No More Learning

? ? ,41 absolute rule over these others; from the demands of praxis, in contrast, it would be advisable to blend this rule with that of the masses; their quantitative superiority would have to work together with that of the qualitative. Beyond these intermediary thoughts, however, the highlighted difficul- ties of a 'rule of the best' can lead to a resignation to let equality in general serve as the practical control because it would introduce the lesser evil over against those disadvantages of--the logically solely justi- fied--aristocracy. Now since it would, however, be impossible to give expression with certainty and constancy to the subjective differences in objective relationships of domination, one is then supposed to discon- nect them generally from the determination of the social structure and thus regulate it as if they did not exist.
However, since the question of the greater or lesser evil in rule is to be decided only according to personal evaluation, the same pessimis- tic attitude can lead to the exact opposite conviction: that overall--in large as well as in small spheres--it has to be better to be governed by unqualified persons than none at all, that the social group must accept the form of domination and subordination more from internal and objective necessity, so that it is, then, only a fortunate accident if the objectively necessary, preformed position is occupied by the subjectively adequate individual. This formal tendency comes from quite primitive experiences and necessities. First of all, from the form of rule represent- ing or creating a bond: less accommodating times, without a multiplicity of forms of interaction available, often have no other means to bring about the formal solidarity of the whole than to subordinate individu- als not directly bound to it under its already associated members. At the time in Germany when the earliest constitution with personal and property equality in the community had ended, landless people lacked the active rights of freedom--if they did not want to remain without any bond to the commonwealth, they had to attach themselves to a master in order to participate indirectly as a protected member in the
41 Greek: ? ? ? ? ? (arete), virtue, goodness--ed.
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? public corporations. The totality had an interest in their doing this because it could tolerate no unconnected people in its realm, and for that reason Anglo-Saxon law made the landless explicitly responsible to 'be under a lord. ' Likewise in medieval England the interest of the community required that aliens place themselves under the protection of a lord. One belonged to a group when one possessed a parcel of one's own land; whoever lacked this and yet wanted to belong to it, they had to belong to someone who was bound to it in that primary manner. The general importance of leading personalities, with a rela- tive indifference to their corresponding personal qualifications, likewise appeared formally in some early manifestations of the principle of elec- tion. Elections to the medieval English Parliament, for example, appear to have been managed with astonishing negligence and indifference: based only on the borough designating a member to parliament; it appears that the designee was accepted whoever it was, thereby reduc- ing its importance--which was manifested no less in the indifference towards the qualification of the electorate frequently conspicuous in the Middle Ages. Whoever is simply present takes part in voting; no value appears to have been placed on legitimation or on a definite number of votes. Apparently this disregard for the electoral body is simply the expression of the disregard for the quality of the personnel resulting from the election. Quite generally the conviction of the necessity of coercion ultimately works in the same way; human nature simply needs it in order not to degenerate fully into purposeless and formless activity. It is completely the same with respect to the general character of this postulate whether subordination happens under one person and that person's arbitrary will or under a law: certain extreme cases excepted, in which the value of subordination as form over the nonsense of its content can no longer become master, it is only of secondary interest whether the law with regard to content is something better or worse, just so long as it acts with the nature of a ruling personality. Here one could point to the advantages of hereditary despotism--thus to a certain degree independent of the qualities of the person--especially where it is a matter of the integrative, political and cultural life of large territories, and where it is ahead of the free federation, which is similar to the prerogatives of marriage over free love. No one can deny that the force of law and custom holds countless marriages together, which morally speaking would have to come apart: persons are here subject to a law that does not suit their case. In others, however, the same coercion, although presently and subjectively felt as severe, is of irreplaceable
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? worth because it holds together those who morally speaking should remain together, but who, in some kind of a momentary disgruntle- ment, bad temper or feeling of vacillation, would separate if only they could, and would thereby irreparably impoverish or destroy their life. The marriage law may be good or bad with regard to its content for the respective applicable case or not: the simple force of remaining together that results from it develops an individual value of a eudaemonistic and ethical kind--outside of that of social functionality--which, from the pessimistically biased perspective here presumed, would not in general be realized upon the discontinuation of that coercion. Already each one's consciousness of being compulsorily bound to the other may make the solidarity utterly unbearable; in others, however, it will bring with it docility, self-control, cultivation of the spirit such that, at any possible time of breaking off, no one would feel moved to do so but rather feel drawn only by the wish to configure the current inescapable totality of existence so that it is as bearable as possible. The consciousness of standing under bondage in general, of being subjugated to a domi- nant authority--be it an ideal or social law, a voluntarily associating personality or a steward of higher norms--this consciousness is, as the case may be, revolting or crushing; probably, however, for the majority of people it is an irreplaceable foothold for the inner and outer life of our souls that seems--in the unavoidable symbolic expression of all psychology--to dwell on two levels: one deep, hardly or not at all flex- ible that bears the real meaning or substance of our being, while the other consists of currently dominant impulses and isolated excitements. The second would still, as is actually the case, more often carry the day against the first and allow the former no fissure through which the pressing and rapid shedding of its elements could come to the surface, unless the feeling of coercion, whatever the source, did not dam up its current, put the brakes on its vacillations and capriciousness, and thereby perpetually provide space and compensation to the persisting undercurrent. Compared to this functional significance of constraint as such, its particular content is of secondary importance. The mean- ingless may be redeemed by the meaningful, but even this now has its questionable meaning simply in that that it teams up with the former; indeed, not only the suffering from the force, but also the opposition against it, against the unjustified as against the justified, exercises this function of repression and interruption on the rhythm of the surface of our life, whereby then the deeper currents of the most private and substantial life, impervious to external repression, reach consciousness
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? and effectiveness. Now insofar as the force is identical with some sort of dominance, this combination shows the member-element in it that its individuality in governance is to some extent indifferent to the quality and law of domination, and that reveals the deeper sense of a claim of authority par excellence.
