her lifetime. And certainly that is nothing peculiar to Weber. On the
contrary, we can observe similar changes in the writings of Dilthey and
Rickert. The young and dynamic Dilthey influenced Simmel and Weber
and, in addition, was probably important for American pragmatism and
the Chicago school as well. But Dilthey himself later left the position of his
text of 1883 (Dilthey 1883, Gerhardt 1971: 279). Heinrich Rickert and the
later Max Weber apparently followed the transition that Dilthey made in
the development of his philosophical thinking. On the other hand, it
seems that Simmel stayed with his position and that he neither followed
nor endorsed the changes in Diltheys line of argument.
 CHAPTER SIX

BACKGROUND OF THE MESSAGES: INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCES

The Platonic Socrates

At the beginning of this book the reader was reminded that Simmel
trained as a philosopher. His sociology grew out of that background. The
following pages show how that occurred. It is not desirable or possible to
try and present the teachings of Socrates, Plato, Kant and other great
thinkers here, but it is possible to show how Simmel looked at these
authors, where he agreed or disagreed with them, and particularly, which
of their ideas he decided to incorporate into his own thinking.
Socrates and Jesus in spite of all the highly significant details that
separate the two have this in common: Neither wrote a line on what they
taught. What we know about them today therefore, depends entirely on
what others wrote down about their teachings. In the case of Socrates we
depend on his disciple Plato for information. Accordingly, whatever is pre-
sented and discussed as a thesis or opinion of Socrates is normally seen
through the eyes or rather the pen of Plato. In the following, however,
we will not be one step removed from Socrates but two, because we look at
what Plato wrote about him from the perspective of what Simmel read in
Platos texts.
Lack of consideration for the autonomous self is one of the most seri-
ous reproaches Simmel made against Plato. But before he tackled that
problem, he described Platos achievements in the continuity of the
Socratic basic motifs (Simmel 1910: 105): In light of the insecurity which
characterized Greek behavior during the time of Socrates, moral and polit-
ical life was threatened by subjectivist arbitrariness as well as by reac-
tionary regressions to older forms of authority, instinctive security, and
tradition that had lost their effectiveness. Socrates wanted to show the
way toward clear guidelines for behavior and hence tried hard to regain
norm-building firmness and security (ibid.).
The bridge that had formerly carried the weight connecting subjective
inclination with objective cultural norms had collapsed. A gap had
emerged between subject and object, a gap that became a challenge for
the philosopher. Socrates saw no other way out of this dilemma but this
144 chapter six

one: Behavior in moral and political realms had to be steered by intellec-

tual knowledge in the same way as had long been the case in the area of
technical craftsmanship. It is here where Simmel discerns, in Platos pic-
ture of Socrates, a principle of pragmatism. The demanding claim that
knowledge be corroborated in practical behavior in the handicrafts, in
horse breeding as well as in the arts, in other words in everything which in
ancient Greece fell under the rubric of the technical is analogously
transferred to ethics and politics: here as well, isolated and subjective
opinions have to be replaced by an objective and generally valid knowl-
edge (ibid.).
With this goal before his eyes, Socrates searched for the concept behind
each object of his attention. He did this, on the one hand, because he
wanted to avoid any one-sidedness and instead get the fullest grasp pos-
sible of the whole phenomenon. Mere subjective specification of a phe-
nomenon is vulnerable to chance, to emotional disposition, to moods, and
to personal interests of individuals. Intellectual work, however, which
should open the access to concept, as Socrates used the term, can serve no
interest other than objectivity, which insofar as it escapes subjective
errors can be called truth.
But on the other hand Socrates was in search of the concept also because
he intended to deduce from it prescriptions for correct behavior, again in
two respects: For one, in handling all that is singular, personal, and arbi-
trary about experience (ibid.) in order to enable understanding and inter-
pretation of experienced events; for another, in preparing us to make
decisions about what to do. Socrates examined the concepts of the ruler,
of justice, of the statesman, of fortitude, always with the conviction that
from a correct concept will follow correct behavior (ibid.).

Platos Eternal Ideas

Plato refocused Socrates predominantly-ethical concern toward a theo-

retical emphasis. For Socrates, it sufficed to derive from the concept
a firm and clear norm for practical ethical behavior (ibid: 106). Plato,
however, was much more concerned with the question of truth itself,
namely whether the term has been correctly conceived, regardless of
how it may later influence actual behavior. The criterion of truth for Plato
was the correspondence of a concept with its empirical referent. Simmel
mentioned other possible meanings of truth, namely that it is a relation-
ship of our images among each other an absence of contradictions, or a
 background of the messages: intellectual influences145

mutual-causal foundation or a symbolic relationship of thought to a

world of realities not directly comparable with it (ibid.) which shows that
Simmel did not feel he should necessarily follow Platos notion of truth.
Plato was not yet prepared to grant that much autonomy to thought;
he is still far from these other criteria of truth mentioned by Simmel.
Furthermore, according to Simmel, it is characteristic of the ancient
Greeks that their conceptualizations were geared toward the substantive
and observable. Accordingly, an image is considered to be true if it corre-
sponds to its empirical referent in the same way as a perfect painting with
its model (ibid.) or as we would maybe say today, as a photograph with its
object.
For Plato objectivity, namely independence from subjectivity, meant
that truth had to be something reliably constant. It does not evade being
pinned down in the process of conception or appear in an ever-changing
form. Something firm and stable, however, was not to be expected in the
world of sensory givens (ibid.). Heraclitus had shown that empirical real-
ity is in a state of constant flux, that it changes its appearance according
to the changing points of view and special circumstances of the observer
(ibid.). Reality could not directly and by itself have the quality of being
true. Therefore the referents of concepts or of truth have to be constructed
somewhere other than in the world of senses. These referents Plato called
ideas, which are therefore only images postulated for the purpose of grasp-
ing the existence of truth (ibid.).
Simmels addition to Platos notion of the determination of the concept
of ideas contains two insights important for understanding Simmels
works. On the one hand, ideas are merely postulated images and there-
fore, like Max Webers ideal types, created ad hoc as tools for thought by
human beings but do not have an independent existence. On the other
hand, they serve the purpose of grasping the existence of truth (ibid.), a
truth that must exist regardless of whether or not human beings can grasp
it. Interpreted in this way, Plato has designed with his eternal ideas an
ingenious methodical tool but according to Simmel did not directly
discover the truth itself in these ideas.
Simmel made his position clear with a comparison with religious emo-
tions. For him what comes first is not the existence of a god, who is then
sought after, loved, and adored, but rather an emotional condition that
then finds its fulfillment in a god: A searching, a love, an adoration are
there as experienced and rightfully existing facts, and God is the name
for the referent that has to exist in order that this experience has a right, a
hold, and a logical possibility (ibid: 107). Numerous misunderstandings of
146 chapter six

Simmels statements stem from the fact that examples such as this one
about the love of God, which were included for purposes of illustration,
have been misread as substantive statements on a specific topic such as
religion. Simmel simply uses examples as this one to clarify his method of
thinking. Thus he makes the epistemological point that Platos eternal
ideas correspond to the name God. Just as Gods name should not be con-
fused with the reality of God, to which the name may lead, so according
to Simmel Platos ideas may not be considered as already constituting
the truth, but they may help conceptualizing it. That is how Simmel saw it.
For Plato himself, however, it was different. For him there were two sep-
arate realities: The empirical one of sensual perception and the transcen-
dent one of eternal ideas. The bodily eye of humans could perceive the
first, and the spiritual eye the second. Simmel, however, does not share
this dualism of two realities. When the Greeks saw the referents of con-
cepts not in the physics of this world but in the metaphysics of another
world, then Simmel explains this with their style of thought that required
visual perception and substance (ibid.). Such thinking led to the conclu-
sion that, if two realms are as different from each other as the mental con-
cept, on the one hand, and the empirical sensory perception, on the other
hand, and both can claim to be true, then they must refer to different spe-
cies of objects. Simmel, however, rejects this interpretation expressly as
false. To him there is just one reality, the world in which we live and act.
The rational conceptualization on the one hand, and the physical per-
ception on the other, do not have as referents two different species of
objects (metaphysics for the ideas and physics for the empirical world);
both jointly refer to the concrete visible world in which man must conduct
his life. Simmel again comes up with an illustration, this time drawing a
comparison not from the world of religious emotions but from the world
of art. Art is another special form in which we capture reality (ibid.), but
it would obviously be erroneous if one would demand a special and dif-
ferent object for it other than the objects for practical empirical percep-
tion. Thus art is not a separate reality for Simmel but a way to tell the story
about the one and only reality. At least that is what Simmel believed art
ought to strive for.
The theoretical position of Simmel, which can be inferred from this 1910
text, may be summarized as follows. Knowledge must be based on experi-
ence in order that it can assure itself of its truth. Human beings encounter
the objects from which they make their experiences only in the realm of
this world, the world of the senses; hence they are not as with Plato
divided between this world and a transcendental world. Experiences with
 background of the messages: intellectual influences147

objects can only turn into knowledge when they are shaped by human
beings into a specific form. The sensory impression of a picture of the
mother remembered by her child, the portrait created by an artist, and the
concept by which a scientist summarizes his object all are for Simmel in
principle, equally valid variations of this process of formation. Hence the
greater part of his life work was dedicated to a comparative study of such
forming.
The nave person acting in everyday life tends to consider his own view
of the world simply as the reality given for everybody else. But when he or
she realizes this is not the case, an abyss appears between the person and
the object confronting him in such a strange way that he cannot grasp it.
When Plato bridges the gap between the isolated subject and his object by
introducing the realm of ideas as a generally valid truth, then Simmel ini-
tially praises this as the great metaphysical deed of Plato (ibid: 104).
Platos theory of ideas is based upon the myth according to which the soul
had, in the transcendental world before its birth, the opportunity to view
the ideas and thereby to memorize them, such that all adult human beings
in this world can remember them in the same way while looking at the
objects because they re-collect them.
In that way, objects lose the impression of being alien, because in their
empirical appearance glimmers a reflection of the eternal idea. This
Simmel admired. According to him, Plato has discovered the fact of
a spiritual world, and he has gained beyond all hitherto-found single
truths the principle of scholarship per se (ibid: 105). What for Plato was
the discovery of a transcendental reality, Simmel interpreted as the
creation of a mental form. Alongside the various singular truths stands
the spiritual world as a fact, which apparently for Simmel is objectively
given. But it can only be worked on and communicated if one succeeds in
giving it the Gestalt of a mental form. In short, perception presupposes
objects.
If we perceive something for which we are unable to identify an object,
we experience an anxiety about our state of mind or we speak of a dream.
If we can see the object, feel it, clasp it to us, or thrust it away from us, only
then are we sure we have correctly perceived (taken as truth) and not
misperceived (taken as erroneous). Consequently, with his theory of ideas
Plato had endowed concepts for which Socrates had a deep concern
with the quality of objects: the Platonic ideas. The latter are just as sec-
ondary as the empirical objects. In both cases, something is initially held
to be true: At the onset I only know that something is true because I have
experienced it. In order to confirm this to myself and to others, as a second
148 chapter six

step I have to determine the corresponding object and retroactively call it

the cause of my experience (ibid: 107).
Plato was the first to bring to consciousness that everything spiritual,
in its content, creates one self-contained context and that our individual
thinking borrows from it its whole sense of truth and objectivity as
incomplete and fragmentary as the grasp of this context may be in our
individual thinking (ibid: 104). For Plato to encounter an arousing experi-
ence as true comes first, and then the realm of eternal ideas is referred to
for interpretation, in order to fulfill the following principle: There can be
no correct perception without an object. The Platonic ideas serve the pur-
pose of stepping in as objects, even though for Simmel they are Platos
constructions.
It can be shown in Simmels works how consistently he maintained the
idea of various approaches to formation in scholarship, religion, art, etc.
In his search for the origins of music, for instance, he presented a plethora
of historical and ethnological material. Thereby he showed that music
originated out of language and out of the basic need of human beings to
communicate emotions: The experience comes first, the cultural object is
then created to give it a form others will understand. In singing for
instance, this natural (Simmel 1882: 281), empirically perceivable, behav-
ioral reality of highly subjective jubilation, sobbing, and yodeling (Simmel
1879) gains the status of musical art when it becomes a composition, real-
izing the goal of objectivity (ibid: 282). Nevertheless, the hot and passion-
ate feelings must not disappear from the music (ibid.). But music and
its style of presentation should not directly follow from these feelings. It
should only be an image of them refracted from the mirror of beauty
(ibid.). In and of itself, as in its raw state, reality may be experienced but
cannot be represented or passed on to others.
For Simmel the art of music is a forming process, which becomes objec-
tive by absorbing the subject into it. The same process can be observed in
play (ibid.) and certainly in a play on a theatrical stage. Art and play, as
realms of formation, compete with science each in its own way to
bring out of one shared pool of life experience that which is objective, in
such a way that the subjective parts can discover themselves in it and that
therefore the created form may claim authenticity; that is, it may claim to
be a truth.
For the method of sociology as an empirical social science, Simmels
concept of truth is meaningful. Truth or falsity is seen as a quality of a
relationship. Due to the diversity and the constant flux in it (Heraclitus),
natural reality as it appears to the senses is not true. The mental formation
 background of the messages: intellectual influences149

