No More Learning

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.
? conflict 239
? 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.
? 240 chapter four
? 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.
? conflict 241
? 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.
? 242 chapter four
? 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
conflict 243
? 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.
? 244 chapter four
? 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,
conflict 245
? 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.
246 chapter four
? 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.
? conflict 247
? 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
248 chapter four
? 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
conflict 249
? 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
250 chapter four
? 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. All the joy and the depth in the connections to another person with whom we feel ourselves, as it were, identified: so that no single connection, no single word, no single common action or trouble actually remains single, but each is a garment for the whole soul that stretches over the other and is welcomed--just this makes an emerging dispute among such persons often so passionately expansive and gives the schema to the disastrous: "You--of all people. " Sometimes closely bonded people are too accustomed to putting the totality of their being and sentiment into the aspects that attract them towards one another to be able also to endow the dispute with subtlety and more-or-less with a boundary by which it would not grow beyond its cause and its objective significance and carry the whole personality into the quarrel. At the highest level of
conflict 251
? mental development this may be avoided because inherent in it is the binding of complete devotion of the soul to a person with nevertheless a fully mutual separation of the elements of the soul; while undifferenti- ated passion blends the totality of persons with the arousal of a part or moment, education allows no such element to go beyond its own, firmly circumscribed claim, and the relationship, thereby harmonious in nature, offers the advantage to the persons of becoming conscious right at the moment of conflict of how negligible it is in relation to the forces that bind them together. But apart from this, the refined sensitivity for distinctions will, particularly in deep natures, make posi- tive and negative feelings thereby all the more passionate, so that they stand in contrast to the past with its opposing hue, and certainly with nonrecurring, irrevocable determinations of their relationship, quite distinct from the back-and-forth oscillations in the everyday banalities of a togetherness entirely unquestioned. Between men and women a very fundamental aversion, even a feeling of hate--not for any specific reasons but as the mutual repulsion of the whole personal being--is sometimes an initial stage in a relationship, whose second stage is pas- sionate love. One could come to the paradoxical presumption that in natures that are meant to be of the closest of emotional relationships, this cycle would be evoked by an instinctive utility in order to procure the definitive feeling through its opposite prelude--like winding up in preparation--the passionate intensification and consciousness which one has then gained. The same form is manifested in the opposite phenomenon: the deepest hatred grows out of broken love. Here not only is the sensitivity to difference probably decisive, but above all the denial of one's own past that is involved in such a change in sentiment.
To recognize a deep love--and certainly not only a sexual one--as a mistake and a lack of instinct is such an exposure of oneself, such a fracture through the security and integrity of our self-consciousness that inevitably we make the object of this unbearable reality pay for it. We conveniently cover up the covert feeling of our own guilt for it with the hatred that makes it easy for us to shift the entire blame onto the other.
This exceptional bitter feeling from conflicts within relationships in which by their nature domestic peace is supposed to rule seems to be a positive reinforcement of the commonplace assumption that relation- ships manifest their closeness and strength particularly in the absence of differences. However, this commonplace assumption is not even valid by way of exception. That no sources of conflict would appear at all
252 chapter four
? in very intimate communities, communities dominating one's whole life or at least involving all aspects of life, as marriage is for example, is completely impossible. Never really to indulge those conflicts, but rather to take precautions against them from a distance, to curtail them from the very beginning with mutual agreement, is in no way always a matter of the most genuine and deepest affection; on the contrary it occurs precisely in attitudes that are certainly loving, moral, faithful, but lack the ultimate, most absolute devotion of feeing. The individual, to not bring this into conscious awareness, is all the more anxiously trying to keep the relationship pure of every shadow, to compensate for the lack thereof through the most extreme friendliness, self-control, regard for the other, especially though to soothe one's conscience over the weaker or stronger insincerity of one's behavior, which even the most genuine, often indeed the most passionate desire cannot change into reality--because it is here a matter of feelings that are not subject to the will but arrive or fail to arrive like forces of fate. The insecurity sensed at the foundation of such a relationship moves us with the desire to maintain it at all cost, often with too entirely exaggerated a selfless- ness, shielding it excessively mechanically by avoiding every possibility of conflict as a matter of principle. Where one is certain of the irre- versibility and unconditional nature of one's own feeling, this excessive peaceableness is not needed at all; one knows that no shock can reach to the foundation of the relationship on which they will ever and again come together. The strongest love can best endure a blow, and the fear of a lesser one, the consequences of which cannot at all be foreseen and which one would thus have to avoid under all circumstances, does not even come up. As discord among intimate people can thus have even more tragic consequences than among acquaintances, so precisely from those connections the most deeply grounded relationship lets it come about much sooner in one of that kind, while some admittedly good and moral relationships, but rooted in feelings that are less deep, proceed apparently more harmoniously and less conflict-ridden.