Indeed, it is in principle impossible that personal qualification and social position in the ranks of domination and subordination would thoroughly and completely correspond, no matter what organization one may propose for this purpose, and certainly based on the fact that there are always more people who are qualified for superior positions than it provides superior positions. Out of the typical workers of a factory there are certainly a great many who could likewise be just as good foremen or employers; of the common soldiers a great many who would fully possess the aptitude of an officer; of the millions of subjects of a ruler without doubt a great number who would likewise be good or better rulers. The divine right of kings is just the expres- sion of subjective quality not being decisive, but rather some other exalted authority, above human scale. Thus the breach between those who have attained a leading position and those who have the ability for it must not be roughly assessed very much lest it yield contrariwise many persons in dominant positions who are not qualified for them. For this type of incongruity between person and position appears more important than it is in reality. For one thing the incompetence inside a position from which others are led emerges especially glaringly, for obvious reasons, proving more difficult to conceal than a great many other human deficiencies--and certainly especially because just as many others, frankly qualified for the position, but subordinate, are standing right there. Furthermore this unsuitability in many cases does not at all come from individual defects, but from contradictory demands of the office, the immediate consequence of which is nevertheless easily imputed to the occupant of the office as subjective culpability. The modern 'national government,' for example, has in theory an infal- libility that is the expression of its--in principle--absolute objectiv- ity. Of course, measured by this fanciful infallibility, its real carriers frequently appear deficient. In reality the purely individual shortcom- ings of leading personalities are relative rare. Given the absurd and uncontrollable accidents by which people in all areas accede to their positions, it would thus be an incomprehensible wonder that an even greater amount of incompetence does not appear in filling them if one were not compelled to accept the fact that the latent qualifications for
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? the positions are very widely available. It rests on the assumption that republican constitutions upon the creation of their offices ask only for negative instances, that is, whether the aspirants hade made themselves undeserving of the office by some other kind of activity--whenever in Athens, for example, appointment was made by lot, it was simply examined whether the selected treated his parents well, his taxes were paid, etc. --thus only whether something against him was provided, so it was assumed that a priori everyone would be worthy. This is the deep insight of the proverb: "To whomever God gives a task, he also gives understanding for it. " Since the 'understanding' needed for filling the higher positions also exists in many people, evidently it does not reveal itself until someone, however selected, accepts the position. This incommensurability between the quantum of skills for ruling and that of their actualization is explained perhaps by the difference between the character of the person as a social entity and as an individual. The group as such is basic and in need of leadership; the characteristics that it displays as quintessentially common are simply those handed down, thus more primitive and undifferentiated, or easily suggestible, thus 'inferior. ' But in general as soon as a group formation of greater mass occurs, it is advisable that the whole mass be organized in the form of subordination under a few. That does not, however, appar- ently prevent every individual in this mass from supposedly possessing higher and finer characteristics. Only, these are of an individual sort, visible from a different perspective that does not arise from the common property and for that reason not helping improve the base level at which all are seen with certainty. It follows from this relationship that, from one angle, the group as a whole is in need of a leader, and it can thus offer many subordinates and only few dominant; from the other angle, however, every individual in that group is more highly qualified as group element then and thus as a subordinate.
The corporate principle and the current order come to terms with this built-in contradiction of all social formations between the fair demand for superior position and the technical impossibility of satisfying it, in that they construct classes into a pyramidal shape with an ever smaller number of members over others and thereby restrict a priori the number of the 'qualified' for the leading positions. This selection is not directed towards the available individuals, but, just the opposite, it predetermines them. From an abundance of look-alikes one cannot bring anyone into the earned position. For that reason these arrangements could serve as the attempt, contrary to the viewpoint of filling the position from the
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? individuals, to breed them for it. Instead of the slowness with which this can operate by way of heredity and of preparatory education, emergency procedures, so to speak, are also deployed that lift up the personalities to the capacity of leadership and governance, regardless of their previously existing quality, through authoritative or mystical rules. For the paternalistic state of the 17th and 18th centuries the subject was not capable of any kind of participation in public affairs; with regard to politics one remained forever in need of leadership. In the moment, however, in which someone occupies a public office, one receives at a stroke the superior insights and public spirit that makes one capable of piloting the totality--as though by civil service one would rise as by generatio aequivoca from being a minor not only to maturity, but to leadership, with all the necessary qualities of intellect and character. 42 The tension between the a priori lack of qualification of one for a determined superiority and the absolute qualification that one gains a posteriori through the influence a higher authority reaches its maximum inside the Catholic priesthood. Here no family tradition, no functional education plays any part from childhood on; indeed the per- sonal quality of the candidate is in principle unimportant over against the spirit existing in mystical objectivity, with which ordination to the priesthood endows one. The superior merit is not conferred on him just because he is by nature predetermined for it (whether or not this can contribute naturally and establish a certain differentiation among the authorized), also not by chance, whether he has from the beginning been an appointed or not appointed--but the consecration accomplishes it, because it conveys the Spirit, the unique qualification for the accom- plishment to which the Spirit calls. That God gives to one, whom he gives an office, also the understanding for it--here this principle is most radically realized, from both its sides (that of former ineligibility and of that afterwards), through the 'office'-created eligibility.
? 42 Latin: generatio aequivoca, spontaneous generation--ed.
CHAPTER FOUR CONFLICT
That conflict is of sociological significance, in that it engenders or modifies communities of interest, solidarity, and organization, is never disputed in principle. In conventional opinion, however, the question must seem paradoxical whether or not conflict comprises a form of association irrespective of its consequences or concomitants. At first this appears as a merely semantic issue. If every pattern of interac- tion among people is an association, conflict too, which is certainly one of the liveliest patterns of interaction, one that is logically impos- sible to limit to a single participant, by all means counts as a form of association. In fact, the actually dissociating activities are the origins of conflict--hate and envy, need and desire. A conflict breaks out only based on them; thus it is actually a curative move against the dualism leading towards division, and a way to work out some kind of unity, even if by annihilating one party--somewhat like the most acute phe- nomena of illness often displayed in the exertions of the organism to free itself from disturbances and harms. This is not in any way what the commonplace saying, "Si vis pacem para bellum,"1 indicates, but in general this special case branches off from that. Conflict itself is only the resolution of the tension between opponents; that it ends in peace is only a single especially obvious expression of its being a synthesis of elements, an opposed-to-one-another that belongs with the for- one-another under one higher concept. This concept is marked by the common opposition of both forms of relationship in contrast to the mere mutual indifference between elements; the rejection as well as the dissolution of association are also negations, but it is precisely in this difference that conflict in contrast identifies the positive moment that is interwoven with its negating character in a unity that is only apparently but not actually breaking up.
From the viewpoint of the sociologically affirmative nature of conflict all social constructs undergo a characteristic ordering. Notably appearing