cannot be checked for validity when divorced from what it is supposed

to represent. The question of truth can only be answered on the basis
of the relation between the form (i.e., the portrait or composition) and
the material object it represents. If the portrait convincingly gives form
to a particular side of the personality of the model who had posed for
days before the artist, truth lies in that congruence between form and
model. Just as the same melody may be sung in various keys, so too can
empirical reality be shaped and put into form via a variety of ways of
representation.
Therefore Simmel thought it desirable that each of the various realms
of formation (scholarship, art, religion, play, etc.) perform its specific kind
of presentation in harmonious concert with each other. As far as religion
is concerned he thinks that it will after a certain transitional period
keep emerging as a central orienting perspective (Simmel 1906: 8). He pro-
ceeds to restrict the scope of this claim, however, by noting the centrality
of an orienting perspective does not mean a monopoly for religious
thought, such that these other provinces of interest [scholarship, art, play,
etc.] are being suppressed. Every one of the great forms of our existence
can be shown to be capable of expressing in its own language the totality
of our life (ibid.).
Simmels idea on Religion and the Great Forms of Existence is so
important to him that he reformulates it for a changed and expanded
edition of his book Die Religion of 1912. He now explicitly worries about
the threat that even in its fundamental possibility life remains hope-
lessly divided (Simmel 1912: 8, compare also Simmel 1997: 137). He there-
fore postulates a stuff of which existence is made, that remains identical
within all realms of formation and each of these categories is in princi-
ple capable of forming the totality of this stuff according to its own laws
(ibid.: 9). There are no tensions necessary among religion, scholarship, and
art: In principle, they may cross each other as little as do tones with col-
ors (Simmel 1906: 8).
Despite Platos turn toward epistemology, the ethical concern of
Socrates remains alive in Platos method. Each concept of human practice
contains in it and in its logical consequences the norm which our conduct
with its manifestations has to follow; the conceptual content of the act
includes our sense of what we are supposed to do (Simmel 1983b: 68).
Whoever contradicts the concept, i.e., the mental objectification of behav-
ior, is also in violation of the norm that should guide behavior. Simmel saw
simply an elaboration of that Platonic teaching in this statement and in
the conclusion that each thing has a corresponding idea, which signifies
150 chapter six

its content but whose complete realization simultaneously also forms its
ideal (ibid.).
But Simmel also recognizes the peculiar inconsistency of Platos theory
of ideas (ibid: 89). On the one hand, Platos ideas are conceived as corre-
sponding to material objects that lead a substantive existence in a life
beyond ours [Jenseits], and that because of the devaluation of this life
relative to the life beyond (as in Buddhism) claim to be the highest real-
ity of these objects, their real being (ibid.). On the other hand, human
beings create these concepts processing in their thoughts this reality of
life and permitting the practical social evaluations, tendencies, and
necessities of development (ibid.) to enter into the dynamics of concept
formation.
While Platos theory of ideas is inconsistent, Simmel saw it as an oppor-
tunity: Contrary to Platos opinion, according to Simmel, these ideas are
created by human beings and thus are not a direct reflection of material
objects. Before such objects can be included in the realm of Platonic ideas,
humans must first reflect about them and form concepts of them. Only
then are they potentially acknowledged as ideals, and as a consequence
they cannot be foreign to our world. Rather, they imply the likelihood that
the empirical and the normative aspects of objects may touch each other
(ibid.), because whenever humans form ideas they cannot avoid letting
their hopes and wishes enter into the forming process.
Simmel does not conceal his aversion to Platos collectivistic concept of
the state: Platos ideal picture of societal relations deserves very explicit
criticism because every child should already from the time of its birth be
removed from the individualistic atmosphere of its parental home, trans-
ferred to public education, and thereafter, placed by the authorities into
the function, the position, where it has to remain (ibid.: 104). In the same
context, the inclination of the state toward equalizing the responsibilities
of women and men, and the tendency to take away from women their
domestic preoccupation that carries with it a personalized character
(ibid.) are seen in terms of the community prescribing the content of exis-
tence for the individual. Yet Simmel did not take this opportunity to
engage in polemics against Platos works, something that almost nobody
since Karl Popper (1957) has failed to do. Instead, Simmel made use of the
chance to illustrate, in Platos theory of the state, how concrete normative
concepts logically follow from epistemological premises.
One of the more striking applications of that position is the following:
The visible objects of this world are only used to represent the ideas
(Simmel 1983b: 104), because Plato did not consider as Simmel did the
 background of the messages: intellectual influences151

realm of ideas to be a heuristic tool in the service of scholarly insight but

rather as a reality beyond this world. One of these visible objects in the
service of eternal ideas is the living human being for whom this line of
reasoning has the consequence that each individual is only supposed to
serve the abstract artificiality of the state (ibid.). That of course can be
used as a convenient point of departure for asking an individual to sacri-
fice himself or herself for the collective.
According to the epistemology of Plato, the person lets the light of the
idea shine through himself only in dimmed and distorted form, making it
more difficult for the idea to appear. In addition the individual confronts
the idea, as it were, with the clumsiness and confusion of his special exis-
tence. Plato does therefore not expect the mass of these singular human
beings to submit easily and completely to the purposes of the whole
(ibid.). Accordingly and this is another alarming connection between
epistemology and ethics for Plato, when the state deals with its citizens
it is certainly justified in realizing, even against their will, the ideal of a
state in them (ibid.). Statements like this one in Platos writings make the
polemics understandable and possibly justified, which Karl Popper
directed against Plato as a suspected apologist of totalitarian regimes
(Popper 1957).
The cautious manner in which Simmel dealt with Platos work is char-
acteristic of him. He praised the ingenious discovery of a genuine realm of
objective knowledge while at the same time criticizing its political conse-
quences. Throughout the entire work of Simmel, we find as a guiding prin-
ciple the wisdom that light and shadow always appear together, that
everything vital is also ambivalent and that reality cannot correctly be
reconstructed in white and black only, but there are always shades of gray.
This may have alienated him from the various camps of black-and-white
painters, however diverse their positions in other respects may have been.
Simmel harshly criticized Marx historical materialism as description of
historical reality and, at the same time, openly applauded it as an admi-
rable heuristic tool. Therefore he was rejected by both Marxists and
anti-Marxists.
In judging Simmels position on Platos works, it may be useful to com-
pare it in more detail to that of Karl Popper. Less even-tempered than
Simmel, Popper rejected Platos epistemology as politically dangerous.
It is true that Popper conceded some positive aspects of Platos works:
Platos sociology is an ingenious mixture of speculation and precise
observation of facts (Popper 1957: 64). But Popper saw in this mixture
a danger, because the speculation leads toward ideas that claim to be
152 chapter six

unchangeable. According to Plato, everything understandable must have

an eternally valid character. It would be the purpose of scholarship to
grasp and describe only what is eternally valid as the true nature of the
objects. The comprehension of a hidden reality as the essence of what is
knowable would then be lost. Therefore Popper labeled the research per-
spective, which is in the tradition of Plato, as methodological essential-
ism (ibid: 59) and rejected it as anachronistic.
The counter-position to essentialism is methodological nominalism,
which Popper supported; it does not purport to reveal essences and does
not search for the true nature of an object but expressly aims to concen-
trate on observing the behavior of objects and describing them in as unbi-
ased and precise a manner as possible. Popper welcomed the fact that
the position of methodological nominalism is generally accepted in the
present-day natural sciences. The problems of the social sciences, on the
other hand, are still for the most part dealt with by essentialist methods.
In my (Poppers) opinion, this is one of the main reasons for their back-
wardness (ibid: 61). In rejecting the question about the essence of objects,
Popper linked up with Comte and positivism. He established the method-
ological base of that school of sociology that calls itself critical rational-
ism, while Simmel founded the interpretative method (verstehen) in
sociology. Following Simmel and his own message, sociologists should
maybe take a fresh look at Plato in spite of Poppers convincing warnings.

Spinoza

The influence of Spinozas philosophy on Simmel is obvious and recog-

nized explicitly by Simmel himself. One of Spinozas better-known works
is his Theological-Political Treatise (Tractatus theologico-politicus, 1670,
Spinoza 1976). He recommends how a Jew ought to read the Torah or how
a Christian the Old Testament. Spinoza points out for instance that
whenever God called a prophet to serve him, prior to that divine interven-
tion the future servant of Yahweh worked in some worldly occupation.
When the newly elected prophet, after considerable hesitation and
sincere refusals finally gives in to Gods will, he is necessarily going to
proclaim his prophecies using the metaphors of his previous daily work
environment: If he had been a peasant, Gods intentions will become visi-
ble to him in connection with cattle and fertile fields, if he had been a
soldier, he will place God in the context of the Heavenly Host as com-
mander in chief. If he had been a courtier, he will prophesize about a
throne and the rituals around a monarch.
 background of the messages: intellectual influences153

These metaphors are familiar from the sacred texts. Nobody can know,
let alone describe the will of God as a divine reality. The only possibility
open to any prophet is the creation of a construction performed by him-
self with the use of metaphors familiar to him (and, hopefully, to his listen-
ers). From that Spinoza draws the conclusion that what matters when
reading scripture is neither to take sentence after sentence verbatim nor
to register every metaphor with positivist accuracy. Instead, he recom-
mends distinguishing between language as a tool for the transport of con-
tent on the one hand, and intended meaning as a reference point for
interpretation on the other. Spinozas advice culminates in the exhorta-
tion, the reader of the Bible should focus on what God wanted to share
with his faithful rather than on the imagery used by the prophet as a result
of his previous occupational routine. Millennia after the sacred texts were
written, what may make them appear dated is that imagery, but not neces-
sarily the transported meaning.
As was to be expected and certainly under the terms of the 17th
Century with this recommendation for how to read sacred texts Spinoza
encountered very grave difficulties: He appeared to many of his contem-
poraries as a heretic and infidel. The truth is, however, that in order to
return to what to him seemed the genuine religiosity of his Jewish people,
he felt he needed to break away from the medieval synagogue and even
from the orthodoxy of the Pharisees (Santayana, 1916: XVI). He was con-
vinced he was called to proclaiming this message even if it meant almost
total isolation and rejection. Spinoza lived from 1632 to 1677. He died prior
to what would have been his 45th birthday, comparable to C. Wright Mills
who was 45 when he died in 1962 (Trevino 2012: 7).
Spinozas book Ethica is usually referred to as his main work. It was pub-
lished as: Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata. He has written it during
the years 16651675. In 1675 he began to read selected portions of the
manuscript to close friends. The book was not published until after his
death in November 1677. Only two of Spinozas works were published
when he was still alive. They were written in Latin and their titles of course
reflect that:
1.Renati des Cartes principiorum philosophiae geometrico demonstrata
mori. The title can be translated as: A treatise on the principles of the
philosophy of Descartes, which are set out in geometric manner. This
book was published 1663.
2.Tractatus theologico politicus, appeared in 1670 and was mentioned
here above. Spinoza did not dare publishing this pamphlet in his
own name, but only anonymously. A first translation into English was
154 chapter six

already available in 1689 under the title A Treatise, partly Theological,

partly political.

Whether or not translations were available was not nearly as significant

then as it is now. In those days the learned persons in Bologna, Prague,
Heidelberg, and Oxford all knew Latin. It was then the language not just of
the Catholic Church but also of all the universities in Europe. Spinoza was
relieved that not everybody could read his texts, and that being fluent in
Latin was a prerequisite for having access to them. This sentiment was
shared by many of his contemporaries: Ren Descartes mentioned in the
preface to his Meditationes de prima philosophiae (meditations on the
principles of philosophy) of 1641 that he made a deliberate decision not to
write this text in French but in Latin instead, in order to keep the morons
from reading it who might feel called upon to join his philosophical
orientation (Descartes, 1960: 7).
The hope of authors in those days to keep certain persons from read
ing what they have published by writing in a language those cannot
master, can certainly be understood in the case of Spinoza: He was born
in Amsterdam on November 24, 1632. As early as 1656 he was excommu
nicated from his synagogue, and as a result of that, the magistrate of
Amsterdam banished him from the city. Nevertheless, he continued to live
in the Netherlands. In 1673 he received an invitation to the University of
Heidelberg as professor of philosophy. Spinoza did not accept the invita-
tion and pointed out the great difficulties he had with the various religious
communities. He feared that the plots against him would only get worse
by the acceptance of a professorship in Heidelberg and that the entire uni-
versity would be affected. Four years after the invitation to teach at the
University of Heidelberg, he died in The Hague on 21 February 1677.
The debate about Spinozas work continued through the centuries. It
includes a publication by Ferdinand Tonnies, titled Study on the history
of development of Spinoza (Tonnies, 1883). In 1905 a new edition of
Spinozas major work Ethica was published in German by Otto Baensch
who begins the introduction to his translation with the words: The phi-
losophy of Spinoza is the most impressive summary of the ideas of the
seventeenth century about world view and philosophy of life (Baensch,
1905: ix). Prior to Baensch a first German translation of the Ethica had
become available as early as 1744. This shows that prior to Simmel much
attention has been paid to Spinozas ideas in parts of Europe.
Spinoza was raised in the strict faith of the synagogue and felt closely
attached to the texts of the scriptures. His first name is Baruch not very
 background of the messages: intellectual influences155

well known in the present time. The Hebrew word means the Blessed One,
in Latin Benedictus. In the Hebrew Bible, the name Baruch appears repeat-
edly in the book, which is associated with the prophet Jeremiah. It can be
found there in chapters 32, 36, 43 and 45. Similar to Jesus and Socrates who
did not write down anything themselves but left that task in the case of
Jesus to the Evangelists, in the case of Socrates to Plato, apparently the
prophet Jeremiah himself has written nothing: He delegated that to
Baruch, his companion and secretary. Just as posterity owes to the philoso-
phy of Plato what is known about Socrates, the biblical tradition owes to
Baruch the knowledge of the prophecies, warnings, and instructions of the
great prophet Jeremiah. The Old Testament of the Christian Bible also
contains a separate Book of Baruch. The existence of this text means not
for the believing Jews, but for the Christian the elevation of Baruch to
the rank of prophet.
Whether and to what extent Spinoza may have identified with the
Baruch mentioned in the book of Jeremiah, is pure speculation. In that
book Jeremiah, and his companion and scribe Baruch with him, had to
endure serious suffering to the point of prosecution and imprisonment for
having preached demands attributed to God, that were most unwelcome
to their listeners. For Spinoza the 44th Chapter of the Book of Jeremiah
may have been of particular importance because it shows two different
interpretations of the struggle and misery into which the people of Judah
had fallen. It was the time when Nebuchadnezzar had defeated the
Judeans and driven them out their homes and laid their cities in ruins.
The prophet Jeremiah interprets this deplorable state as Gods punish-
ment for apostasy and sinfulness of the Chosen People. On the other hand,
some of the Israelites, and according to the text, especially their women,
worshiped a Queen of Heaven, offered her their incense, and poured liba-
tions in her honor. Contrary to the interpretation of the prophet the
people and, again, especially the women pointed out that this cult had
guaranteed the welfare of the Jews for a long time in the past. Therefore
they demanded the worship of the Queen of Heaven be resurrected and
continued in order to find a way out of the then current crisis with her
help. Here are two opposing constructions of reality competing with each
other: Punishment for sinful behavior on the one hand, and distress as a
result of insufficient devotion to a goddess on the other.
The wrathful God of Israel announces to the impenitent nation further
misfortune that arrives promptly. From the point of view of the biblical
text that prompt arrival of more misery may have refuted all hopes for help
from the Queen of Heaven. At the same time the general misery becomes
156 chapter six