A particular nuance of the sociological sensitivity to difference and the accentuation of conflict on the basis of similarity arises where the separation of originally homogeneous elements is intentional, where the separation follows not actually from the conflict, but the conflict from the separation. The prototype for this is the hatred of the renegade and that against the renegade. The image of the former harmony still functions so strongly that the present opposition is infinitely much more acute and bitter than if no relationship at all had existed from the very
conflict 253
? beginning. Add to this, that both parties will extract the difference from the lingering similarity--the unambiguity of which is of utmost impor- tance to both of them--frequently in just such a way that it expands out beyond its original source and seizes on every relevant point at all; for this purpose of securing position, theoretical or religious apostasy leads to a mutual denunciation in any kind of ethical, personal, inter- nal or external respect, which is not at all necessary when the exact same difference occurs between strangers. Indeed, that in general a difference of convictions degenerates into hatred and strife occurs for the most part only with essentially and originally homogeneous parties. The sociologically very important phenomenon of 'respect for the enemy' tends to be absent where the enmity arose over an earlier solidarity. Where then so much similarity continues to exist that confusion and the blurring of boundaries are possible, points of difference have to be accentuated with a sharpness that is often not at all justified by the matter itself but only by this danger. This functioned, for example, in the case mentioned above of Catholicism in Bern. Roman Catholicism does not need to fear that through an external contact with such a fully heterogeneous church as the Reformed its uniqueness would be threatened, but arguably through contact with one so closely related as Old Catholicism.
This example already touches on the second type in question here, which certainly in practice more or less coincides with the other: the enmity whose intensification is grounded in solidarity and unity--which is in no way also always similarity. The reason for its separate treatment is that here, instead of the sense of difference, a whole new rationale arises, the peculiar appearance of social hatred, i. e. of the hatred for a group member, not from personal motives, but because a danger to the existence of the group comes from that person. Insofar as such a person threatens by discord inside the group, the one party hates the other not only on the substantive basis that provoked the discord, but also on the sociological, in that we simply hate the enemy of the group as such. While this is a reciprocal occurrence, and each blames the other for threatening the whole, an intensification accrues to the antagonism precisely by virtue of the membership of its parties in one unitary group. Most characteristic of this are the cases in which it does not actually come to a breaking up of the group; since until this has occurred, it means a specific solution to the conflict has been found, the personal difference found its sociological solution, and the instigator of ever renewed irritation was removed. It is in fact precisely
254 chapter four
? for this result that the strain between antagonism and the still existing unity must operate. As it is dreadful to be alienated from someone to whom one is nevertheless bonded--outwardly, however also internally bonded in the most tragic cases--from whom one cannot get free, even if one wanted to, so the bitterness increases when one does not want the community to break up, because one does not want to give up the values of belonging to the all-encompassing unity, or because one feels this unity as an objective value, the threat to which generates strife and hatred. From these constellations arise the vehemence with which, for example, fights inside of a political faction or a labor union or a family are settled. The individual soul offers an analogy to this. The feeling that a conflict within us between sensual and ascetic, or selfish and moral, or practical and intellectual tendencies diminishes not only the claims of one or both parties and obviates the possibility of an entirely free fulfillment of life, but often enough threatens the integrity, the balance and the ego-strength of the soul as a whole--this feeling might in some cases suppress the conflict from the very beginning; where, however, it is not sufficient for that, it gives the struggle on the contrary something grim and desperate, an accent as though there were actually something much more essential being fought over than the immediate object of strife in question; the energy with which each one of those tendencies would subdue the other is not nourished only by its, as it were, egoistic interest but by that which goes beyond it to the integrity of the 'I' for which this struggle means a rupture and a degradation when it does not end with an unambiguous victory. So the strife inside a tightly bound group often enough goes beyond the measure that its object and its immediate interest would justify for the parties; for emotion is attached to this to the extent that the dispute is not only an issue of the parties but the group as a whole, so that every party fights, as it were, in the name of this, and in the opponent has not only its opponent but at the same time that of their higher sociological unity.