1 Latin: If you want peace, prepare for war--ed.
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? immediately is that, when the relationships of people with one another-- in contrast to what each is with oneself and in relationship to objects-- comprise the matter of a particular observation, the traditional objects of sociology comprise only one subdivision of this expansive science defined really by one principle. It appeared as though there were only two standard objects of the science of humanity: the entity of the individual and the entity from individuals, the society, as though a third were logically excluded. Then conflict as such finds no place where it could be studied apart from the contributions that it makes to the forms of immediate unity in society. It is a sui generic fact, and its classification under the concept of unity would be both forced and futile because it means, in fact, the negation of unity. Now, however, it appears as a comprehensive classification in the theory of the relationships of those people who make up a unity, thus distinguishing the socially supportive in the narrower sense from others that work against unity. But now it is to be kept in mind that every actual historical relationship tends to share in both categories. However, just as the individuals do not achieve simply the unification of their personalities, harmonizing their contents completely according to logical or objective, religious or ethical norms, but just as opposition and strife precedes not only such unity, but are functioning in it in every moment of their lives--so there could not be any kind of social unity in which the converging directions of ele- ments would not be permeated inextricably by the diverging ones. A group that would be the quintessentially centripetal and harmonious pure 'union' is not only empirically unreal but would also manifest no real life process; the society of saints that Dante saw in the Rose of Paradise may behave that way, but it is spared any change and develop- ment, while the sacred gathering of church fathers in Raphael's Disputa is already represented, if not as an actual conflict, still as a consider- able difference of moods and directions of thought from which all the enthusiasm and real organic coalescence of the gathering flows. As the cosmos needs 'love and hate,' attractive and repulsive forces, in order to have a form, so society also needs some quantitative ratio of harmony and disharmony, association and competition, good will and ill will, in order to arrive at a specific formation. But these divisions are not at all merely sociological liabilities, negative proceedings, so that the defini- tive, real society would come about only through other positive social powers, and for sure always only so far as they do not hinder it. This commonplace view is quite superficial; society as it exists is the result
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? of both categories of interaction, which appear completely positive with respect to both. 2
The misunderstanding, that as the one tears down what the other builds up, and as what is finally left over is the result of a subtrac- tion of it (while in reality it is better identified as that of addition of it)--this misunderstanding likely originates from the double meaning of the concept of unity. We designate as unity the consensus and the combination of social elements, in contrast to their divisions, dissocia- tions, disharmonies; a unity, however, also means to us the complete synthesis of persons, energies, and forms into a group, the final total- ity of it, in which the integrative, in the stricter sense, as well as the dualistic relationships are included. So we are led back to the group formation that we sense as 'integrative,' with respect to those of its
2 This is generally the sociological case of an opposition in views of life. In the usual view, two parties of life stand everywhere opposed to one another, one of which sustains the positives, the actual content or even substance of life itself, the other, however, in its meaning is non-being, of which, following its negation, then, the positivities con- struct authentic life; thus joy and sorrow, virtue and burdens, strengths and deficiency, successes and failures act out the given contents and breaks in the process of life. A different one appearss to me, however, as the highest concept that is indicated vis-a`- vis these opposing pairs: all these polar differentiations are to be grasped as one life, even in what is not supposed to be from a single ideal and is merely a negative, not supposed to feel the pulse beat of a central vitality or to awaken the whole meaning of our existence from both parties; also that which appears as isolated, disturbing and destructive in the all-encompassing context of life, is necessarily positive, not a void, but the fulfillment of a role reserved for it alone. Now there may be a height--away from everything that at the objective level and in the scale of values is encountered by all as a plus and minus, as in opposition to one another, confronting one another mutually incompatibly--by which it is nevertheless felt as an intertwined unitary life. To reach this height or to continuously grasp it may be denied to us; too gladly we think of and sense our essential being, which we actually and ultimately mean, as identical with one of these positions; depending on our optimistic or pessimistic sense of life, the other appears to us as superficial, accident, something to be eliminated or removed, so that the true life united in itself would rise. We are everywhere implicated in this dualism--which the text will presently explain further--from the narrowest to the most extensive provinces of life, personal, factual, or social: we have or are a totality or unity that separates into two logically and factually contrary factors, and we then identify our totality with one of these factions and experience the other as something foreign, not actually something proper to us, and negating our central and full being. Life stirs continually between this tendency and the other--the tendency that also allows the whole actually to be the whole, that the unity that still concerns both objects separately also actually stimulates life in each of the two and in their combination. The right of the latter tendency, however, to lay claim to the sociological phenomenon of conflict is all the more called for as strife puts forth its socially destroying power as an apparently indisputable fact.
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? functional components that apply as specifically integrative--therefore with the exclusion of the other wider additional meaning of the word. Contributing to this imprecision is the corresponding ambiguity of the division or opposition from the other side. While this displays its negating or more destructive meaning among the individual elements, it is naively concluded that it would have to function in the same manner for the relationship of the whole. In reality, however, what between individuals is considered as a negative thing from a particular angle and in isolation, something detrimental, need not likewise function in any such way inside the totality of the relationship, for there is here--as perhaps the competition of individuals within an economy shows most simply--along with others, a whole new picture of interactive patterns unaffected by the conflict in which the negative and dualistic plays its rather positive role, apart from what was perhaps destructive in indi- vidual relationships.
These more complicated cases exhibit here two rather contradictory types. First the superficially close, infinitely many life relationships of inclusive commonality, such as marriage. Not only for marriages gone unequivocally awry but also for such that have found a tolerable or at least bearable modus vivendi--a certain measure of disagreements, inter- nal differences, and outward controversies that, after all and in spite of everything, preserves the bond, is in general organically bound to, and not to be separated from, the unity of the sociological formation. Such marriages are in no way less of a marriage for having conflict in them; rather they have developed as these definitively characteristic totalities from just such elements, to which this quota of strife irreducibly belongs. On the other hand, the thoroughly positive and integrating role of antagonism emerges in cases where the structure is characterized by the clarity and carefully preserved purity of social divisions and strata. Thus the Indian social system is not only based on the hierarchy of castes but also directly on their mutual revulsion. Animosities keep not only the boundaries within the group from gradually blurring--so that they can be consciously cultivated as guarantees of existing arrange- ments--but they are moreover also directly sociologically productive: they often give classes and personalities their initial reciprocal relation, which they would not have discovered or not in that way if by chance the objective causes of the animosity had indeed existed but unaccom- panied by the feeling and the expressions of animosity. It would in no way always result in a richer and fuller community life if the repelling and, viewed individually, even destructive energies within it were to
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? disappear--as when a more extensive fortune results when its liabilities cease to exist--but rather in a picture changed just as much and often just as unrealizable as after a cessation of the forces of cooperation and affection, helpfulness and harmony of interests. This holds not only on a large-scale for competition, which determines, purely as a formal relationship of tension and quite apart from its objective consequences, the state of opposition and distance of the elements, but also wherever the association depends on the spirit of the individual souls. Thus, for example, the opposition of an element against someone with whom one is already in a social relationship is therefore not merely a negative social factor because it is frequently the only means whereby it becomes even possible for us to be in association with actually unendurable personalities. If we did not have the power and right at least to offer opposition to tyranny and obstinacy, capriciousness and tactlessness, we would not put up at all with relationships to people from whose character we suffer such things; rather we would be pushed to steps of such desperation that would for sure dissolve the relationship, although they are not exactly 'conflict. ' And indeed not only on account of the fact--while not essential here--that oppressions3 tend to increase if one surrenders to them quietly and without protest; but opposition grants us an inner satisfaction, diversion, relief--just as it gives humility and patience under other psychological circumstances. Our opposition gives us the feeling of not being completely oppressed in the relationship; it allows our power to prove itself consciously and thus initially lends a liveliness and interactive ability to relationships from which we would have withdrawn at all costs without this corrective.
In fact it not only achieves this when it does not come with notice- able results but also when it does not come to light from the outset at all, when it remains purely internal; even where in practice it is hardly expressed, it can produce inner balance--sometimes even for both sides of the relationship--a calm and an ideal sense of power, and thereby save the relationship whose continuation is often inconceivable to out- siders. Opposition is, then, an aspect of relationship itself; it is tied to the same rights by the other bases of the existence of the relationship; it is not only a means of preserving the relationship as a whole, but one
3 'Oppressions' translates Bedru? ckungen, which could also be translated 'depres- sions'--not entirely unreasonable in this context; maybe Simmel even intended the double entendre--ed.
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? of the concrete functions in which this relationship in reality consists. Where the relationships are purely superficial and thus not of practical consequence, the latent form of conflict provides this service: aversion, the feeling of a mutual alienation and repulsion that at the moment of close contact, brought about in some way, would immediately erupt into explicit hate and conflict. Without this aversion, urban life, which brings everyone daily into contact with countless others, would not have any kind of imaginable form. The whole internal organization of such interaction is based on an extremely intricate gradation of sympathy, indifference, and aversion of the most momentary as well as enduring kind. The sphere of indifference is thereby relatively small; the activity of our souls, though, responds to almost every impression of another person with some kind of specific feeling, whose subconsciousness, fleetingness, and motion only appear to neutralize it in indifference. Actually this latter would be as unnatural to us as the vagueness of random reciprocal suggestion is unbearable, and antipathy, the harbinger of active antagonism, protects us before both of these typical threats of the metropolis; it secures the distances and avoidances without which this type of life could not be led at all: its measure and its ingredients, the rhythm of its emergence and disappearance, the forms in which it is fulfilled--this forms an indivisible whole from the configuration of urban life, with the motives that are unifying in the narrower sense; what appears intuitively in this as dissociation is in reality thus only one of its elementary forms of being a society.