so depressing that Baruch dares asking God to be spared. Baruchs words

are: Woe is me, for the Lord added grief to my sorrow. I am tired of sighing
and can find no rest. (Jeremiah 45, 3). The response of an angry God is:
See what I built, I tear down, and what I have planted I pull out, and the
whole earth I shall strike, but you are asking miracles for yourself? For
behold. I bring disaster upon all flesh, saith the Lord, but Ill give you your
life as a prey in all places whither thou goest (Jeremiah 45.4f). This pas-
sage can be read as an urgent request to the individual to understand his
life as an opportunity granted individually, and although difficult, to make
something of it, as he constructs his reality from a perspective of utmost
simplicity.
In any case, the text signals willingness to bare suffering needed also by
Spinoza, the faithful with the same name as Jeremiahs scribe. His suffer-
ing resulted from more and more attacks by members of the synagogue
and the two Western branches of Christianity at that time three very
unlikely bedfellows indeed who all agreed on denouncing Spinozas way
of reading scripture. In that situation of persecution Spinoza did not dare
publish his main work in his own name, in fact he did not have the courage
to publish it at all. Only after his death his friends published his Ethica. It
appeared in print in November 1677, but even then, respecting Spinozas
own wishes, there was no name of an author mentioned on the title page
of the book.
Before we turn to Spinozas main work on ethics, a few words on his
incredibly courageous method should be inserted while mindful of the
historical situation of the 17th century when the Thirty Years War (1618
1648) was fought primarily in what is now Germany. Spinoza sees in
front if his faithful eye a God who is not only aware of the limited intel-
lectual abilities of humankind, but who in addition takes those limita
tions into account in his own divine behavior. God knows Spinoza
thinks that humans can only imagine sacred facts in their mortal fash-
ion. God and Spinoza thus both are aware that it is totally impossible
for humans to grasp God the way he really is. This is due to the fact that
the living do not have access to the beyond, that mortals do not usually
share the reality of the immortals. However, human conduct in this world
can be geared toward the beyond and thus has the potential of producing
a special empirical reality in the world of the living which points to
the other world. This type of reality, firmly anchored in inner worldly
experience, and yet connecting somehow to something infinitely more
real, is the point of departure for the epistemology of both Spinoza and
Simmel.
 background of the messages: intellectual influences157

Spinoza implies that even God himself uses the reality of this world as a
starting point in his dialogues with the people in order to be close to them.
The following examples may show how surprising and from the perspec-
tive of traditional theology, how provocative the results are that come
out of this way of thinking,: The belief in one of the most sacred events
of the Judeo-Christian tradition, handing over of tablets of the Ten
Commandments by God himself to Moses, is commented in Spinozas
words as follows: At last, descending from heaven on the mountain God
revealed himself, because it was believed that God dwells in heaven, and
Moses also rose on the mountain to talk with God, which certainly would
not have been necessary if he could have imagined God just as easily at
any other place (Spinoza, 1976: 44). This is a striking way of looking at the
event!
The disarming simplicity of the quote says, God appeared to Moses on
a high mountain for no other reason than because Moses could not imag-
ine a manifestation of God at any other place. God took into consideration
the limitations of the abilities of Moses to believe! This way to argue trig-
gered mostly horror among Spinozas contemporaries. But describing him
as a heretic was based on a misunderstanding: Spinoza does not question
that Moses has met God on the mountain. Just why this event took place
on the mountain Spinoza explains in a manner that was quite offensive to
his readers, because it was believed that God dwells in heaven. God does
not come to the summit of the mountain because it is his supreme and
totally autonomous will, and then, by virtue of his omnipotence, orders
the mortal Moses to be there to meet him. Instead God considers the
imagination of his people, because it was believed that God dwells in
heaven, God as it were agreed to meet half way between heaven and earth,
and therefore Moses needed to climb to the mountain top.
This brings us back to Spinozas observations about how God calls a
mortal to be his prophet. It is Gods way to contact his people as described
by Spinoza. The same applies to dealing with the prophets, whom he uses
to communicate important messages to the faithful. Again, Spinoza and
after his conviction God himself not only considers the specific and
always limited power of imagination of the people of God, but even that of
the individual to be appointed to be prophet: In terms of imagination, the
difference was this: was the prophet a man of taste, he conceived the
meaning of Gods message in a tasteful style, unclear, however, when
he was a confused head. The same is true also of the revelations that
were reported by using pictures. Was the prophet a peasant, then his imag-
ination showed him oxen, cows, etc., was he a soldier, then an army
158 chapter six

commander and hosts, or was he a courtier, then a kings throne, and simi-
lar things. Finally, the prophecy was also different depending on the differ-
ent conceptions of the prophets: The Magi (Matthew, chapter 2), who
believed in the astrological antics, received the revelation of the birth of
Christ through the appearance of a risen star in the east (ibid: 34f).
Obviously, Spinozas opinion of astrology was much lower than would
have been typical for his time (and probably for ours today). A few pages
further in his text he sums up his thoughts in this way: The prophets were
more suited for this than for that revelation depending on the difference
in their temperament All this shows, after careful consideration, that
God does not use any special style of language, but that he merely speaks
according to the education and the ability of the respective prophet, taste-
ful, flush, strict, uneducated, or diffuse (ibid.: 36). In Spinozas time this
must have given an unbearable leeway for interpretation when reading
the Scriptures. God does not speak in his own divine language style, but he
recognizes the inner closeness to those who believe in him in using the
language with which they are familiar. Language here does not only refer
to a way of communication, but rather the entire assemblage of meta-
phors is adapted to the imagination of the person referred to by God!
These and similar statements have served as proof of Spinozas pre-
sumed infidelity and atheism. From the perspective of his critics he lacked
reverence before the Holy Scriptures, which according to them should
not be handled, as he dared. But whether or not his method does result in
unbelief, is a question of the image of God a person may have. One famil-
iar alternative is to think of God as an absolute ruler along the lines of an
autocratic monarch, whose will is autonomous and not influenced by
other subjects when implemented in worldly reality. The mortal person in
his or her powerlessness then has no choice but to look for the closest pos-
sible approach to the objective reality that is God alone. Here, the indi-
vidual struggling for faith will grasp or fail to grasp a reality that exists by
Gods fiat no matter what the mortals thoughts and actions are. This
notion comes close to the epistemology of the natural sciences where
objective reality is a given.
Another alternative, different from the image of an autocratic God, is
that of the interacting God. He is the deity whom Spinoza and Simmel
both visualize. To them the border between the sacred and the secular is
not the one between God and humans, rather there is some sacred quality
in the interaction with the divine in which humans participate. Spinoza
writes against the background of this image of God that Moses went to
the top of the mountain because it was only there that he could imagine
 background of the messages: intellectual influences159

meeting God. Spinoza has the prophets preach about God in images famil-
iar to them for merely secular reasons because they related to their former
occupational lives. Against the background of the interacting God it is
plausible that the deity meets his faithful half way. However, supporters of
the autocratic God would be inclined to complain that Spinoza defines the
ideas of the people as sacred and denies Gods quality of Supreme Being.
In all of that Spinozas philosophical interest remains focused on the
inaccuracies of knowledge production. He mentions the importance of
emotions as intervening effect, because humans tend to see what they
want to see and vice versa. He then elaborates on that in connection with
a theorem which can be seen as the early formulation of a theory of preju-
dice in his book Ethica: Proposition 16: We will love or hate something
because we imagine it to resemble an object that tends to bring joy or sad-
ness to the soul. We do this even if what makes it appear similar is not the
cause leading to such emotions as a consequence (Spinoza, 1905: 114).
Accordingly, the object that in the context of Spinozas reasoning can also
be a person is not given justice, because one judges that object on the
basis of purely superficial resemblance or analogy, and emotions are thus
projected on very shaky grounds. The theory of projection summarizes in
more detail much later what has here already been recognized by Spinoza.
It is also remarkable about Spinozas approach that he does not depreci-
ate as irrational those affective characteristics of human cognition. On the
contrary, he can clearly be distinguished from those authors who classify
human emotions as weakness and unreliability. In his Ethica he tries to
justify the emotional influence on human cognition in terms of regulari-
ties, or even laws (but not as laws in the sense of the natural sciences). This
way of looking at the feelings of males and females does not denounce
them as deviant from proper behavior. Rather Spinoza points to reason-
able (but not rational) and responsible ways of dealing with emotions and
even develops methodological tools for predicting them reliably.
Along this same line of reasoning Spinoza writes in his Ethica in
Proposition 22. If we imagine that someone makes an object of our love
happy, we will be moved to love that person. If we imagine, however, that
someone brings sadness to him or her, we are will inversely be moved to
hate that person (ibid: 119). Here the origin of love and hate is traced to a
relationship that, in the terminology of Simmel, has the form of a triad.
Spinoza uses the model of three persons, two of which are present and one
absent. To generate love or hate in these examples, nothing concrete is
happening that might be empirically tangible, but the deep emotions will
be triggered by the contents of what one person merely imagines. A man
160 chapter six

who is permanently in love with someone absent, imagines a person who

is present putting the absent beloved one in a stage of joy or in sorrow.
Reacting to his own imagination that man will develop positive or nega-
tive affects toward the not so well known person in his presence, whose
contents can be predicted accurately.
In the various portions of the text selected here, Spinoza deals with the
process of reality construction, even though that term is not yet used by
him. Proposition 25 in part III of his Ethica contains a description of the
emotions causing us to form an image of a certain person. Again he refers
to that person as an object: We are eager to affirm about ourselves and
about a thing those characteristics of which we imagine that they would
bring joy to the beloved object. Conversely we would negate everything of
which we imagine that it would bring sadness to the object we love (ibid:
121). This notion predates what Simmel sees in front of him when he writes
about being in love and about what to him is the fact that the lover con-
structs the reality of his beloved in the precise way that is required to be
compatible with his emotional makeup.
Moreover, Spinoza describes a kind of automatism of generating empa-
thy in Proposition 27: If we imagine that an object similar to ourselves for
which we feel no particular emotion is brought to experience a certain
sentiment, then we ourselves, simply be imaging that, will be caused to
experience a similar sentiment (ibid: 122). Here again, a process we would
be inclined to describe as unreasonable, is dealt with in a way that makes
it appear perfectly regular and even predictable. This identifies the unusual
contribution Spinoza makes toward the development of an epistemology
of emotional and social processes by not excluding but rather considering
as crucial the peculiarities of the persons involved. In his texts Simmel has
frequently mentioned his indebtedness to Spinoza (Simmel, 1989; Simmel
1997: 5, 60, 115, 124, 138, 143), or dealt with Spinozas ideas in a critical stance
(Simmel 1911: 53, 56, 59, 60). Via Simmels mediation the influence of
Spinozas philosophy has had an impact on contemporary humanist soci-
ology that has hardly been recognized.

Kant

Kants epistemological hypothesis that we create an object in the pro-

cess of dealing with it was the starting point of Simmels line of reason-
ing in his sociology and in is theory of culture. Kant had formed this insight
in the example of the scientific procedure of the natural sciences, and
Simmel transplanted Kants concept to the cultural and social sciences.
 background of the messages: intellectual influences161

We are already familiar with examples thereof: The religious experience

creates for itself an image of God; more generally, each perception requires
in the process of vital existence its object and, because it needs this object,
it postulates it and gives it shape. A general epistemological principle
emerges, namely that Platos ideas are reinterpreted from a pre-given real-
ity toward a mental formation, i.e., from something which human beings
find ready-made toward some-thing that they themselves create.
Kants principle of the formation of an object in the process of dealing
with it became, for Simmel, the red thread which runs through his main
epistemological work: The Problems of the Philosophy of History [Die
Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie] (Simmel 1892b). Here Simmel criti-
cized those scholars in the liberal arts who are of the opinion that they
could mirror reality in its true nature, as it were. Time and again, Simmel
pointed out that what happens in the process of scholarship is more nearly
comparable to the accomplishment of an artist who paints a picture, a
portrait or a landscape; while one recognizes the similarity between the
art object and reality, one would have to admit that an unmistakable qual-
itative difference exists between the work of art and the reality. In this
sense Simmels conception of the cultural and social sciences corresponds
well with the English concept of the arts as opposed to the sciences.
In his Toward Preliminary Thoughts which Every Future Metaphysics
That Wants to be Considered as Scholarship Would Have to Follow (Kant
n. d.: 1122), Kant examined the question of how the genesis of knowledge
could be conceivable, other than on the basis of sensory perception alone.
He distinguished here between understanding [Verstand] and reason
[Vernunft], and declared following Platos postulate of two separate
realities that understanding would be responsible for dealing with those
objects about which we can have knowledge via our senses, while reason
would be in charge of the ever-greater penetration into the world of ideas.
By rejecting with Plato the concept of sensualism, Kant considered it to
be irresponsible to restrict scholarly efforts to the empirical realm. The
objects of sensory perception may not directly give us access to truth (or,
as Popper would say, insight into the essences) not according to Plato
because everything is too much in flux, not according to Kant because the
overwhelming complexity of reality makes a clear overview impossible.
Kant was convinced that it has been assumed for too long a time that all
our cognition must conform to the objects; instead of that he suggested to
assume by contrast that the objects must conform to our cognition.
Since Kant, in accordance with Plato, did not want to renounce specula-
tive thinking which goes beyond the experience accessible to the senses,
162 chapter six