Finally there is an apparently wholly individual, in reality very sig- nificant sociological fact that can tie the most extreme vehemence of antagonistic arousal to the closeness of association: jealousy. Linguistic usage doe not use this concept unambiguously and frequently does not distinguish it from envy. Undoubtedly both emotions are of the great- est importance in the formation of human relations. With both it is a matter of something valued whose attainment and safeguarding a third person, actually or symbolically, impedes for us. Where it is a matter of attaining, we speak more of envy; where a matter safeguarding, we
conflict 255
? speak of jealousy; but of course the defining allocation of the words is in itself entirely meaningless and only the distinction of the social- psychological processes is important. It is characteristically described as jealousy that the subject thinks it has a rightful claim to that possession, while envy is not concerned about a right but simply for the desirability of what one has been denied; it does not therefore even matter to the subject whether the good is denied it because the third person possesses it or whether loss or renunciation on the part of the third party would not help the subject get it. Jealousy on the other hand is in its inner course and coloring thereby directly determined, in that the posses- sion is denied us because it is in the hands of another, and in that it would immediately fall to us with the breakup thereof: the experience of the envious turns more on the possession, that of the jealous more on the possessor. One can envy the fame of another even when one has not the least claim to fame oneself; one is jealous of that person, however, when one is of the opinion that one is likewise and prefer- ably deserving of it than the other. Embittering and gnawing for the jealous is a certain fiction of the feeling--however unjustified, indeed absurd as it may be--that the other has, as it were, robbed one of the fame. Jealousy is an experience of so specific a kind and strength that it, having arisen from some kind of exceptional mental combination, inwardly adds onto its typical situation.
To a certain extent in the middle between the specific phenomena of envy and jealousy stands a third belonging to this scale that can be identified as resentment: the envious desire for an object not because it is in itself particularly desirable to the subject but only because the other person has it. This manner of experience develops into two extremes that change into the negation of one's own possession. On the one hand the form of passionate resentment that prefers to forego the object for oneself, indeed prefers its destruction rather than grant it to another; and the second: one's own complete indifference or aver- sion to the object and still the thought that the other would possess it is completely unbearable. Such forms of envy draw the reciprocal behaviors of people into a thousand gradations and combinations. The large problem area in which the relationships of people are susceptible to things as causes or effects of their relations with one another is in no small part covered by this type of affect. It is here not only just a matter of money or power, love or social standing being desired, so that rivalry or some other outflanking or removal of a person is a mere procedure, no different in its inner sense than the overcoming of
256 chapter four
? a physical obstacle. Rather, the accompanying feeling that attaches to such a merely external and secondary relationship of persons develops in these modifications of the envy into autonomous sociological forms in which only envy's content plays a part in the desire for the objects; what is then established is that the final indicated stages of the sequence have fully stripped away the interest in the objective contents of the object and maintained it merely as a matter wholly indifferent in itself, around which the personal relationship crystallizes. On this general basis the significance that jealousy has for our particular problem is now manifest, and which it then has for sure if its content is a person or as the case may be the relationship of a subject to it. Incidentally it seems to me that linguistic usage would not accept 'jealousy' as pertinent for a purely impersonal object. What we are concerned with here is the relationship between the jealous individual and the person for whose sake jealousy is directed against a third person; the relationship to this third person has a completely different, much less peculiar and complicated sociologically characteristic form. For this reason fury and hate, contempt and cruelty arise towards that person directly on the presumption of a connectedness, an outer or inner, real or supposed claim to love, friendship, recognition, association of some kind. Here the antagonism, be it felt mutually or unilaterally, stiffens all the more strongly