If therefore the conflictual relationships do not also produce a social structure by themselves but always only in correlation with unifying energies, so that only both together constitute the concrete entity of group life--so the former are hardly distinguished in this respect from the other social forms that sociology infers from the diversity of actual existence. Neither love nor the division of labor, neither common conduct towards a third nor friendship, neither party membership nor domination and subordination needs bring into being or maintain dictatorially a historic unification, and where this is however the case, the process thusly characterized by that already contains a plurality of distinct forms of relationship; it is then simply the essence of human spirits not to allow themselves to be bound together by one thread, in the same way that scientific analysis does not stop with the elementary unities in their specific bonding strength. Indeed, perhaps this whole analysis, still in an objectifying and apparent reciprocal meaning, is a mere subjective act: perhaps the bonds between the individual elements
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? are indeed frequently rather uniform, but that unity is not within the grasp of our understanding--it is precisely by the richest and substan- tively most complex living relationships that this mystical unity becomes most strongly conscious to us--and it simply remains then to present them as the functional combination of a plurality of binding energies. These are limited and reciprocally modified until the picture comes into relief that objective reality arrived at in a much simpler and unified way but one resistant to articulation through understanding. However, the procedures play out in the individual soul as well. In every moment these processes are of so complex a kind, harboring such an abundance of manifold or contradictory vicissitudes, that identifying them with one of our psychological concepts is always incomplete and actually falsifying: even the life moments of the individual soul are never connected by just one thread. Nevertheless, even this one picture is that which analytical thinking goes about creating from the inaccessible unity of the soul. Certainly there is much that we have to conceive of as in themselves fully unitary--as a blend of emotions, as a compound of multiple drives, as a competition of conflicting feelings; however, the calculations of understanding lack a schema for this unity, and so it must construct it as a resultant of multiple elements. When we are simultaneously attracted to and repelled by things, when noble and base characteristics appear to be blended in an activity, when the feeling for someone is made up of respect and friendship, or from paternal or maternal and erotic impulses, or from ethical and aesthetic values--then these are certainly frequently in themselves fully unitary as actual mental processes, but we can describe them only indirectly and therefore render them into a concert of manifold mental elements with various analogies, prior motives, or external consequences. If this is correct, then compound relationships between several souls must in many cases also be essentially unitive. The distance that characterizes the relationship between two associated people, for example, often appears to us as the result of an affection that would have had to produce a much greater closeness, and of an animosity that would have had to actually drive them completely apart; while each is delimiting the other, that objective measure of dis- tance simply seems to emerge. This can, however, be quite incorrect; the relationship is from the inside invested in this distance; it has, so to speak, from the very beginning a certain temperature that does not at first come about as a balance of an actually warmer and an actu- ally cooler condition. The measure of superiority and influence that is created between two persons is often interpreted by us as produced
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? through the strength of the one party which intersects, though, with a respective weakness in the other; this strength and weakness may be present, but their duality is frequently often not at all evident in the relationship as it functions, but is determined rather by the combined nature of the elements, and we break down its immediate character into those factors only after the fact. Erotic relationships offer the most frequent example. As they often appear to us woven out of love and respect, or also contempt; from love and felt harmony of natures and synchronistic consciousness to the completion of one another through opposition; from love and imperiousness or the need for dependence. What the observer or even the subject itself interprets as two combining streams is in reality often only one of them. In the relationship, as it exists after all, the whole personality of one affects that of the other, and its reality is independent of the consideration that, if this relationship had simply not existed, the personalities would themselves then infuse at least respect or fondness or the opposite of that. Countless times we describe that sort of thing as emotionally mixed or proportionately blended because we construe the outcomes that the qualities of the one party would exercise on the other, as if they operated in isolation--which they simply do not do; seen quite apart from the fact here that the mix of feelings and relationships themselves, where spoken of with greater justification, remains always a problematic expression that translates a spatially vivid event with unrestricted symbolism into fully heterogeneous mental relationships.
So it must also often occur with the so-called mix of converging and diverging currents in a community. Then either the relationship is from the very beginning sui generis, i. e. its motivation and form are in themselves entirely unitary and accordingly we compose it from a monistic and an antagonistic current only in order to be able to describe it and arrange it. Or each of them is definitely present from the very beginning, but, as it were, before the relationship came to be; in it they have developed into an organic unity in which either of them is not made noticeable at all with its specific energy; of course, related to that and not to be overlooked is the enormous number of relationships in which the parts of relationships in opposition continue to run objec- tively and separately next to one another and can in any given moment be distinguished from the total context. It is a peculiar nuance of the historical development of relationships that they sometimes manifest at an early stage an undifferentiated unity of converging and diverging tendencies that only later unfolds into a complete differentiation. Still
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? in the thirteenth century permanent assemblies of nobles are found in the courts of central Europe which are a kind of council to the prince, live as his guests, and at the same time are a semi-permanent repre- sentation of the aristocracy, who also saw to their interests, however, against those of the prince. The community of interests with the king, whose administration they occasionally served, and the oppositional protection of their own collective rights existed in these structures not only inseparably side by side but inside one another; the position was surely experienced as unifying just as its elements appear to us as incompatible. In England around this time the parliament of barons was still hardly distinguishable from an augmented council of the king. Factionalism and critical or partisan enmity are here still resolved in an embryonic unity. As long as it is in general initially a matter of the fashioning of institutions that have to solve the ever multifaceted and complex problem of the inner balance of the group, as long as it will be frequently uncertain whether its effective combination shall work for the benefit of the whole in the form of opposition, competi- tion, and criticism, or in that of unmediated unity and harmony--an original state of indifference will exist that appears logically inconsistent from the later complications but which necessarily corresponds to the organization's undeveloped state. The subjective personal relationships often develop in an oppositional direction because the sharpness of factionalism or hostility in early cultural epochs tends to be relatively acute. Half- and undetermined relationships among people, taking root in a semi-consciousness of feelings, the final word of which can be hate just as well as love, which, indeed, betrays its indifference sometimes in a pendulum between both--such relationships are as native to mature and more-than-mature times as to youthful ones.
As little as antagonism by itself amounts to making a society, so little does it--borderline cases aside--tend to be absent as a socio- logical factor in processes of making one, and its role can increase in perpetuity, that is, up to the displacement of all forces of unity. Thus the resulting scale of relationships is also constructed from ethical cat- egories, although these latter are in general not suitable indicators for uncovering incidentally and thoroughly what is sociological among the phenomena. The value sensations with which we attend the acts of will of individuals produce series that have a purely random relationship to the selecting of their forms of relationship in accord with objective conceptual viewpoints. One would rob ethics of its deepest and finest content as soon as one represented it as a kind of sociology: the activity
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? of the soul in and toward itself, which does not enter into its external relationships at all; its religious movements, which serve only its own redemption or ruin; its dedication to the objective value of knowledge, beauty, the significance of things, which stand beyond any bond with other humans. The blend of harmonious and hostile relationships, however, has sociological and ethical levels overlapping from the outset. It begins here with the action of A for the benefit of B, proceeds to A's own benefit by means of B, without using B, but also without harm- ing B, and finally leads to egoistic action at the expense of B. While this is now reciprocated on the part of B, though almost never in the exact same way and to the same degree, the unavoidable mixing of convergence and divergence originates in human relationships.