he distinguished two different types of insights and saw them existing side
by side: Just as understanding required categories for gaining experience,
so does reason contain in it the basis for ideas, by which I mean necessary
concepts whose objectification, however, may not be represented in any
empirical experience (ibid.: 40). Sensory experience is only possible for
that person who works with categories, categories that owe their existence
not to the empirical world but rather to the accomplishments of a theo-
retical classification as every sociologist who has ever done empirical
work knows.
But subsequently, the tenability of such categories can be tested empiri-
cally, which is not the case for speculative concepts. The distinction
between ideas, i.e., pure concepts of reason, and categories, or pure con-
cepts of understanding, as insights of an entirely different kind, origin,
and use (ibid.: 41) corresponds to the already mentioned distinction
between insights that may be tested in the empirical world and those that
are inaccessible to experience: All pure insights of understanding may be
characterized by the fact that their concepts are gained in empirical expe-
rience and that their basis may be corroborated by experience; the insights
of transcendental reason, however, may neither in their ideas nor in their
propositions be either given by experience or corroborated by it or even
rejected by it (ibid: 42).
If the insights of reason inaccessible to empirical examination had
their sources within the thinking subject, while the insights of under-
standing had to restrict themselves to dealing with the empirical world,
then the gap between subjective speculation and objective reality would
be insurmountable in Kants approach. Then, reasonably, only the conclu-
sion that positivism has drawn would remain. But the decisive move by
which this was avoided is the following: Kant saw in the accomplishment
of reason a continuation of sensory experience with other means of
thought. Already according to Kant (and later also according to Simmel),
the world of ideas, in which reason dwells and travels, does not refer to
contents other than those of sensory experience. Those contents can then
be formed in a variety of different ways.
In addition we must acknowledge that these contents, which in the
empirical world always appear in a fragmentary and unsystematic way, are
completed and systematized in the realm of reason via the accomplish-
ments of the subjects thinking (ibid: 43). Kant expressly formulated the
thought that Simmel later would pick up and elaborate on, about the pos-
tulated object which however is only an idea (ibid: 44): Pure reason does
not have, among its ideas, special objects for consideration which would
 background of the messages: intellectual influences163

lie beyond the field of experience, but merely demands completeness in

the use of understanding in conjunction with experience. This complete-
ness, however, can only be a completeness of principles (ibid: 44; Helle
1977: 1416). This reads like a description of the construction of ideal types
according to Max Weber.
Simmel saw Plato partly through the eyes of Kant. There is not a sepa-
rate realm of objects each in this world and a world beyond it. Rather,
scholarship is geared toward the one-and-only realm of objects of an
empirical world. Kant admitted, however, that reason creates its own
objects, in order to achieve completeness and a systematic order objects
that are not empirically given. Simmel generalized this achievement of
thought, viewed it in analogy to artistic creation, and conceptualized sci-
ence, religion, art, play and yes, also society as formations that may be
understood as results of this process. For Simmel it is thereby not only and
not even foremost the scholarly endeavor which yields such formations.
Each experience, and especially each vital and emotional experience, cre-
ates its object by which it can see itself as being true.
Simmel commented on Kants position as follows: The distinction
between the appearance and the thing-in-itself, as we find it in Kants
work, is mostly very much misunderstood as being metaphysical and
taken as a distinction that would correspond to the difference between
the I and the non-I; This distinction is not about the opposition
between appearance and non-appearance but rather about the difference
between empirical and purely intellectual presentation. Kant did not
write the critique of pure reason to teach us that the non-I is not the I, but
in order to show that all of our knowledge is bound to sensory impressions
as material and that via pure reason alone, lying beyond sensory appear-
ances, no knowledge of reality is possible (Simmel 1983b: 149).
Simmel took the concept presentation (vorstellen, which figuratively
means placing some-thing in front of ones mental eye, but also imagin-
ing) in the literal sense; one presents something in front of oneself, to
which one has a relationship. Dealing with sensate, perceivable reality
almost demands both approaches: experience and pure thinking. Both of
these ways of generating knowledge continue to develop alongside and
with each other in the course of life. In a circular motion, that Simmel sees
as starting out with the sensory world, out of experience there grows pure
thinking and this in turn leads to new sensory experiences. This circular
movement keeps leading the subject through the world of appearances
because via pure reason alone, lying beyond sensory appearances, no
knowledge of reality is possible (ibid.). It is this close affinity with the
164 chapter six

empirical world of action which makes Simmels method suitable for

sociology.
The difference between appearance and the thing-in-itself does there-
fore not correspond to the absolute difference between presentation and
non-presentation, but rather to the relative difference between experi-
ence and pure thinking. The thing-in-itself also belongs under the general
concept of presentation as the intelligible object of Kant that, while it is
not knowable, is nevertheless imaginable or presentable (ibid: 150).
Pondering the empirical world in a timely interchange between the pre-
sentation of appearance and the presentation of its essence can only be
successful if the subject who strives for knowledge is active. To be busy in
an arbitrary way will not suffice. What is demanded is autonomous and
potentially creative conduct.
Building upon Kant, Simmel created the epistemology of an active
human being. He wrote about Kant: the exclusive object of knowing
is, for him, the sensory appearance of things, and only their pictures
within us and never their own inner-most being that exists in and for
itself. And there is only one point where we may gain access to such,
namely in our acting, an acting that is not just receptive but rather cre-
ative, i.e., free. We are really only ourselves, therefore, when we act
(Simmel 1924: 6). And since in the process of acting, the interests of the
subject flow into the process of gaining knowledge, Simmel saw as the
central concern of Kants system not the thinking but the will, because
practical behavior, as he [Kant] declares it to be the main objective goal of
life, is also the subjective interest which in the final instance directs his
thinking (ibid.).
Here we find pronounced the connection between knowledge and
interest that in the sociology of knowledge since Max Scheler and Karl
Mannheim has become a topic of research. Simmels Kantianism remained
tied to the concept of formation, according to which various realms of cre-
ation (art, play, science, etc.) supplement rather than compete with each
other, allowing the raw reality to become imaginable. Following Dilthey,
Simmel particularly kept in mind history and psychology. Simmel stressed
the diversity which already the individual human being, in and of him-
self, displays (Simmel 1890a: 11), and he also talked about the dissolution
of the societal soul into the sum of the mutual effects of its participants
(ibid: 13). The concept soul signifies the idea of unity. But the conceptual-
ization of unity on the basis of the diversity of sensory appearances was,
for Simmel, one of the epistemological difficulties of the psychologist, the
historian, and the sociologist as well.
 background of the messages: intellectual influences165

Kant says someplace that to conceive an object means nothing else

than creating unity out of the diversity of ones observations. Likewise one
can say, at least with respect to the soul, the reverse, namely that its unity
means that we can gain knowledge and understanding from the diversity
of its contents, i.e., that we can reconvey these contents onto each other
according to rules. Lacking all deeper knowledge of the real forces, how-
ever, that connect the psychic appearances, as far as the content of these
rules is concerned we are left only with the observable, timely relationship
of empirical soul processes (ibid: 368).
Beyond every necessity for proof, Simmel was convinced that one can
find in the soul the quality of unity directly. While mental conception
almost always has to construe unity out of the incoherence of appear-
ances, we are confronted with an already formed unity in the soul and its
unity means that we can gain knowledge and understanding from the
diversity of its contents (ibid.). But the soul does not appear to us! Does
Simmel here fall back to the metaphysics that he had labored so arduously
to strip away? In order to explain the process in the course of which unity
can be created out of incoherent impressions, he refers to an invisible
entity, the soul.
The depth of his thinking led Simmel to a realization of the limits to the
possibilities of gaining knowledge. So he took upon himself Kants insight
into the imperceptibility of the world as his bequest (Susman 1959: 3). On
the other hand, the following words from Simmel have come down to us:
Certainly there lies a deep secret therein, that there is such a thing as
truth and that it is discovered by us and not created, as if it were pre-drawn
in us by ideal lines (ibid.). It is either open to being misunderstood or
false, depending upon the meaning that the person attaches to that con-
cept, to call Simmel a relativist. Margarete Susman, who knew him well,
mentioned his close relation to the absolute (ibid: 4). He probably did not
see before his eyes a multiplicity of possible ultimate values, but rather
many presentations of the one. His relativism did not stem from doubt
but from an entirely different grasp of truth (ibid.).
As he had done with Plato, Simmel gave precise reasons where he did
not want to follow Kant and specified what his critique was based on.
Simmels criticism of Kant is so rich in facets that it cannot be covered
here. Particularly unpopular probably were his fundamental objections to
Kants categorical imperative (see Gallinger 1901). Simmel unequivocally
objected to the categorical imperative, the demand that we act as if the
principle upon which this acting is based were valid for all human beings
(Simmel 1983b: 22). Although it would thereby be excluded that one usurp
166 chapter six

rights for oneself that one would not want to concede to others, it would
also exclude the making of special sacrifices and taking obligations upon
oneself that one would not want to demand of others (ibid.). The basi-
callyegalitarian tone in Kants ethic was not to Simmels liking.
Just as a personal ruler can impose upon a subject a responsibility from
which all others are exempted, or may exclude a subject from it whereas
all others would have to comply, this can also be done by an impersonal
ruler [the ruler from within] in whose voice the moral demand appears
(ibid.). The impersonal ruler whose voice brings the moral demand to the
attention of the individuals consciousness, according to Simmel, does not
legitimate itself in a democratic way but instead remains independent of
the consensus of a majority. Rather Simmel entrusts the autonomous indi-
vidual with cultural and social progress. Simmels individualism led him to
sharply distance himself from Platos idea of the state, because there, as
already mentioned, the individual was entirely subjected to serving the
realization of the objective idea.
This same individualism also led Simmel toward his rejection of the cat-
egorical imperative: For this individualism by no means has to be a con-
cealed immorality, a selfish blissfully exclusive desire that masquerades as
a morality of a very special and unique kind and content. Rather, it can be
an entirely genuine and sincere morality that represents, relative to the
generally valid ethical demand, not a minus but a plus, but which is con-
scious of the fact that no other human being either may act that way or
may be required to act that way (ibid.).

Dilthey

The philosopher from whom Simmel learned directly by being face to face
with him at the University of Berlin, was Wilhelm Dilthey (18331911).
He became a professor of philosophy at that University in 1882, after
having been professor at other European institutions of higher learning.
In his 1883 book, Introduction to the Liberal Arts [Einleitung in die
Geisteswissenschaften], he set out to create a secure methodical base for
academic disciplines outside of the natural sciences. He was of the opin-
ion that this epistemological project must be prepared by looking at and
thinking through the history of philosophy from a certain perspective:
The emancipation of the individual sciences started at the end of the
Middle Ages. But among these sciences, those of society and history
remained for a long time, until well into the last century, in the old servi-
tude to metaphysics (Dilthey 1883: XIII).
 background of the messages: intellectual influences167

The historical school has to be credited with having been the first to lay
a foundation for an empirical access to the study of history and society
(ibid: XIV). But unfortunately the historical school proved to be philo-
sophically weak and its methodological bases were not, in Diltheys opin-
ion, sufficiently thought through. It lacked, he said, a healthy relationship
to epistemology and psychology (ibid: XV). Hence when scholars such
as August Comte (17981857), John Stuart Mill (18061873), and Henry
Thomas Buckle (18211862) began to solve the epistemological problems
of history with the methods of the natural sciences, there was a much
too weak and ineffective protest on the part of the liberal arts, a protest
that would hardly have impressed these masters of natural-science-like
analysis.
As a consequence thereof, research in the area of history and society
was soon confronted with the alternative of either following the direction
of the natural sciences positivism or restricting itself to the tasks of mere
description. Those scholars who rejected both these alternatives, and the
solutions contained therein, frequently gave in to the temptation to put
too much trust in their subjective intuition and so gradually, without
noticing it, sank back into the soft embrace of metaphysics (ibid.: XV).
Dilthey gave this illustration of the state of methods in the liberal arts in
1883. The frustration described in the text that led him to write his
Introduction (ibid.) remains surprisingly timely up until today. One does
not have to be a pessimist to raise the question, whether the method of the
liberal arts really has advanced since then. And one can profitably turn
again to Wilhelm Diltheys text today, particularly so since he clearly
inspired scholars such as Georg Simmel, George Herbert Mead, Max
Weber, and others who so decisively influenced early sociology. Simmel
and Dilthey had in common the endeavor to make the process of gaining
insights in the liberal arts independent from metaphysics.
The historical school was necessary for Dilthey, despite its drawbacks. It
was correct in its basic intention and was only, as already mentioned,
standing on an insufficient methodical foundation. Therefore Dilthey
took on the task of giving the historical school a sound philosophical basis,
a methodical foundation that would not so easily sway under pressure.
At the same time, he wanted to make himself a mediator between the
historical-descriptive and the abstract-theoretical domains within liberal
arts research. Hence from the start Dilthey placed the utmost importance
on the conditions under which the contents of consciousness come into
being. He dedicated himself to the study of the conditions under which
human insights gain Gestalt (ibid: XVII).
168 chapter six

In the liberal arts we are presented with our image of all of nature
as a mere shadow (ibid.), a shadowy veil that we cannot lift away because
it is not immediately accessible as reality. Therefore the inner experi
ence remains the only type of reality that we can hold onto, because
the facts which are given to us as data when each is analytically viewed
as a singularity have no apparent inter-connections. The step from a
singular datum to an integrated whole is therefore the genuine and
most serious methodical problem. We either create an image of the total-
ity of history and of society as a whole, which would necessarily be
shadowy and unclear, or we undertake an analysis of the facts that are
given to us in experience and arrive thereby at incoherent, singular pieces
of data.
Dilthey addressed his work to all those who are concerned with the
branches of scholarship that have as their objective the historical societal
reality (ibid: 4), i.e., with those disciplines whose objective is the reality of
history and society. He wrote that these fields, at the time his book was
written, had entered a decisive stage of development. They were then con-
cerned with moving closer to each other, with helping one another to dis-
cern the connection that exists among them, and with working out a joint
position for a united methodology for the liberal arts (ibid.). The repercus-
sions of the French Revolution had initiated this process because people
started thinking about continuities or discontinuities of society: The
importance of the sciences of society grows, therefore, relative to those of
nature (ibid.). Dilthey even had the conception of a paradigmatic revo-
lution that, in his time, unfolded in a way similar to what happened in
ancient Greece during the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. (ibid.).
For Dilthey, the task of the liberal arts initially was to come to terms
with the reality of history and society, in order to grasp what happens in
this area of reality; it is not or at least not primarily the task of the lib-
eral arts to also change reality (ibid.: 5). We are therefore dealing with the
study of reality that we do not want to master but first of all want to grasp
(ibid.). This type of reality represents the one half of the globus intellectua-
lis, and Dilthey called this half the liberal arts [Geisteswissenschaften],
because he felt this term was already widely accepted since it had been
used by John Stuart Mill in his Logic (ibid.: 6). From our current perspec-
tive as sociologists living more than a century later, however, it was Dilthey
who introduced the term Geisteswissenschaften into German parlance and
especially so via his discussion of the special methods of these academic
disciplines in comparison to the natural sciences. But Dilthey himself did
not claim credit for this contribution.
 background of the messages: intellectual influences169