and further the more it derived from unconditional unity and the more passionately its conquest is desired. If the consciousness of the jealous frequently seems to swing between love and hate, that means that both of these strata, of which the second is layered over the first in all its breadth, alternately gain the stronger consciousness for themselves. Especially important is the previously mentioned condition: the right that one believes one has to the psychological or physical possession, to the love or the adoration of the subject who is the object of jealousy. A man might envy another over the possession of a woman; jealous, however, is only the person who has some kind of claim to their possession. However, this claim can exist merely in the passion of desire. Because to derive a right from this is a common human characteristic: the child will excuse itself for the transgression of something forbidden by saying of that forbidden item, "But I really wanted it"; the adulterer, insofar as he possesses the least trace of conscience, would not be able to target the offended husband in a duel if in his love for the woman he did not see a right that he would be defending against the purely legal right of a spouse; just as the mere possession counts everywhere also as the right of possession, so desire too turns into the preliminary stage for such a right, and the
conflict 257
? double meaning of 'claim'--as simple desire and as legally grounded desire--indicates that really wanting the right adds its own force to the force of a right itself. To be sure, jealousy often turns into the most pitiable drama precisely through this claim to a right: to assert claims of right to feelings such as love and friendship is an endeavor with fully ill-suited means. The plane on which one can have recourse for the grounding of a right, of an external or internal one, has nothing in common with that on which those feelings lie; to desire to enforce it with a mere right, however deeply and well deserved it may be in vari- ous ways, is as senseless as wanting to order a bird, who is long gone out of earshot and eyesight, back into its cage. This ineffectiveness of entitlement in matters of love generates the phenomenon characteristic of jealousy: that in the end it clings to the external proofs of the feeling, which are indeed enforceable by the appeal to the sense of duty, yet guarding, with this paltry gratification and self-deception, the body of the relationship as if it still had something of its soul in it.
The claim that belongs to the jealous is often fully acknowledged as such by the other side; it signifies or endows, as every entitlement between persons, a kind of oneness; it is the ideal or legal existence of a bond, of a positive relationship of some sort, at least its subjective anticipation. Rising then over the existing and far-reaching unity is at the same time its negation which the very situation of jealousy creates. Here, as in some other concurrences of unity and antagonism, the two are not separated into different realms and then held together and apart by the total reach of the personalities; rather precisely that unity, still existing in some kind of internal or external form, experienced at least on the part of one party as truly or imaginatively real, is negated. The feeling of jealousy sets a wholly unique, blinding, irreconcilable bitterness between the persons, because the rupture between them has then become exactly the point of their bond, and thus the tension between them has imparted to the negative factor the maximum that is possible in severity and emphasis. From this then, in that this formal social relationship dominates the internal situation, we can account for the strange, actually completely unlimited breadth of factors by which jealousy is nourished and the prevalent substantive meaninglessness of its development. Where either the structure of the relationship clothes such a synthesis by synthesis-and-antithesis from the very beginning, or where the soul of the individual offers this structure inside of its own dispositions, every arbitrary cause will thereby produce consequences, and for sure these will be conceptually all the more easily appealing,
258 chapter four
? indeed more often will have already been in effect. In that every human act and statement lends itself to a multifaceted interpretation of its intent and attitude, jealousy, which wants to see everywhere only one interpretation, provides a fully pliable tool. While jealousy can tie the most passionate hatred to the ongoing continuation of the most pas- sionate love and the annihilation of both parties to the effect of the most heartfelt solidarity--because the jealous destroy the relationship in as much as they are provoked to the destruction of the other--jealousy is perhaps that social phenomenon in which the construction of antago- nism by way of unity achieves its subjectively most radical form.