Admittedly, there are conflicts that seem to exclude any other dynamic: e. g. that between the robber or rowdy and a victim. If such a conflict leads to utter destruction, then it borders without question on treach- erous murder, in which the admixture of unifying factors equaled zero; as soon as any kind of protection against that exists, some limit to violent action, there is indeed a force for making a sociely, even if only as restraint. Kant claimed that every war in which the parties imposed no such restraint in the use of possible means has to have become a war of extermination, especially on psychological grounds. Since wherever one would not at least abstain from assassination, breach of promise, and incitement to betrayal, one destroys the very trust in the enemy's way of thinking that makes a peaceful conclusion at all possible. Almost inevitably some element of common ground weaves itself into the hostilities, where the state of open violence has given way to some other kind of relationship that perhaps manifests a completely undiminished sum of hostility between the parties. When the Lombards had conquered Italy in the sixth century, they imposed a tribute of one third of the harvest on their subjects, and so every single victor was in fact dependent on the levy of particular individu- als. With the type here described the hatred of the conquered towards their oppressors may be especially strong, indeed, perhaps yet stronger, than during the fight itself, and may be reciprocated by the latter no less intensively--be it, because the hatred towards them who hate us is an instinctive preventive measure, be it, because, as is generally known, we tend to hate them whom we have injured. Nevertheless, now there exists in the relationship a community, precisely that which the enmity produced, which required participation of the Lombards in the affairs of the indigenous people, which was at the same time an
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? undeniable parallel of interests. In that at this point divergence and harmony became inextricably intertwined, the content of the former actually developed as the germ of future community. This form type was realized most broadly in the enslavement--in lieu of killing--of captured enemies. Of course, in this slavery myriad times there is the marginal case of absolute internal animosity, the occasion of which, however, effects precisely a sociological relationship and thereby often enough its own mitigation. The intensification of opposition can be thus directly provoked for the sake of its own reduction, in fact not at all only as an extreme measure, in the confidence that the antagonism would end beyond some level in exhaustion or in an understanding of its folly; but also in that occasionally princes serve as leaders of the opposition in monarchies, as, for example, Gustav Vasa did. 4 Opposition is definitely thereby intensified; this new emphasis brings its elements to what would have otherwise been kept far away from them; but at the same time precisely for that reason it is kept within certain limits. While the government strengthens the opposition seemingly deliberately, it takes the sting out of it precisely through this accommodation.
Another marginal case appears to occur when conflict is occasioned exclusively through the desire to fight.
As soon as an object ignites it, a desire to have or to dominate, rage or revenge, not only do conditions arise from the object or the materializing situation that subordinate the fight to common norms or mutual restrictions, but where an ultimate goal in question is situated externally, it will be colored by the fact that any goal is in principle achievable through various means. Desire for a possession as well as for domination, indeed for the annihilation of an enemy, can be satisfied as much by alternative maneuvers and occurrences as by conflict. Where conflict is simply a specific means toward a terminus ad quem,5 no reason exists for not limiting or refrain- ing from it where it can be replaced by other means with the same results. But where it is determined exclusively by the subjective terminus a quo,6 where inner energies exist that can be satisfied only by conflict as such--in that case substituting something else for it is impossible, because it is its own purpose and content and thus completely free
4 Gustav Vasa (ca. 1496-1560), son of a Swedish senator, led a rebellion against King Christian II of Denmark and thereby established the Kingdom of Sweden and his own dynasty--ed.
5 Latin: point of arrival--ed.
6 Latin: point of departure--ed.
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? of any supplementation by other forms. Such a conflict for the sake of conflict seems to suggest a certain impulse of formal hostility that sometimes necessitates psychological observation and about whose vari- ous forms it is now time to speak.
The skeptical moralists speak of a natural hostility among human beings, for whom homo homini lupus est,7 and "in the misfortune of our best friends is something that does not completely displease us. "8 But the completely opposite moral-philosophical attitude, which derives moral selflessness from the transcendental foundations of our nature, is not thereby all that very far removed from that pessimism, for it nevertheless concedes that devotion to the 'Thou' is not found in the experience and calculability of our drives. Empirically, rationally, the human being is accordingly plainly egoist, and every twist of this natural reality can no longer occur through nature itself but only through the deus ex machina of a metaphysical being inside us. So a naturally occurring opposition seems to present itself as a form or foundation of human relationships, standing at least alongside the other, sympathy between human beings. The peculiarly strong interest that people tend to take, for example, precisely in the suffering of the other is only explained by a blend of both motivations. The not infrequent 'spirit of opposition' points to the antipathy that is a part of our being, which in no way resides only in those for whom nay-saying is a matter of principle, such as those who are the exasperation of their environment, in friend as well as in family circles, in committees as well as among the theater public; it is likewise in no way the most characteristic triumph of the political realm, in the persons of opposition whose classical type Macaulay describes in Robert Ferguson: "His hostility was not to Popery or to Protestantism, to monarchical government or to republican government, to the house of Stuarts or to the house of Nassau, but to whatever was at the time
7 Latin, translated loosely: "People are like wolves toward one another. " Simmel actually mixes Latin and German: ". . . fu? r die homo homini lupus ist. . . "--ed.
8 Simmel does not cite his sources here. The Latin quotation is apparently originally from the play Asinaria by Plautus [Eugene Ehrlich, Amo, Amas, Amat and More, N. Y. : Harper & Row, 1985), p. 144]. The latter quotation is apparently from Franc? ois Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680), in an early edition of Reflexions ou Sentences et Maximes Morales (editions were published, starting in 1665). See Rodney Ohebsion, "A Collection of Wisdom: Francois duc de La Rochefoucauld," in Immediex Publishing, <http://www . immediex. com/rochefoucauld. html> [accessed 2 May 2007]--ed.
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? established. "9 All such cases that one considers types of 'pure opposi- tion' need not, for all that, be this; because such opponents tend to offer themselves as defenders of threatened rights, as advocates for the just, chivalrous protectors of the minority as such. Much less distinctive occurrences seem to me to betray an abstract oppositional drive more clearly: the quiet, often hardly conscious, frequently immediately fleet- ing impulse to negate a claim or demand, especially when it confronts us in categorical form. Even in thoroughly harmonious relationships among many thoroughly tractable natures, this instinct for opposition arises with the unavoidability of a reflex movement and blends into the overall performance, though without notable consequence. And if one wanted to identify this as really something of a protective instinct--in the way that many animals automatically extend their defense or attack mechanisms at a mere touch--this would then directly manifest the primary, fundamental character of opposition; what is meant is that the personality, where it itself is hardly affected but is faced purely with objective expressions of another, can do nothing else but assert through opposition that the first instinct with which it affirms itself is the negation of the other.