It is freedom that sets human beings apart from the rest of nature and,
in Diltheys view this constitutes the division of the globus intellectualis
into two separate hemispheres. It falls upon the liberal arts to research this
realm of freedom, within which human beings gain knowledge of that
which exists as reality only before their own consciousness (ibid: 7). It is
here where Dilthey referred to Spinoza, who said about human beings:
And since for them only that exists which is a fact for their consciousness,
here in their lives in this mental world that unfolds within them in its own
right, here lies that value, that goal of life, that goal of their actions in the
producing of mental facts (ibid.).
The process by which this type of reality constitutes itself, which is gen-
uinely reserved for the liberal arts, is identified with the process by which
human consciousness comes into being. While the natural sciences study
that reality which is, in its essence, independent of human beings and
which can demonstrate an objective existence namely independent of
whether or not anyone knows about it, whether or not human beings
reflect about it this is not the case for the liberal arts. The scholar of the
liberal arts researches that reality which is man-made and which thereby
can only be real insofar as it is the content of human consciousness.
Despite this, however, what human beings socio-culturally create as an
objectification of the mind has the potential to take on a life of its own, to
stand on its own two hind legs and rise up against its creator, as is vividly
illustrated in the Marxist discussion of alienation. Dilthey, however, did
not primarily deal with this aspect of cultural reality, this process of taking
on a life of its own and becoming alienated. But he was well aware that the
potential of an independent mental world has to be considered, and that
human beings experience it as the center of all value and of all goals in life.
According to Dilthey, it is always the goal of human conduct to participate
in it. How such mental facts come about and are created needs to be stud-
ied by the liberal arts (ibid.).
About a free human being, Dilthey wrote: So he separates a realm
of nature from the realm of history in which, amidst an objective neces
sity which is nature, freedom flashes up at innumerable points in this
whole (ibid.). That is, the realm of history driven out of the realm of
nature is surrounded by it, by an objective necessity in which flashes of
innumerable points of freedom nevertheless flare up over and over. And it
is this realm of freedom which has to be surrendered to the study of the
liberal arts. In contrast stand the mechanical processes and events which
the natural sciences study in their search for laws, against whose back-
ground freedoms would have to appear as irregularities or aberrations.
170 chapter six

It is characteristic of the mechanical flow of natural changes that it

already contains from the outset everything that unfolds (ibid.). In
history, by contrast, there is the potential for creativity.
Dilthey thereby confronted the study of the creations of the human
mind with the empty and infertile repetitions of natural processes in
human consciousness (ibid.: 8). He denounced the positivistic ideal of
historical progress as a calculable process; for this method cannot take
away the empty and dull repetition of natures flow in consciousness,
which the idolaters of intellectual development delight in when they
imagine an ideal of historical progress (ibid.).
In view of the great successes of the natural sciences in the 19th century,
it was an important task to strengthen the self-confidence of the scholars
in the liberal arts. It was Diltheys goal to present the differences between
the liberal arts and the natural sciences. Not only do we need different
methods to study these two types of realities, but furthermore the princi-
ples upon which the isolated singular facts are joined together into a
coherent system have a fundamentally different character in the two
areas. Therefore mental facts cannot and may not be subsumed under a
system of natural or material realities, because the relations among the
facts of the mental world have nothing in common with the monotony of
the process of nature.
Only when the relations among the facts of the cognitive world prove to
be incomparable in that way with the uniformities of natures course, only
when a subordination of mental facts under those which the mechanical
study of nature has ascertained can be excluded, only then are we not pre-
sented with inherent limitations of seeking knowledge, but rather with
barriers at which knowledge of nature ends and an independent scholar-
ship of the liberal arts [Geisteswissenschaften] begins, which forms itself
out of its genuinely own center (ibid: 14).
Diltheys tirade against the empty and infertile repetitions of natural
processes in human consciousness (ibid: 8) and against a subordination
of mental facts under those which the mechanical study of nature has
ascertained (ibid: 14), however, also hit that which by borrowing from
physics and biology presented itself as sociology under Comte and
Spencer. Dilthey meant only the positivistic variant when he rejected soci-
ology as being quite impossible. In a footnote, he confronted the sociology
of Comte and Spencer with the concept of the science of society from the
German scholars of public law (ibid: 44f). He agreed with the efforts
toward a science of society and later even revised his categorical verdict
against sociology, in the additions to the new edition of the Introduction,
 background of the messages: intellectual influences171

on the basis of Simmels program with which he agreed (Tenbruck

1958: 591).
Dilthey referred to the high complexity of society, but he saw the pos-
sibility of gaining insights by recreating reality within us. This methodical
concept, which we find again in Simmel, stands in obvious contrast, how-
ever, to that of the natural sciences since as Dilthey wrote nature
remains mute and is alien to us (Dilthey 1883: 45f). By contrast: Society is
our world. We partake in the interplay of reciprocal interrelations
[Wechselwirkungen] within it (ibid: 46).
Dilthey pointed out that value judgments are necessary in order to be
able to critically reflect our image of society: We are compelled to master
the image of its constitution by ever-active value judgments and to trans-
form it, at least in our imagination, with a never-resting drive of the will
(ibid.: 46). Individuals are themselves a part of society and hence find
access to its interior. Therefore the individual can understand [verstehen]:
I understand the life of society. The individual is, on the one hand, an ele-
ment in this interplay of the reciprocal relationships of society, a point of
intersection of the various systems of these reciprocal interrelations
(ibid: 47).
This quote out of the Dilthey text anticipated the title of a chapter of
Georg Simmel, The Intersection of Social Circles (Simmel 1890b). It
appears as if Simmel was very much in agreement with the position that
the young Dilthey took in his Introduction (Dilthey 1883). Uta Gerhardt,
however, stressed particularly the thoughts of the late Dilthey (Gerhardt
1971: 279 footnote), that from about 1907 onwards leaned toward an expla-
nation of life out of the subject-object dualism and that determine the
categories of life as forms of perception of life (ibid.). She also men-
tioned that Simmels works on this topic were in part already available
before this turn in Diltheys approach (ibid.).
Grasping knowledge of the total picture, of the interrelation of the
whole, remained Diltheys goal. From the perspective of methodology one
can here identify the basic contours of the procedure of understanding or
interpretation [verstehen]. While Dilthey on the on hand rejected what
he called sociology, with reference to Comte and Spencers positivis-
tic approach, he outlined on the other hand a concept for a family of
sciences of society and counted among them, for instance, grammar,
rhetoric, logic, esthetics, ethics, jurisprudence (Dilthey 1883: 48). Political
science as well belongs in this circle of sciences of society.
Dilthey emphasized the importance of the Italian Renaissance for the
history of the liberal arts. According to him, it was then that the cord
172 chapter six

between religion as a source of reality constructions and empirical reality

itself was severed. By giving up the subordination under the medieval
scheme of religious imagination, science snaps the cord between religious
ideas as means of construction and reality; one becomes aware of them
with an unprejudiced mind and thereby, objective perception and positive
science emerge, where up until then a metaphysical deduction had kept
the phenomenon connected with the innermost depth of total spiritual
life (ibid: 451).
The result of this snapping of the cord between religion and empir
ical reality was therefore, on the one hand, the beginning of positive
natural science and, on the other hand, an increasing process of indepen-
dence and detachment of religion, natural science, and the liberal arts
from each other. Once these three became detached from each other,
the next stage in this evolutionary process was the transformation of
metaphysics: It changes from a quasi-religion into a private system
of knowledge (ibid: 455). This loss of collective integration led to what
Dilthey called free multiplicity of metaphysical systems (ibid.) or, as
one might say in modern language, it led toward pluralism of values and
orientations.
For Dilthey it was one of the most important challenges of the liberal
arts (Dilthey 1883: 483) to solve the following tasks:
a)
the explanatory bases for judgments about reality have to be
ascertained;
b)the explanatory bases for value statements and imperatives (ibid.)
have to be worked out; and finally it is necessary that
c)both are related to and connected with each other.
d)This was the consequence of the transformation of philosophy, accord-
ing to which the old opposition between theoretical and practical phi-
losophy was being replaced by the counter positioning, as suggested by
Dilthey, of natural sciences and liberal arts (ibid.).
Close to the end of his Introduction (the book under review here), Dilthey
tells about a fairy tale by Novalis, in which a man falls passionately in love
but then leaves his girl in order to go into the world in search of truth. After
many false turns and much suffering, he finally succeeds in encountering
the enshrouded goddess Isis. Eventually he discovers behind her veil the
kindhearted girl whom he had left in order to search for the truth. Diltheys
interpretation thereof comes as a surprise. He did not say, as Simmel might
have suggested, that this was a depiction of the unique opportunity to find
ones You, to recognize ones significant other (Mead); instead Dilthey
 background of the messages: intellectual influences173

wrote, eventually everyone always rediscovers in everything only their

own selves:
He finally stands in front of the goddess of nature, he lifts the lightly
shimmering veil and his lover sinks into his arms. When the soul seems
to succeed in recognizing the subject of natures course itself, bared of its
garments and veil, then it finds in this itself (ibid.: 517). Why itself, one
could ask Dilthey. He does find his you, doesnt he? But this perhaps is
already a hint about the difference between Dilthey the philosopher and
Simmel the sociologist.
In addition, Simmel was a scholar of the liberal arts with a living rela-
tionship to the absolute; Dilthey on the other hand, although called upon
by his family to become a protestant minister, lost his faith and became a
philosopher and a skeptic instead. At the end of the text he wrote: The
legal heir of the skeptic is the epistemologist. Here we have arrived at the
borderline where the next book will begin (ibid: 519). But that next
book mentioned here was never written. Dilthey himself was the legal
heir of the skeptic who pursued epistemology to reorient himself and his
contemporaries. His text represented an attempt to replace faith and
metaphysics with epistemology, a task which Dilthey later had to realize
he could not solve.
A reference to a text by Dilthey, which strongly influenced the develop-
ment of the liberal arts in the last part of the 19th century, is intended to
serve here to further lead into the works of Georg Simmel. An intensive
study of all of Diltheys publications although beyond the scope of the
current text would be necessary and desirable to correctly judge his
importance. Our treatment of Dilthey has unavoidably been sketchy,
focusing on his Introduction; however, the position of this work in terms
of the history of scholarship speaks in favor of our having stressed it here.
Its title page mentions that the author, Wilhelm Dilthey, is Professor of
Philosophy at the University of Berlin. During the second half of the 19th
century, this university was an important intellectual center. It was there
where Georg Simmel, at the age of 18, began his study of history and phi-
losophy. And it was there where five years later, in 1881, he received his
doctoral degree and after weathering some menacing difficulties where
he received the postdoctoral degree [Habilitation] in 1885, two years after
Diltheys Introduction was published in Berlin. It was here where George
Herbert Mead and Robert E. Park spent time as doctoral candidates.
We know that Dilthey was a supporter and advisor of Simmel and that,
without his support, Simmels postdoctoral dissertation probably would
never have been accepted. A scholar-to-be usually devoted the years
174 chapter six

between the doctoral and the postdoctoral degrees to particularly inten-

sive study and research, which in all likelihood would fundamentally
influence that persons later scientific orientation. One can safely assume
that this was also the case for Georg Simmel in his contact with Wilhelm
Dilthey. To demonstrate the temporal connection, one should again recall
the following dates: 1881 Simmels doctoral degree; 1883 publication of
Diltheys Introduction to the Liberal Arts; 1885 Simmels postdoctoral
degree as a Privatdozent.
In the context of describing the situation at the University of Berlin, it
should also be pointed out that in 1889 George Herbert Mead arrived in
Berlin and that he became a student of Wilhelm Dilthey. We hear that
Mead not only occasionally attended Diltheys lectures and seminars but
that he apparently began his dissertation under Diltheys guidance.
Although he did not finish it, because his stay in Berlin was cut short, one
may safely assume that once someone decides to write a dissertation
under the guidance of an important philosopher that person will closely
inspect that scholars publications, particularly a major book such as the
one we have discussed here. Therefore it is plausible to assume that Georg
Simmel and George Herbert Mead both knew Wilhelm Diltheys
Introduction to the Liberal Arts very well.
A decade after Mead, in the fall of 1899, Park (18641944) arrived
in Berlin (Raushenbush 1979:30). He moved there with his wife and
their three children. The name of the university then was of course
not Humboldt University, as it is today, but rather Friedrich-Wilhelm
Universitt, named after the emperor. Raushenbush reported about Park:
In the spring of 1900 he took three courses with Georg Simmel who was
then forty-one and a docent in the university. The courses were in Ethics,
History of Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century, and Sociology. This was
the only course in sociology Park took in his entire life. Years later Park was
to say that Simmel was the greatest of all sociologists (ibid.).
Simmels popularity with the students at that time makes it difficult to
reconstruct the development of his personal relationship with Dilthey.
Simmel had been a student at the University of Berlin since 1876. Then, in
1882, Dilthey came from Breslau and assumed a vacant chair in Berlin,
thereby returning to the University where he had earned his doctoral
and postdoctoral degrees. Here he found the young and unusually bright
Simmel, with whom he felt united in basic methodical questions from the
time of his arrival from Breslau. He helped Simmel when, in 1885, Simmel
got into serious difficulties in his attempt to the pass his postdoctoral
examinations. In 1890 Simmels book, On Social Differentiation [Ueber
 background of the messages: intellectual influences175

sociale Differenzierung], appeared and it contained numerous passages

that were inspired and influenced by the Dilthey of the time before 1890
(e.g., see Simmel 1890a: 7).
In the course of the years, however, the distance between the two phi-
losophers must have increased. What began as the helpfulness of a full
professor (his position strengthened by having been called by several
universities) to the postdoctoral student whose degree chances were in
jeopardy became a relationship of competition for preeminence in the
field of philosophy. Dilthey had announced a second volume to his
Introduction to the Liberal Arts, which promised to solve the epistemo-
logical problems following the dissolution of metaphysics, but he never
wrote it. Simmel, however, actually completed a book, The Problems of the
Philosophy of History [Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie], which
had the subtitle, An Epistemological Study.
Dilthey had intended to give a solid methodical foundation to the study
of history and society. But students who were interested in the study of
society went in large numbers to the lectures of Simmel, who seemed to
offer this foundation. Everyone who studied philosophy at the then-
renowned University of Berlin was forced to compare Dilthey with Simmel.
Simmel was a financially independent, entirely autonomous Privatdozent
who could allow himself the luxury of not holding examinations, appar-
ently because he disliked the unpleasant situation of the examiner (Gassen
1958: 208). As a full professor, Dilthey had the status of a civil servant and
was of course obliged to give exams because this was part of the duties of
his office.
On November 3, 1897, in a letter to Rickert, Simmel wrote that his lec-
tures were more overcrowded than ever and at the same time reported
that Dilthey would apparently not be happy to see him get a professorship
in Berlin (ibid.: 92f). This remark could only have been a reference to an
associate professorship, since it would have been against the German tra-
dition anyway to invite a member of the local department to a full profes-
sorship. In his memoirs, Paul Ernst reports about a personal encounter in
which Simmel jokingly said of the University of Berlin, that there are two
professors who teach philosophy Zeller, who doesnt even know what
philosophy is, and Dilthey, who knows but is not about to let anybody in
on the secret (ibid.: 141). Directly comparing Dilthey and Simmel, Paul
Fechter writes: In more than one way they were figures who stood in con-
trast to each other, one the counter piece of the other (ibid.: 162).
Another contemporary, N.J. Spykman, suspected that certain difficul-
ties with Dilthey played a role in the problems of Simmels career
176 chapter six

(ibid: 186). Ludwig Curtius (18741954) frankly admits that he preferred

going to the lectures of the Privatdozent Simmel over those of Dilthey
(ibid: 222). In view of the apparent competition of these two university
teachers from the point of view of students, it is plausible, when several
witnesses agree, that Dilthey presumably may have stood in the way of
Simmels job promotion to associate professor.
But we also know that Dilthey had several calls as full professor to
universities in Switzerland and in Germany. It is an old principle of
German academic conventions that a Privatdozent is not promoted to the
rank of professor by the same faculty which granted that persons post-
doctoral degree, but rather must first try to change universities. It could
have been an entirely rational argument of Dilthey against Simmel to say
that he even if deserving had not yet received a call to another univer-
sity. Over the course of his lifetime, Simmel published 24 books and more
than 200 articles. Dilthey died in 1911, that is, seven years before Simmel.
And while Dilthey left a multitude of unpublished manuscripts, he had
published only three books and a number of articles, of which none of
the latter captured the extent of his philosophical importance (Rickman
1979: 13).
Rickman mentioned that Diltheys philosophy was rejected during
National Socialism (ibid: 15). His philosophizing was too anti-dogmatic for
the taste of that totalitarian regime. According to Rickman, it is known
that Dilthey had jotted the following remark on his copy of John Stuart
Mills Logic: Mill is a dogmatic because he lacks historical knowledge.
Diltheys anti-dogmatic position is probably also the reason why a century
later many Marxist philosophers of the seventies and eighties saw in him
the most dangerous opponent of dogmatic Marxism (ibid: 18f).
On the question of the possible influence of Dilthey on Simmel, we
come to the following preliminary conclusion. The Introduction, the text
we have inspected here in excerpts, represents the position of a young and
dynamic Dilthey who has influenced Simmel and Weber and who, in addi-
tion, was probably important for American pragmatism and the Chicago
school as well. Dilthey himself later left the position of this text (see
Gerhardt 1971: 279 footnote). Heinrich Rickert and the later Max Weber
apparently followed the transition that Dilthey made in the development
of his scientific thinking. On the other hand, it seems that Simmel stayed
with the position as outlined in this text and that he neither followed nor
endorsed the later change in Diltheys line of argument.
In the Dilthey text of 1883, it is presumably decisive from his point of
view that with the onset of the Italian Renaissance the cord between the
 background of the messages: intellectual influences177

religious sources of reality construction on the one hand, and empirical

reality on the other hand, was torn asunder. In this text, Dilthey still has
the hope of repairing this break by means of the philosophy of life. In the
future, constructive ideas would have to be gained out of the reality of life
itself so he means and so he hopes (Dilthey 1883: 541). This is Simmels
topic as well, for whom the search for criteria of truth led from the reality
of life to philosophical pragmatism.

Summary: Statements about Simmels Method

Simmel starts his message with the insight that the purpose of knowledge
is to improve action: Man should gain knowledge in order to inform and
enrich his conduct and improve his life. A knowledge firmly placed in the
service of action cannot elicit the criteria for its value from itself. These
criteria must be determined according to what services knowledge
provides for humans. This fundamental principle is so important that
Simmels work remains inaccessible if one fails to grasp its significance.
The following is a list of points intended as a reminder of the typical traits
of Simmels method:
1. Action, as Socrates requires, is to be guided by rational knowledge
(Simmel, 1910: 105): This applies in the moral and political sphere in the
same as in the sphere of craftsmanship and technique. Simmel derives
the principles of pragmatism from Platos Socrates.
2. According to Simmel, the ancient Greeks directed their knowledge
toward the material and concrete. Thus an idea was said to be true if
it corresponded to its object like a perfect image to its model (ibid:
106).
3. The claim to objectivity, to independence from subjective bias, meant
for Plato, truth had to be something constant and reliable, which did
not repeatedly elude cognizance or change its appearance. Objects
which fulfilled this requirement were termed ideas by Plato.
4. From Simmels point of view, Platos ideas are simply conceptual prod-
ucts which are postulated, created ad hoc as tools of thought, like Max
Webers ideal types, and do not exist independently of this. They also
serve the purpose of understanding the existence of a truth (ibid: 106),
a truth which therefore must exist, whether grasped by man or not.
Thus Simmels method is caught up in the conflict of only accepting the
realm of ideas as the product of human creation, and yet anticipating
that it might provide access to an objective truth.
178 chapter six

5. Rational conceptualization and sensory perception do not refer two

distinct types of objects (ideas as the object of metaphysics and empir-
ical experience as that of physics): instead, both refer concurrently to
the concrete material world in which actions must be performed.
Simmel adopts this theory from Kant (Simmel, 1922b: 124): The objects
of mans experience are encountered only in this one empirical, mate-
rial world; they are not separated into this life and an after-life.
Sociology as an empirical science would be inconceivable to Simmel
without this epistemological premise.
6. As far as Simmel is concerned, fresh knowledge can only be acquired
from actual life experience and not by means of intellectual reflection
alone: Initially, I simply know that something is true because I have
experienced it. Not until after this, in order to confirm this to myself
and others, do I then take the secondary step of defining the object,
which I then specify as being the cause of my experience (ibid.: 107).
7. Experience in relation to objects cannot become knowledge until man
gives it a certain form. The sensory impression of a picture of the
mother remembered by her child, the portrait created by an artist, and
the concept by which a scientist summarizes his object all are for
Simmel in principle, equally valid variations of this process of forma-
tion. Hence the greater part of his life work was dedicated to a com-
parative study of such forming.
8. The central fields of forming, art, religion, and play compete with sci-
ence and learning in taking the objective experiential field of life com-
mon to all and shaping it while preserving the subjective element in
creating an authentic form.
9. An answer to the question what is truth? is only to be found in the
relation between the form, for instance a portrait or an ideal type, and
the object it aims to represent. The criterion of truth has thus been
shifted to relations. It is in relations where reality is located.
10. Simmel believes, contrary to Platos view, that since ideas are created
by man and then recognized as ideals, they cannot be as otherworldly
as Plato assumed. On the contrary, they offer the possibility of a point
of contact between what things are and what they ought to be
(Simmel, 1983b: 89) because humans are conscious of their unlived
potentials.
11. Simmel applies Darwins evolutionism to culture and history and
subjects the ability of the person to acquire knowledge and objective
truth to the same dynamic progression. The development of our spe-
cies is continuously creating new ways of perceiving the world both in
 background of the messages: intellectual influences179

sensory and intellectual terms; similarly, new categories for its evalua-
tion are constantly being created (Simmel, 1907b: 431).
12. The reinterpretation of Platos ideas from existing reality to a rational
formative process, from something which man discovers and encoun-
ters as a finished product to something he creates himself is for Simmel
a universal epistemological principle applied consistently in the con-
text of sociology.
13. There are two means of access to perceivable reality: Experience and
pure thought. Alternating with the passage of time, these two methods
of acquiring knowledge take turns in promoting each other: The cycle
begins with experience (cf. 7 above), giving rise to pure thought as a
reflection on the experiences, and this in turn leads on to new experi-
ences. This cyclical development constantly guides the person through
the world of phenomena.
14. The actions of the subject, characterized by his interests, determine
the process by which knowledge is acquired. For this reason, Simmel
assigns central importance within the Kantian system not to thought,
but to will. If there is little effective will, there will be little knowledge
worth acquiring. As one of his premises, Simmel adopts Kants notion
that interests determine thought, a notion that has since become an
issue in the sociology of knowledge.
15. Quite apart from the reality resulting from the will of humans, Simmel
proposes the existence of an objective truth. Knowledge of this truth
can be attained by studying the relations of its parts: If we do not wish
once and for all to cling dogmatically to a single truth, which according
to its very nature requires no proof, it seems reasonable to regard this
reciprocity of verification as the fundamental form of knowledge its
purest form. The acquisition of knowledge is thus an unstable process
whose elements mutually define their positions, in the same way as
matter is affected by gravity; in the way same as the latter, therefore,
truth is a relational concept (Simmel, 1907b: 68). This approaches a
sociological theory of relativity.
16. Simmels message comes full circle: Man should gain knowledge in
order to inform and enrich his conduct and improve his life. As life and
action form the central pivot of Simmels thought, he sees an energetic
will, whatever its specific object, as giving the impulse to activity. The
action induced creates results, which may be judged successful or
unsuccessful. The theoretical content of any successful desire will sub-
sequently be defined as truth. Simmel thus regards the substance of
truth as being the result of such judgments. The fact that the agent is
180 chapter six

now guided by the truth he has very successfully come to recognize is

understandable since the truth was originally based on the success of
his actions (Simmel, 1922b: 123).
17. It would be a gross misinterpretation of Simmel to read into his episte-
mological shift from the substantial to the relational a departure from
all objective solidity. In Simmels view there is indeed a single objective
truth, located not in things but in relations. The inherent danger of
human existence lies in the risk of making the wrong judgment by fail-
ing to recognize the objective truth at a certain time and in a certain
place. Simmels knowledge certainly does not come without norma-
tive stability: In fact any being endowed with imagination is in posses-
sion of a fixed truth which in their thinking they may either hit upon
or fail to grasp in any particular case (Simmel, 1907b: 70). This rigorous
methodical conclusion provides him with a basis for a sociology with
an ever present ethical dimension.
 APPENDIX ONE

BIOGRAPHY OF GEORG SIMMEL

From 1858 until 1914 Simmels home was Berlin. He spent the last four
years of his life, which coincided with World War I, as professor at the
University of Strasbourg where he died of liver cancer on September 26,
1918 (not on September 28, as several sources report). Simmel was of
Jewish origin and belonged to a Protestant Church. He grew up the young-
est of seven children and received a sizable inheritance after the death of
his father. This allowed him to pursue his inclinations toward intellectual
autonomy.
Simmel earned his doctorate degree from the University of Berlin,
which enjoyed considerable international reputation then. Among those
intellectuals who came from abroad to study were George Herbert Mead
and Robert Ezra Park. In Berlin as well as elsewhere in Austria, Germany,
and other parts of Europe it has long been the tradition not to promote a
scholar from within his or her department to the rank of full professor.
This old custom, by which intellectual inbreeding was to be minimized,
excluded Simmel from eligibility to a professorship at the university where
he had been a student, a Ph.D. candidate, and a Privatdozent. That is one
of the reasons, why Max Weber tried to get him a professorship at
Heidelberg, which failed, most likely due to anti-Semitic prejudices.
Trying to produce a reconstruction of Simmels life would have been
met with strong reservations from himself. To him, it is unreasonable to
portray a person and then to claim that the result would be the only pos-
sible accurate reproduction and that every other portrayal would neces-
sarily be less fitting and less correct. One should specifically keep in mind
Simmels conviction that a photo-like reproduction of reality is impossible
in general.
If one describes a personality with an interest in the history of culture,
then that never means simply a point-by-point copy of their entire lived
life, but rather that, depending upon the specifics of ones interest,
one will eliminate many things, focus on others and what really is
important one will combine the relevant parts into one coherent picture
which, as such, does not have a correspondent object in reality. Rather,
comparable to an artistic portrait, one has instead of the real totality of the
182 appendix one