Above all, it seems impossible to relinquish an a priori conflict instinct if the incredibly petty, even silly causes of the most serious conflicts are considered. An English historian tells that not long ago throughout the country two Irish parties had fought furiously, whose hostility is sup- posed to have arisen from a dispute over the color of a cow. In India for decades dangerous insurgencies occurred as a result of the feud between two parties who knew nothing about one another except that they were the party of the right and left hand. And this pettiness of the origins of dispute emerges only, as it were, at the other end, so that the dispute also often flows into similarly childish phenomena. Moslems and Hindus live in India in continuous latent enmity, and they indicate this by the Moslems buttoning their outer garment on the right, the Hindus on the left, by their sitting in rows in the circle at common meals so that the poor Moslems use a side of a certain leaf as a plate and the poor Hindus the other. In human enmities, cause and effect stand so often apart from context and reasonable proportion that one
9 The source: Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England From the Accession of James II--ed.
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? cannot correctly ascertain whether the purported object of the dispute is really the occasion for it or only an offshoot of an already existing antagonism; leastwise the impenetrability of some kind of a rational foundation for the contest leads us into suspicion vis-a`-vis such specific instances of struggle as those between the Roman and Greek race-track factions, the partisans of ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? and ? o? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ,10 the War of the Roses (red and white roses), the Guelfs and the Ghibellines. In general one has the impression that human beings would no more love one another on account of such trifles and trivialities than hate.
Finally, the often eerily faint suggestion of a hostile disposition seems to me to point to a primordial need for animosity. The average person in general finds it much more difficult to inspire in another any kind of confidence and affection for a third person, until then a neutral, than mistrust and antipathy. Particularly noteworthy here it appears that this difference is relatively glaring especially where it is a matter of a slight degree on the part of both, the elementary beginnings of the disposition and of the prejudice for or against someone; then at a higher degree leading to action, it is no longer this inclination, fleeting but revelatory of a basic instinct, that adjudicates, but more conscious considerations. It manifests the same basic fact, albeit with a different twist, that those slight prejudices, haunting our picture of another just like a shadow, can be suggested to us even by completely different personalities, while a favorable preconception requires for sure an authoritative instigator or one comfortably close to us. Perhaps without this ease or thoughtless- ness with which the average person reacts directly to suggestions of an unfavorable type, the aliquid haeret11 would not acquire its tragic truth. The observation of some antipathies and factionalizing, intrigues and open conflicts could allow the animosity to line up under those primary human energies that are not unleashed by the external reality of their objects but rather are self-constructed based on their objects. So it is said, human beings do not have religion because they believe in a God but because they have religion as a disposition of the soul; then they believe in a God. This is generally well recognized with regard to love, in that, especially in youthful years, it is not merely the reaction of our soul, thereby called forth by its object as that object becomes
10 Homousios and homoiousios, an early Christian theological dispute--ed.
11 Aliquid haeret, Latin: literally, something stays or, in this case, something will stick--ed.
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? a sensation of color in our optical apparatus; rather the soul has the need to love, and so reaches out to take hold of some kind of an object that satisfies it, even while it clothes it for itself, if need be, with the characteristics that apparently initially called forth the love. This is not to say that--emphasizing the same qualification--this could not also be the development of the opposite affect, that the soul would not also possess a built-in autochthonous need to hate and to fight, which often then for its part projects its hate-inspiring characteristics into the objects that it designates for itself. This case being not so flagrantly obvious as that of the corresponding love may lie in the fact that the love drive, by virtue of its immense physiological intensification in youth, documents its spontaneity, its determination by the terminus a quo, quite unmistakably. The hate drive probably has such acute stages in itself only exceptionally, whereby its subjective-spontaneous character would become conscious in the same way. 12
If, then, a formal instinct for animosity actually exists in humans as a counterpart to the need for comradeship, it nevertheless appears to me to stem historically from one of those mental distillation processes in which inner movements ultimately leave behind the form that is common to them as an autonomous drive in the soul. Interests of every kind compel us so frequently towards conflict over particular goods, into opposition against particular personalities, that there may very well be a condition of stimulation, pressuring us as a residuum of them towards expressions of antagonism, transformed within our kind's hereditary inventory. The reciprocal relationship of primitive groups is well known and, for oft-debated reasons, almost continuously a hostile one. The most definitive example is perhaps the Native Americans,13 by which every tribe viewed itself as existing in principle in a state of war with every
12 All relationships of one person to another are divided most fundamentally accord- ing to this question--albeit in countless transitions between its 'yes' and 'no': whether its psychological foundation is a drive of the subject, which in itself, as drive, develops even without any external stimulus and for its part from the outset seeks an adequate object for it--be that it it finds it as adequate, be that it transforms it through fantasy and necessity into adequacy; or whether the psychological foundation consists in the reaction that the being or activity of a personality calls forth in us; naturally the poten- tialities for it must also be present in us, but they would by themselves remain latent and would never by themselves take shape as drives. Intellectual as well as aesthetic, sympathetic as well as antipathetic relationships to people materialize into this contrast, and frequently draw their formula for development, their intensity and their climax, only from this foundation.
13 Simmel, for that time, of course, writes: Indianer--ed.
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? other tribe with whom it had not expressly concluded a peace treaty. It must not be forgotten, however, that in early cultural conditions war comprised almost the only form in which a group came into contact at all with foreign groups. As long as inter-territorial trade was undevel- oped, individual travel unknown, psychological commonalities not yet transcending group boundaries, there was no sociological relationship between the separate groups apart from war. Here the relationship of the group elements to one another and that of the groups--primitive ones--to one another manifest a completely oppositional form. Inside the closed circle enmity as a rule means the breaking off of relationships, the withdrawal and avoidance of contacts; here even the impassioned interaction of open conflict is accompanied by these negative aspects. In contrast, distinct groups remain entirely indifferent to one another, so long as there is peace, and first gain an active importance for one another in war. For that reason even the same drive for expansion and influence, which requires internally an unconditional peace as the foundation of intertwined interests and unhindered interaction, can appear towards the outside as a warlike tendency.
Despite the autonomy that one may thus grant to the antagonistic drive in the psyche, still it is not quite enough on which to ground all the phenomena of animosity. First of all, because even the most spon- taneous drive curbs its sovereignty to the extent that it does not turn to just any desirable object but only those that are in some way suitable: certainly hunger stems from the subject, without first being actualized by the object, and yet it will not jump at stones and wood but only at objects in some way edible. So even love and hate, however little their drives may be rooted in an external stimulus, will nevertheless require some kind of a structure corresponding to their objects, and will have their complete manifestation only under this concurrence. On the other hand, it seems to me likely that the drive of animosity, on account of its formal character, accelerates in general only with regard to materially induced controversies, putting the pedal to the metal, as it were. And where a conflict springs from a pure, formal desire to fight, which is thus entirely impersonal, in principle indifferent regarding the content as well as the opponent--there hate and fury towards the opponent as a person unavoidably runs its course, as does the interest in a contested prize, because these affects nourish and increase the psychological force of the conflict. It is functional also to hate the opponent with whom one is fighting for whatever reason, just as it is functional to love the one to whom one is bound and with whom one must get along. The
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? truth expressed by a popular song in Berlin, "What one does for love, it is pleasing to repeat," applies as well to what one does for hate. The reciprocal behavior of human beings is often understandable only in that an inner accommodation cultivates for us those feelings that are then the most functional for the given situation, for its exploitation or its completion, for tolerating or shortening it, feelings that empower us through psychological integration, as they are required for the perfor- mance of the tasks at hand and the neutralizing of the inner conflicting drives. So no serious fight may long endure without the support--even if developing only gradually--of a complex of psychological drives. This is of great sociological significance: the purity of conflict only for the sake of conflict undergoes such admixtures of, in part, more objective interests, in part, of such impulses that can also be satisfied in other ways than through conflict and that in practice throw a bridge between the strife and other forms of interaction. I know of actually only one single case in which the attraction of conflict and victory in and of itself, as a rule only the one element of substantively induced antagonism, constitutes the exclusive motive: the sporting competition, and indeed this kind of event takes place without a prize located outside the game itself. 14 Here the purely sociological attraction of achieving mastery and recognition against others in the contests of skill combines with the purely individual pleasure of purposeful and successful movement, and in the playful gamble with the favor of destiny that blesses us with a mystically harmonious relationship to the powers-that-be beyond indi- vidual as well as social events. In any case, the athletic contest contains in its sociological motivation absolutely nothing other than the contest itself. The worthless token which is struggled for, often with the same passion as for pieces of gold, exposes the formalism of this impulse, which also often far outweighs the material interest in the competition for gold pieces. Now it is noteworthy that precisely this most complete dualism presupposes in its actualization sociological forms in the narrower sense, standardization: one allies in order to fight, and one fights under the mutually recognized domination of norms and rules. As noted, these standardizations, in whose forms this nevertheless develops, do not enter into the motivations behind the whole undertaking; they present the
14 'Sporting competition' translates das Kampfspiel (literally 'fight-game' or 'conflict- game'), which can mean boxing match, prize-fight, jousting tournament, or any kind of athletic or quasi-athletic contest for its own sake--ed.