object an ideal elaboration of it which gains its meaning and importance

from a specific purpose of presentation (Simmel 1907a: VIII).
To Simmel the truly unmistakable qualities of an important person are
not that persons biographical data but rather his or her creations, which
transcend the individual insofar as they are accessible to all. Following his
epistemological principle, the object of study takes shape for the researcher
only in the process of thinking about it. Only then does the inclination to
search within individual characteristics for the general, and vice-versa, to
seek within the general for that which is individual becomes apparent.
What for mankind or culture is the most general, is for its producer his
most personal, that which marks the very uniqueness of this individuality;
the incomparable individuality of Schopenhauer does not lie in his per-
sonal circumstances: that he was born in Danzig, that he was an unpleas-
ant bachelor, that he broke off ties with his family, and that he died in
Frankfurt; for each of these traits is only typical. His individuality, the per-
sonal uniqueness in Schopenhauer, is rather The World as Will and
Imagination (ibid: 64). According to Simmel, Schopenhauers biography
could be brushed aside with good reason: because the uniqueness of this
man lies entirely in his work. On the other hand, as Dilthey has stressed,
history becomes alive in biographies and the general coming and going of
an historical epoch becomes, in the life of an individual, personal destiny.
This holds for the peaking of German self-confidence in the national-
ism of the German empire in Simmels days, for the great intellectual
movements which are linked with the names of Darwin (18091882), Marx
(18181883), and Freud (18561939), and for the universal catastrophe of
humanity in World War I, a war that Simmel could only experience as the
German he was. If one tears biographical data and life decisions out of
their historical context, one should not be surprised at how incomprehen-
sible they then appear. In spite of Simmels reservations against writing
biographies, we now turn to some data on his life.
Isaak Simmel, the grandfather of Georg, had lived in Silesia and there
he received, as a mature man, citizenship rights in Breslau around 1840. He
was the founder of a successful merchant family. His son Edward, Georg
Simmels father, was born there in 1810. Edward was a merchant himself.
During one of his numerous travels, between 1830 and 1835, he converted
in Paris from the Jewish faith to Christianity, becoming a Roman Catholic.
In 1838 Edward Simmel married Flora Bodenstein, who also came from
Breslau. Her family had converted from Judaism to the Christian faith, but
she had been baptized not as a Catholic but as a Protestant. Georg Simmels
parents moved to Berlin where Edward Simmel founded the chocolate
 biography of georg simmel183

factory called Felix & Sarotti, which he later apparently was able to sell
advantageously (Gassen and Landmann 1958: 11).
When Edward Simmel died early in 1874, he left a sizeable estate. Since
his wife and seven children, of whom Georg was the youngest, survived
him, the early death of the father would have otherwise meant not only an
emotional and personal but also a financial catastrophe for the family.
Julius Friedlaender, a friend of the family and an important music
publisher, became the legal guardian of Georg Simmel. Later on, Simmel
dedicated his doctoral dissertation to him with gratitude and love
(ibid: 11).
Like his mother, Georg Simmel was baptized as a Protestant. During
World War I he left the church, not so much because he wanted to turn his
back on the Christian faith, but out of a need for religious independence
(ibid.: 12. See also Becher, H., 1984: 317). Gertrud Kinel, whom he married
in 1890, also came from a religiously mixed family. Like her father but
unlike Simmel, she was baptized as a Catholic. Since her mother was in
charge of her religious upbringing, however, Gertrud was raised in the
Protestant faith. Georg and Gertrud Simmel had a son, Hans, who became
an associate professor of medicine in Jena; he died in the late 1930s as an
immigrant in the United States (Ksler 1985).
Georg and Gertrud Simmels household in Berlin became a cultural
centre: it was here where personalities such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan
George, Edmund Husserl, Reinhold and Sabine Lepsius, Heinrick Rickert,
Max and Marianne Weber and others were regular guests. Georg Simmels
presence at the University of Berlin had a great attraction for audiences
from quite diverse social circles: Simmels lectures about problems of
logic, ethics, esthetics, sociology of religion, social psychology, and sociol-
ogy were sometimes acclaimed as cultural events, announced in news
papers and occasionally even critiqued.
As many colleagues scornfully noted, his audiences included many
foreigners, intellectually interested non-academics, students from all
disciplines, and especially numerous women. Those who had heard his
lectures unanimously told of Simmels fascinating style of presentation, of
his ability to attach almost physical substance to his train of thought,
and to make the objects of his lectures appear in the mental eye of the
audience, instead of presenting ready-made, seemingly undeniable results
as did many of his colleagues (Schnabel 1976: 272).
His entire schooling and university education, which contributed to
Simmels later successes as a university teacher, he received in Berlin.
At the age of 18 he passed his Abitur (final examination at a secondary
184 appendix one

school). He enrolled in the summer semester of 1876 at the University of

Berlin, where he studied for five years. Here he attended courses in history
under Theodor Mommsen, attended lectures about cross-cultural
psychology by Lazarus und Steinthal, and finally studied philosophy as a
student of the less-well-known professors Zeller and Harms, who intro-
duced him to the works of Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche; of
these, Kant had the strongest influence on Georg Simmel. The importance
of the University of Berlin can be inferred from the fact that during his
studies Simmel had as his teachers such influential scholars as Droysen,
von Sybel, von Treitschke, Jordan, and Hermann Grimm (Simmel 1881:
33; Tenbruck 1958: 588).
During 1881 Simmel applied for permission to take the doctoral exami-
nations. The topic of his dissertation was Psychological-Ethnological
Studies about the Origins of Music. This dissertation was not accepted!
According to the available documents and written evaluations, the profes-
sors in charge cited as reasons for the rejection the patchwork-like sketchi-
ness and the insufficient precision of the line of reasoning. While admitting
that the topic of research was extraordinary, they criticized the manner in
which it was carried out many typographical errors, illegible quotations,
etc. In other words, one would have to assume that the dissertation Simmel
wrote and submitted was somewhat sketchily done.
On the other hand, shortly before he applied for opening the formal
procedures leading to his doctoral degree, he had won a prize with another
scholarly work. This successful work carried the title, Presentation and
Examination of Several of Kants Perspectives on the Essence of Matter.
Those professors who were dissatisfied with his dissertation suggested
Georg Simmel withdraw his work on the origin of music and present in its
place this prize-winning work he had written on another occasion.
Simmel gladly accepted this friendly advice and he was granted the
doctoral degree. The oral doctoral examinations were in the fields of
philosophy, history of art, and medieval Italian. His dissertation became
Simmels first book, published in 1881 in Berlin under the title, The Essence
of Matter According to Kants Phsyical Monadology (Simmel 1881). Despite
the successful completion of his doctoral exams, Georg Simmels degree-
process was characterized by extremely unusual events.
Two years after receiving his doctoral degree, Simmel applied to the
same faculty of philosophy at the University of Berlin for the formal
permission to teach in the area of philosophy. During this application
procedure, which should have promoted him to the rank of an inde
pendently teaching faculty member (Privatdozent), even more difficult
 biography of georg simmel185

problems arose. For his postdoctoral dissertation, he had again written

a work about Kant, this time about Kants theory of space and time.
The professors whom the dean had appointed to judge this dissertation
among them Wilhelm Wundt turned it down. According to them, this
work was not bad from a scientific point of view but it circled around
the topic without fully dealing with it. Only after Professors Dilthey and
Zeller forcefully came to Simmels defense was it finally accepted as a
Habilitationsschrift [post-doctoral dissertation].
After the academic trial lecture (Probevorlesung) that Simmel had to
deliver, the oral examination of the candidate by the faculty members was
marked by an unheard-of and dramatic event; Professor Zeller remarked
that he considered a specific lobe of the brain to be the seat of the human
soul, whereupon Simmel ignoring the social situation he was in
uncompromisingly declared Zellers point of view to be nonsense. As an
immediate consequence, Simmel did not pass this examination on his
first try (Schnabel 1976: 273).
The extraordinary circumstances with regard to his doctoral and post-
doctoral examination procedures presumably left a mark in the memory
of the faculty members in Berlin, although in both cases Simmel finally
succeeded in obtaining the degree. In addition to anti-Semitism, which is
widely mentioned in the literature and would have played a role especially
in the social circles of the Ministries of Cultural Affairs, one can safely
assume these occurrences contributed to preventing a smooth academic
career path for Simmel. At any rate, in January of 1885 Simmel passed
the postdoctoral examinations in philosophy and thereby became a
Privatdozent at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Berlin.
The style of work and life, which he then adopted, was described as
follows: Simmel used to work in the mornings and evenings, whereas he
preferred to see guests and friends in the afternoons. His closest friend was
the economist Ignaz Jastrow. Both talked to each other in such a manner
that the one hardly listened to what the other said; despite this, they
always had the impression of having understood each other well. Simmels
production came easy to him. For his lectures, he made almost no notes
and improvised as he talked. He wrote articles one after the other, without
second drafts or corrections, as if he already could see them take form in
his minds eye. Behind the mental brilliance and human warmth, however,
there was a hidden, irrational interior(Gassen and Landmann, 1958: 13).
In 1898, the faculty to which he belonged as Privatdozent requ
ested Simmel be promoted to associate professor (Extraordinarius),
which would have been equivalent to giving him a permanent position.
186 appendix one

The Ministry of Cultural Affairs, however, did not grant this request.
In February 1900, the same academic body repeated its attempt to make
Georg Simmel an Extraordinarius, this time finally with success. Then:
In 1908 the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Heidelberg had an
opening, its second full professorship in philosophy. Following the recom-
mendation of Gothein and Max Weber, Dean Hampe suggested on
February 17th to the Ministry of Cultural Affairs in Karlsruhe as a first
choice (primo loco) the name of Rickert and as a second choice Simmel.
The passage referring to Simmel reads as follows: Should these difficul-
ties [i.e., to win Rickert] be insurmountable, the faculty suggests that
the government of the Grand Duke give a call to the Extraordinarius at
the University of Berlin, Dr. Georg Simmel. At the age of 50, Simmel is,
among the middle generation of the current academic teachers of philoso-
phy, by far the most peculiar countenance. One cannot assign him to any
of the general schools of thought; he has always gone his own way, at first
with very astute but essentially negative and destructive criticism in his
two-volume Introduction to Moral Science, then with an ever-deeper and
comprehensive grasp of philosophical social science. With sensitivity to
nuances, he dealt with methodological questions in Problems of the
Philosophy of History (2nd edition, 1905) which shows manifold connec-
tions with ideas of Windelband and Rickert; but his main impact lies in
sociological works which show everywhere an unusual command over
the research materials from very diverse disciplines and a philosophical
penetration of this rich material (ibid.: 24f).
Although Rickert declined the call for this chair, Georg Simmel did not
get the chance to go to Heidelberg. The position remained vacant for a
while until a certain Schwarz was called to fill it. Georg Simmel is said to
have had an offer to teach in the United States, which probably because of
World War I, did not materialize. Finally, in 1914, Simmel got a call to the
University of Strasburg. As much as he may have been delighted to finally
become a full professor, the farewell from Berlin must have been painful
for him because he had become part of its cultural and scholarly life. That
Simmel now leaves the university where he had worked for thirty years not
only means a loss for it, but also for himself. Such a personal, such an irre-
placeable style of teaching as Simmels has its audience, as in a theater,
and one knows: the audience does not necessarily follow the stage direc-
tor whom it holds in high esteem into a new house(Ludwig 1914: 413).
Simmel belonged to those who are not willing to accept artificially
created forms of intellectual discipline as rituals. He made full use of the
economic independence that he was fortunate to have, in order to remain
 biography of georg simmel187

intellectually independent as well. This is one of the keys towards under-

standing the admirable creativity and diversity that characterized his
scholarly work up until his death.
When he felt himself to be incurably ill, he asked his doctor: How long
do I still have to live? He needed to know because his most important
book still had to be finished. The doctor told him the truth and Simmel
withdrew and completed: Perspectives on Life [Lebensanschauung].
He confronted death like an ancient philosopher. I await the delic ship,
he wrote to a friend. On September 28 (Gassen is mistaken, it was
September 26), 1918, he died from cancer of the liver in Strasburg, where
he had been appointed four years before. Death at this point in time
was perhaps a blessing because many former Strasbourg professors fell
into utter poverty shortly thereafter, when Alsace became French again
(Gassen and Landmann 1958: 13).
Following the already mentioned published dissertation about Kant,
Simmel started his publishing activity in 1882 with an article in the Journal
of Ethno-Psychology and Linguistics [Zeitschrift fr Vlkerpsychologie und
Sprachwissenschaft] under the title, Psychological and Ethnological
Studies about Music (Simmel 1882). These are the rescued fragments of
the dissertation, which had been declined. In 1884 another article under
the title The Psychology of Dante appeared in the same journal.
Three years later, in 1887, he published the article On the Basic Question
of Pessimism in Methodological Perspective. Shortly thereafter, the arti-
cles Michelangelo as a Poet (1889) and Moltke as a Stylist (1890)
appeared. During the next years (1891 and 1892) he published Humanist
Fairy Tales and On Spiritism. Reviewing these titles in sequence shows
how unusual and diverse the publishing activity of Simmel was; even at
the beginning of his academic career. His message was not popular nor
was it easy to accept. That has not changed much since the publication of
these titles. But the interest in Simmels work persists and seems to
increase.
 APPENDIX TWO

SIMMELS AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FRAGMENT

In 1958 in their Buch des Dankes an Georg Simmel [Book of thanks to

Georg Simmel], Kurt Gassen and Michael Landmann published an auto-
biographical fragment from Simmels unpublished writings. In this unfin-
ished self-portrait, Simmel defines two levels of reflection which formed
the basis of his work: the philosophical level and the level of the individual
discipline. For each of these he specifies two areas of study: for the former
epistemology and Kant, for the latter history and the social sciences.
I took as my point of departure studies on epistemology and Kant which
were directly related to history and social science (Gassen and Landmann,
1958: 9). From this wording one can assume that Simmel did not dedicate
separate creative periods or phases of his life to each of the two levels, but
that his philosophical work went hand in hand with his historical and
sociological enquiries.
It is characteristic of Simmels position in the history of ideas that he
regards as real only that which is present in the conscious mind of the
individual. Reality is no longer to be found in material objects, but in con-
sciousness. In the same vein, Dilthey had written of Spinoza: And as for
him only that exists which is a fact of his consciousness, every value and
every purpose of life is contained in this conceptual world which has its
own independent existence within him, every goal of his actions is ori-
ented towards the creation of intellectual facts (Dilthey, 1883: 7). Dilthey
draws a distinction between that intellectual sphere only existing in the
conscious mind, that is to say the sphere of scholarly study not relating to
the natural world, and nature a distinction he also applies in terms of
method. But Simmel does not accept this tendency to psychologize reality.
He cannot work on the basis of an epistemology which permits no fixed
object outside the psyche of the individual.
In the contemporary world, everything which is substantial, absolute
and eternal is being dissolved into a constant flux of historical change and
purely psychological reality. It seems to me that the only way of preventing
this development from turning into unfounded subjectivism and skepti-
cism is to replace these fixed, immutable values with the vital interaction
of elements elements which are equally subject to disintegration ad infi-
nitum (Gassen and Landmann, 1958: 9).
190 appendix two

Simmel writes of himself that the path he chooses to follow is not meant
to take him from substance to psyche but to interaction. Reality, appar-
ently abandoned, is given a new home: the dynamic relation. This new
epistemological orientation does not make reality relative but relational.
The central concepts of truth, value, objectivity etc. presented themselves
to me as interactive forces, the content of a relativism which no longer
meant the skeptical erosion of all that was steadfast and stable, but instead
offered a safeguard against precisely such an erosion by means of a new
concept of stability (Philosophie des Geldes) (ibid.) Simmel mentions
his book on money here, but does not quote any particular passage from
the text.
Simmels unfinished self-portrait here contains a reference to the book
Philosophie des Geldes (The philosophy of money) in which he applies
according to his own judgment the methodical program outlined here.
Previous to this, he had discovered the formative process, in the course
of which there is a reshaping and molding of objective experience. The
first result was the fundamental thesis (argued in the Probleme der
Geschichtsphilosophie Problems of the philosophy of history); that
history means the forming or shaping of actual events which need sim-
ply be experienced according to the a priori principles of the scholarly
mind, just as nature is the forming of the material that the senses per-
ceive by categories of reason (ibid.).
Simmel bases his sociology on the combination of the two basic catego-
ries of his thought: Interaction and the formative process. In society, the
formative process leads to the emergence and development of social
forms, and living reality is the dynamic interaction itself, which carries
along with it the process of formation. The only conceivable point of
departure for the creation of social forms is the interaction between indi-
viduals. Whatever the obscure historical beginnings of societal life may
actually have been, any genetic and systematic consideration must take as
its basis this most simple and most direct relationship. And after all, this
relationship is still today the instigating force behind countless new social
forms. Thus ideational products of human reflection and judgment are
formed which we view as going far beyond individual will and action,
rather as if they were pure forms of the latter (Simmel, 1907b: 159).
Although it is interaction in which pure form manifests itself, this con-
cept is by no means mere social-psychological interactionism. The inter-
acting subjects create through their interaction objective culture which
existed before them and will continue to exist after them, since it goes
beyond individual will and action (see above). Simmels insistence that
 simmels autobiographical fragment191

there is an independent objective world, familiar to us from his epistemol-

ogy, thus leads to a world of pure forms. In his unfinished self-portrait he
writes: This separation of the form and content of historical representa-
tion, which I came upon from a purely epistemological point of view, was
then to develop in my thinking as a methodical principle within an indi-
vidual discipline: I was able to reach a new concept of sociology by sepa-
rating the forms of socialization from the content, i.e. the motives,
purposes and actualities, which are not social until they are seen as inter-
active processes between individuals; it was thus the treatment of these
types of interaction as the object of a pure sociology which I undertook in
my book (Gassen and Landmann, 1958:9).
The phrase by separating the forms of socialization from the content
(see above) has led to disastrous misunderstandings. The entire school of
formal sociology, which was founded by Leopold von Wiese, regarded
Simmel as a representative of formal sociology, purely on the basis of such
misinterpreted sentences. What Simmel wanted was not formalism but
the preparation of a new method. This is why he himself speaks of pure
sociology and not of formal sociology. The former is based on a new, higher
plane of abstraction, where the concrete, empirical becomes secondary
(e.g. company power, power within the Church, military power) and the
concept can be studied as a pure form of domination (in German:
Herrschaft).
Simmel does not want to adopt Diltheys program of freeing epistemol-
ogy from metaphysics. He is not disturbed or perplexed about the exis-
tence of improvable truth. He observes how he himself grows into a new
metaphysical position, as it were, as he works at the new discipline, sociol-
ogy: But from this sociological significance of the concept of interaction,
I gradually came to see it as a general, all-embracing metaphysical princi-
ple (ibid.). A scientific discipline which aims to serve does not lose any-
thing by subjecting itself to metaphysical principles: Our intellect can
only grasp the measure of reality as a limited form of pure concepts, which,
however much they diverge from reality, draw their legitimation from the
service they provide to the interpretation of reality (Simmel, 1907b: 150).
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 INDEX
Abstraction67, 73, 7577, 103, 106, 121,
124, 191
Alienation20, 65, 66, 95, 102, 105, 108,
109, 111, 112, 115, 118, 120, 122, 123, 133,
137, 169
American7, 18, 2123, 26, 76, 107, 142, 176
Pragmatism17, 2126, 2932, 142,
176, 177
Sociology7, 21, 32, 76
Autonomy36, 41, 56, 125, 126, 145, 181
Bourgeoisie96, 135
Christianity90, 91, 93, 94, 156, 182
Class17, 66, 74, 116, 123, 136, 137, 159, 162
Conflict96
Labor38, 135
Working66, 96, 123, 137
Classics19, 100
Comte, Auguste43, 44, 76, 152, 167,
170, 171
Confrontation2, 6, 37, 38, 41, 53, 76, 78, 87,
99, 108
Construction1, 8, 9, 11, 1418, 20, 24, 44, 57,
73, 74, 102, 114, 119, 126, 130, 137, 139142,
148, 153, 155, 160, 163, 172, 177, 181
Mental34, 36, 73
Of ideal types15, 20, 74, 142, 163
Of reality24, 106, 118
Critical3, 16, 39, 4143, 70, 103, 129, 132, 136,
152, 160, 171
Analysis41, 128
Nature of Simmel70, 103
Culture2, 6, 1519, 30, 36, 3840, 44,
4648, 5052, 54, 56, 6064, 67, 77, 90,
97, 101, 102, 105110, 118, 119, 121, 124, 125,
127, 128, 138, 141, 160, 178, 181, 182, 190
Darwin, Charles21, 23, 24, 27, 33, 43,
4547, 59, 60, 62, 63, 70, 81, 110,
178, 182
Descendency (theory of)45, 47
Dialectic44, 6467, 96
Dilthey, Wilhelm5, 47, 59, 63, 71,
76, 80, 142, 164, 166177, 182, 185,
189, 191
Durkheim, Emile43, 49, 71, 74, 89,
93, 103
Economic1, 15, 19, 36, 37, 49, 52, 6570,
7577, 80, 95, 102, 105108, 119122, 124,
131, 136138, 186
Activity52, 105, 106, 108, 112, 115, 116, 121
Objects102, 114, 117
Value113, 119
Economy3, 16, 19, 64, 6769, 96, 102, 105,
108, 113117, 121123, 125, 127, 128, 132,
136, 139
Evolution4, 5, 15, 22, 23, 27, 33, 36, 37, 39,
54, 67, 70, 81, 93, 97, 110, 111, 113115, 141,
172, 178
Cultural15, 46, 51
Social54, 60, 61, 98, 121
Fashion31, 49, 50, 54, 63, 117, 122, 129, 156
Feuerbach, Ludwig66, 67, 9395
Germany6, 25, 38, 43, 93, 135, 141, 156,
176, 181
German37, 45, 66, 71, 72, 76, 9395, 107,
122, 135, 154, 168, 170, 175, 176, 182, 191
Happiness51, 56, 64, 126, 127
Material goals56
Supreme126
Hegel, Friedrich23, 44, 45, 52, 6467, 69,
70, 93, 94, 117, 124, 184
Historical materialism12, 19, 20, 6770, 96,
129, 136, 151
History4, 7, 8, 11, 12, 27, 38, 40, 41, 4446,
59, 61, 63, 64, 6769, 7377, 80, 81, 90,
107, 109, 113, 114, 120, 121, 136, 137, 139, 141,
154, 161, 164, 178, 181, 182, 184, 186, 190
Historical change30, 189
Historicism76
Human formations98
Humanities1, 2, 47, 18, 33, 74, 75, 133, 136,
137, 141
vs natural sciences1, 5, 6, 136
Ideal types14, 15, 17, 20, 74, 140, 142, 145,
163, 177, 178
Individual1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 1113, 17, 28, 3033,
54, 56, 57, 6164, 66, 67, 70, 71, 8793, 95,
101, 105, 106, 110, 111, 115119, 144, 148, 150,
151, 156158, 164, 171, 182, 189191
Consciousness12
200 index
Individualism17, 30, 3741, 52, 56, 74,
80, 81, 92, 93, 103, 129, 138, 141, 166
Individualization30, 3639, 4850, 73,
74, 98
Interaction2, 10, 47, 50, 52, 53, 61, 65, 71,
73, 7679, 81, 8385, 8789, 91, 97, 99,
102, 103, 105, 106, 108, 111, 114, 116, 118,
120122, 124, 125, 127130, 132, 138, 158,
189191
Interpretation1, 2, 57, 11, 18, 19, 28, 4143,
58, 73, 8587, 112, 144, 146, 148, 153, 155,
158, 171, 172, 179191
Kant, Immanuel1, 2, 5, 19, 21, 23, 35, 36,
3941, 47, 56, 57, 64, 72, 82, 93, 117, 126,
138, 143, 160166, 178, 179, 184, 185,
187, 189
Liberalism41
Mannheim, Karl18, 100, 164
Marx, Karl19, 20, 4345, 52, 57, 6466, 67,
70, 76, 9397, 101, 102, 113, 117, 127, 131,
135139, 141, 151, 169, 176, 182
Mead, George Herbert8, 9, 17, 38, 44, 50,
107, 167, 172174, 181
Metaphysics14, 20, 59, 6769, 137, 146, 161,
165167, 172, 173, 175, 178, 191
Method2, 4, 5, 7, 11, 12, 26, 29, 32, 35, 44,
47, 48, 59, 62, 63, 68, 7077, 8082, 102,
103, 107109, 114, 115, 117, 123, 124, 136,
139141, 145, 146, 148, 149, 152, 156, 158,
159, 164, 166168, 170, 171, 174, 175, 177, 179,
180, 186, 187, 189191
Verstehen8, 14, 16, 17
Modernity20, 36, 39, 51
Metropolis3, 37
Modernism141
Money3, 16, 22, 26, 28, 29, 38, 52, 53, 60,
66, 69, 72, 102, 105108, 113, 115, 127,
128, 131
Philosophy of16, 22, 26, 29, 60, 102,
105108, 132, 139, 190
Value of118, 120, 137
Moral7, 22, 39, 44, 57, 58, 6062, 75, 90,
113, 143, 144, 166, 177, 186
Morality166
Native6, 18, 37, 51, 56, 58, 64, 65, 71, 80, 97,
99, 100, 103, 124, 135, 138, 158, 167
Newcomer97, 99
Objectivity5, 14, 27, 34, 79, 87, 115, 116, 117,
127, 128, 144, 145, 148, 177, 190
Park, Robert19, 44, 71, 72, 100, 102, 173,
174, 181
Plato10, 13, 1820, 24, 28, 33, 34, 40, 43, 61,
70, 119, 120, 143152, 155, 161, 163, 165, 166,
177179
Play15, 25, 35, 48, 63, 74, 75, 81, 99, 103, 106,
124, 140, 148, 149, 163, 164, 171, 175, 178, 185
Politics3, 123, 124, 144
Pragmatism17, 18, 2126, 2932, 36, 42,
136, 142, 144, 176, 177
Proletariat66, 96, 132, 135
Religion3, 4, 6, 19, 30, 36, 38, 48, 5355, 57,
63, 64, 69, 76, 81, 8493, 9597, 102, 121,
123, 124, 136, 138, 139, 146, 148, 149, 163,
172, 178, 183
Revolution30, 41, 44, 46, 52, 70, 96,
135, 168
French41, 46, 168
Revolutionary action44, 52
Science17, 15, 16, 21, 22, 38, 39, 44, 48, 58,
60, 6264, 6870, 7275, 77, 79, 80, 82,
97, 103, 133, 136, 139, 141, 148, 152, 158161,
163, 164, 166172, 178, 186, 189
Natural sciences1, 3, 5, 6, 63, 70, 77, 79,
80, 103, 136, 152, 158160, 166172
social6, 7, 13, 1519, 21, 29, 32, 35, 37, 43, 44,
60, 61, 64, 66, 67, 9698, 100103, 106, 116,
118, 120, 121, 141, 142, 148, 150, 152, 160, 161,
166, 171, 174176, 183, 185, 186, 189191
Constructed19, 21, 57, 83
Evolution54, 60, 61, 98, 121
Forms2, 3, 44, 50, 52, 84, 8991, 101, 102,
127, 128, 190
Life37, 43, 53, 84, 85, 87, 90
Reality17, 35, 43, 71, 77, 82, 88, 103, 124,
126, 141
Relationships39, 49, 128
Socialism41, 46, 56, 123, 124132, 137,
138, 176
Socialization13, 72, 76, 77, 8186, 111, 191
Structure44, 52, 71, 83, 130, 136
Sociology57, 10, 12, 1519, 21, 32, 35, 37,
43, 55, 57, 61, 63, 7182, 108, 112, 119, 125,
133, 135, 139, 143, 148, 151, 152, 160, 164, 167,
170, 171, 174, 178180, 190, 191
Of religion55, 69, 87, 93, 121, 183
Socrates30, 32, 34, 62, 70, 143, 144, 147, 149,
155, 177
Solidarity51, 76, 98, 99, 125, 128, 135
Spencer, Herbert43, 44, 49, 76, 170
Stranger18, 19, 83, 97, 99101, 103, 123
Style41, 50, 146, 148, 157, 158, 183, 185, 186
 index201

Truth4, 7, 8, 11, 12, 17, 2135, 64, 113, 118, 139, Measure of113
140, 144149, 153, 161, 165, 172, 177180, Objective112, 117
187, 190, 191 Ultimate59
Verstehen614, 16, 17, 139, 152, 171
Utopia4, 35, 99, 100, 132 Vitalism25

Value12, 24, 28, 29, 31, 33, 36, 39, 44, 54, 56,
5963, 83, 100, 122127, 129, 131, 132, 137,
138, 140, 165, 169, 171, 172, 177, 189, 190
Attributing61, 105, 108
Construction/creating of102, 114
Material120
Weber, Alfred101
Weber, Max57, 1417, 19, 20, 51, 52, 55, 56,
69, 74, 76, 89, 93, 103, 121, 132, 135, 137,
139142, 145, 163, 167, 176, 177, 181,
183, 186
Wechselwirkungen9, 171