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? mechanism without which such a conflict, excluding all heterogeneous or objective reasons, would not be feasible. Indeed, the standardization of the athletic contest is often one so rigorous, impersonal, mutually observed with strictness of an honor code, as associations for coopera- tive enterprises hardly ever exhibit.
This example places next to one another the principle of conflict and that of association, the latter of which likewise holds opposites together, almost with the purity of abstract concepts and are thus revealed as acquiring their full sociological sense and reality only in relation to one another. The same form dominates litigation, albeit without this tidiness and mixture of elements. Certainly there is here a contested objective, which can be settled satisfactorily through this voluntary concession, something not possible with conflict for the sake of conflict; and what one even in legal disputes identifies as a desire and passion for fighting is likely in most cases something else altogether: namely the energetic sense of justice, the impossibility of tolerating a real or imagined infringement in the sphere of law with which the 'I' feels a sense of identification. The complete obstinacy and the uncompromising stubbornness by which parties in legal processes so often bleed to death, hardly has the character of the offensive even on the part of the plaintiff, but rather that of the defensive in a deeper sense: it is simply a matter of the self-preservation of the personality that so extends into one's property and one's rights that every encroachment on them defeats it, and for that reason the fight is a matter consequential for one's entire existence. This individualistic impulse and not the sociological one for fighting will thus determine such cases. Considering the form of conflict itself, however, the legal dispute is indeed an absolute conflict; i. e. , the respec- tive claims are pursued with pure objectivity and with all permissible means, without being driven or moderated by personal or some kind of other extraneously located factors; the legal dispute is purely dispute in so far as nothing enters into the complete action that does not belong to the dispute as such and would not serve the purpose of the dispute. While otherwise even in the wildest conflicts something yet subjective, some kind of a simple fateful turn, an intervention by a third party is leastwise possible, all such is here excluded by the objectivity with which just the dispute and nothing but the dispute proceeds. This exclusion from litigation of everything that is not conflict can of course lead to a formalism of conflict that proceeds independently of the content. This occurs on the one hand in the legal sophistry whereby the pros and cons of the objective factors themselves are generally no longer considered,
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? but instead an entirely abstract conflict is simply erected imaginatively. On the other hand the dispute is sometimes transferred to parties who have no relationship at all to that which is supposed to be decided by the conflict. When legal disputes in higher cultures are fought out by professional advocates, this serves then the pure resolution of the dispute apart from all personal associations that have nothing to do with it; when however Otto the Great determines that a legally disputed ques- tion should be decided by a divinely judged duel, and indeed between professional fencers--so all that is left of the entire issue of the conflict is the mere form, so that that is what is fought and triumphs, this is all that is shared between the dispute that is supposed to be decided and that which it decides. This case expresses in caricaturing exaggeration this presently concerned reduction and limitation of the legal dispute to the mere element of contest. However, this most merciless type of conflict is positioned precisely through its pure objectivity--because it stands indeed quite beyond the subjective opposites of compassion and cruelty and far more thoroughly on the presupposition of a unity and commonality of the parties than is the case as strictly or in similar measure with hardly any other kind of relationship. The common sub- ordination to the law, the mutual recognition that the decision should result only from the objective force of the arguments, the adherence to formalities that apply uncompromisingly to both parties, the conscious- ness that the entire process is to be enveloped by a social power and order which only then gives it meaning and reliability--all this allows the legal dispute to rest on a broad foundation of unity and consensus among the disputants; thus the parties to a hearing take the form, albeit in smaller measure, of an entity of a commercial-type transaction, in that they acknowledge, along with all the opposition of interests, mutu- ally--amicably--mandatory norms. The common presuppositions that exclude everything merely personal from the legal dispute carry that character of pure objectivity, to which for its part now the inexorabil- ity, the severity, the unconditional character of the dispute conforms. The interactive relationship between the dualism and the unity of the sociological relationship is manifested thus in the legal dispute no less than the sporting contest; precisely the most extreme and unbridled nature of the contest takes place while it is surrounded and supported by the strict unity of common norms and limitations.
Ultimately this emerges everywhere where the parties are preoc- cupied by an objective interest, i. e. wherever the issue in dispute and therefore the dispute itself is differentiated from the personality itself.
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? Here now the duality is possible that the conflict can turn purely on objective decisions and leave everything personal outside it and in a state of peace; or it can simply grip the persons in their subjectivity, without thereby leading concurrently to an alteration or change in the objective interests, which the parties hold in common. The latter type is characterized by the expression from Leibniz: he would pursue even his deadly enemy if he could learn something from him. That this can becalm and moderate enmity itself is so obvious here that only the opposite result can come into question. And though the enmity that runs alongside an association and understanding in objective matters has, so to say, a clarity and certainty in its own right, the conscious- ness of such a separation assures us that we will not let the personal animosity encroach where it does not belong; and yet this good con- science that we purchase for ourselves with that differentiation can in some circumstances actually lead to an intensification of the animosity. Because where it is thus limited to its actual source, which at the same time is the most subjective of the personality, we abandon ourselves to it at times progressively more passionately, more concentrated, than when its impulse yet shared a ballast of secondary animosities in realms that are actually only attached to that central one. Where the same differentiation, on the contrary, leaves the dispute attached only to impersonal interests, the useless intensification and embitterment, whereby the personalizing of objective controversies tends towards revenge, will certainly similarly cease; on the other hand, however, the consciousness of being the representative of supra-individual demands, of fighting not for oneself but only for the substantive issue can give the fight a radicalism and a ruthlessness that finds its analogy in the collective conduct of many very selfless, highly idealistically disposed people: since they do not take themselves into consideration, they do not take others into consideration either and think it fully justifiable to sacrifice themselves as well as to slaughter others for the idea. Such a fight, in which certainly all the powers of the person are engaged, while the victory is supposed to accrue only to the issue at hand, will bear the character of the noble: since the noble person is the wholly personal one who yet knows to hold one's personality entirely in reserve; therefore, objectivity functions as noblesse. 15 But once this separation is accomplished and the conflict objectified, it rather consistently does not
15 Noblesse, French for nobility--ed.
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? yield to one of renewed restraint; indeed, this would be a sin against the objective interest on which the conflict has focused. The struggle is fought out now with absolute severity over this mutual interest of the parties--in that each defends only the issue and its claim, and foregoes all personal self-seeking--without intensifying but also without the miti- gations of a court of persons and obedient only to its immanent logic. The opposition thus formed between unity and antagonism intensifies perhaps most perceptibly where both parties are really pursuing one and the same goal, for example, the exploration of a scientific truth. Here any indulgence, any polite renunciation of the merciless exposure of the antagonist, any peace agreement before a completely decisive victory would be a betrayal of that very objectivity for which personal- ity had been excluded from the contest. Social struggles since Marx, with infinite further variations, develop into the same form. Insofar as it is recognized that the situation of the workers is determined by the objective conditions and forms of production, independently of the will and ability of individual persons, the personal bitterness of the principal struggle as well as the local one clearly diminishes. The employer as such is then no longer a bloodsucker and damnable egoist, the worker no longer in all circumstances of sinful covetousness; both parties at least begin to cast their demands and tactics in something other than the personal motivation of malevolence. This objectification is guided in Germany actually in a theoretical manner, in England by means of labor unions; while personal and individual antagonism with us was overridden by the more abstract generality of historical and class move- ments, there it was by the strict supra-individual unity in the actions of the labor unions and employers' associations. The intensity of the fight, however, did not for that reason decrease; indeed, on the contrary, it became more goal-driven, more concentrated, and at the same time more far reaching in the consciousness of the individuals, to be fought not only and often not at all for themselves, but for a great supra- personal goal. An interesting symptom of this correlation is furnished for example by the boycott of the Berlin breweries by the workers in the year 1894. This was one of the most severe regional conflicts of the last century, conducted by both sides with the most extreme energy, but without any--really very obvious--personal hatefulness of the boycott leaders towards the brewers or the directors towards them. Indeed, two of the party leaders in the middle of the struggle set forth their opinions about it in one and the same periodical, both objectively and thus agreeing in the presentation of the facts, and differing partisan-wise
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? only in the practical implications. While the conflict separates out everything irrelevantly personal and thereby limits quantitatively the antagonism, a mutual respect, an understanding in everything per- sonal is made possible, generating an acceptance of being driven by shared historical imperatives--this unifying basis nevertheless did not modify the intensity, irreconcilability and unyielding consequence of the struggle, but increased it.
The opponents having a shared reality over which their conflict arises in the first place can indeed appear in much less noble events than in those touched on above: when, namely, the commonality is not an objective norm, an interest situated beyond the competitive egoism of the party, but rather a covert factional agreement in a shared egoistic purpose common to both of them. To some degree that was the case with the two major parties in England in the eighteenth century. An opposition of political convictions, which would have gotten to the root of things, did not exist between them since it was for both of them equally a matter of the perpetuation of the aristocratic regime. It was the peculiarity that two parties who divided the ground of political con- test fully between themselves did not, though, fight radically--because they concluded a tacit pact with each other against something which was not at all politically factional. One linked the parliamentary cor- ruption of that period with this peculiar restriction of conflict: selling out one's conviction for the good of the opposing party did not seem all that bad to anyone since the creed of this opposing party had indeed a rather broad, albeit also hidden basis in common with that of one's own, beyond which their fight initially began! The ease of corruption showed that the restriction of antagonism by an existing commonality had not made it then more principled or objective but on the contrary calmed it and tainted its objectively necessary meaning.
In other purer cases the synthesis of convergence and divergence of relationships can have the opposite result if unity is the starting point and foundation of the relationship and then conflict rises above it. This tends to be more passionate and radical than where no kind of prior or simultaneously existing solidarity of the parties is found. Where the ancient Jewish law permitted bigamy, it nevertheless prohibited marriage with two sisters (although a man could marry one after the death of the other) because this would especially lend itself to the incitement of jealousy! It is thus presumed, without more ado, as a reality of experi- ence that a stronger antagonism is found on grounds of familial com- monalities than among strangers. The mutual hatred of rather small
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? neighboring states, whose whole world view, whose local relationships and interests are unavoidably most similar, indeed must often coincide, is frequently much more passionate and irreconcilable than that between large nations that are spatially as well as materially completely removed from each other. That was the fate of Greece and late Roman Italy, and an escalation of the same shook England before the amalgamation of the two races came about after the Norman Conquest. The hatred between these two, who lived indiscriminately on the same territory, bound to one another by progressively functional life interests, held together by a uniform national consciousness--and yet internally fully alien to one another, generally without mutual understanding and in power interests absolutely hostile to one another--this hatred was, as justifiably emphasized, more bitter than it can emerge at all between externally and internally separated tribes. Church relationships provide the clearest examples since the smallest difference among them in their dogmatic focus immediately takes on a logical incompatibility: when there is any deviation at all, it is conceptually indifferent whether it is great or small. Thus it was in the confessional disputes between the Lutherans and the members of the Reformed Church, specifically in the seventeenth century. Hardly had the great separation from Catholicism taken place, the totality so divided on account of the most idle things into parties whom one hears saying from time to time that one could sooner maintain fellowship with the Papists than with those of the other confession! And when in 1875 in Bern a difficulty over the loca- tion of the Catholic worships service arose, the Pope would not allow it to be held in the church that the Old Catholics used, but possibly in a Reformed church.
Two kinds of commonality are possible as foundations of a whole other heightened antagonism: the commonality of qualities and the commonality by way of involvement in the same social context. The for- mer refers exclusively to the fact that we are different beings. An oppo- sition must excite the consciousness all the more deeply and intensely when it is in contrast to a correspondingly greater similarity among the parties. In a peaceful or affectionate ambience this is an excellent safeguard of the association, comparable to the warning function of pain inside an organism, because precisely the energized consciousness with which the dissonance is felt on the otherwise thoroughgoing harmony of the relationship immediately urges the removal of the cause of the dispute so that it would not simply further gnaw in semi-consciousness through to the foundation of the relationship. However, where this basic
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? intention ultimately to get along in all circumstances is lacking, the consciousness of the antagonism, already sharpened by the similarity, will itself intensify. People who have much in common often treat one another with greater wickedness and injustice than complete strangers, sometimes because the large common area between them was taken for granted, and so, rather than that, the momentary difference controls their position toward one another, but mainly just because so little is different between them that every smallest antagonism has a completely different relative importance than between those more different who are from the outset mutually fixed with all possible differences. Hence the family conflicts over the incredibly smallest things, hence the tragedy of the 'trifle' over which completely compatible people sometimes have a falling out. This by no means always proves that the forces for harmony were already declining; it can simply follow from some great similarity in qualities, inclinations, convictions, so that the fall- ing out over a completely unimportant point comes to be felt through the sharpness of the opposition as something entirely unbearable. It comes down to this: one is objective about the stranger, with whom one shares neither qualities nor extensive interests; one holds one's own personality in reserve; thus the single difference does not so easily become all-consuming. Very different people are encountered typically regarding issues of only a single negotiation or coincidence of interest, and therefore the resolution of a conflict is limited to that matter. The more we as whole persons have in common with another, the more readily will our wholeness link up every single connection with that person; thus the completely disproportionate vehemence with which otherwise thoroughly controlled people sometimes allow themselves to be carried away when it comes to their closest intimates.