Specific types of such a synthesis manifest the phenomena that one comprehends as competitions. First it is decisive for the sociological nature of competition that the conflict is an indirect one. Whoever does direct damage to or removes the opponent altogether no longer competes against that opponent. The linguistic usage in general utilizes the word preferably only for such contests that consist of the parallel efforts of both parties for one and the same prize. The differences of these from other types of conflict thus allow a more precise designa- tion. The pure form of the competitive contest is above all not offensive and defensive--for the simple reason that the prize for the contest is not held by one of the opponents. Whoever struggles with another to acquire that person's money or spouse or reputation proceeds in altogether different forms, with a completely different method, than when one competes with another, to direct the money of the public into one's pocket, to win the favor of a woman, to make a greater name for oneself through words and actions. While in many other types of conflict, therefore, the defeat of the opponent brings immediately not only the victory prize but is the prize of victory itself, with competition two other combinations appear: where the defeat of the competitor is the temporally first necessity, because this defeat in itself just does not yet mean anything, but the goal of the whole action is reached only through the presentation in itself of value entirely independent from that fight. The merchant who has successfully cast suspicion with the public on the unreliability of the competitors has thereby not yet won anything if the needs of the public are not directly linked to the goods that that particular businessperson offers; the suitor who has scared off or made it impossible for the rival is thereby not one step further if the desired love rejects the suitor; a proselyte no longer needs to adhere to a faith that strives to win proselytes even if that faith has removed all the competitors from the field by exposing their deficiencies--if
conflict 259
? the nature of that proselyte's needs that it can satisfy is not accom- modated. The competitive struggle thereby acquires its tone with this type in that the decision of the contest does not yet realize the goal for itself, as in those cases where rage or revenge, punishment or the ideal value of the victory as such motivates the conflict. Perhaps the second type of competition differs still more from other conflicts. In this one the conflict generally consists only in each of the contenders striving for the goal for oneself without expending any effort on the opponent. The runner who wants to be effective only through one's speed, the merchant who wants to be effective only through the price of one's goods, the evangelist who wants to be effective only through the internal persuasiveness of one's teachings exemplify this curious type of conflict, which matches, in intensity and passionate exertion to one's utmost, every other type, which rises to its most extreme effort also through the mutual consciousness of the effort of one's opponent, and yet, viewed from the outside, proceeds as though there were no opponent in the world but only the goal. Through the undeviating course in the affair, this competition form can appropriate contents by which the antagonism becomes a pure formality and serves not only a common purpose but allows even the victory of the victor to benefit the defeated. At the siege of Malta by the Turks in 1565, the grand master divided the forts of the island among the various nations to which the knights belonged so that the rivalry over which nation would be the bravest would be exploited for the defense of the whole. Here then is a genuine competition, in the course of which any damage to the oppo- nent that could hinder one's full deployment in the rivalry is, however, excluded from the outset. This is such a very pure example because, to be sure, presumably the wish to conquer in the contest for honor calls forth the entirely particular contingent of strength; the victory to be won for that purpose, however, is such that its success also extends to the defeated. Similarly every competition occasioned by ambition in the scientific realm manifests a conflict that is not directed against the opponent but towards the common goal, wherein it is assumed that the knowledge won by the victor is also gain and advancement for the losers. With artistic competition this last extension of the principle tends to be missing because the aggregate objective value, equally including that of both parties, in light of the individualistic nature of art, is not consciously, albeit perhaps ideally, present. This absence in commercial competition is still more decisive for the consumer who nevertheless belongs under the same formal principle of conflict. For here too the
260 chapter four
? contest is aimed directly at the most perfect service, and the benefit to a third or to the whole is its result. So the subjectivity of the end goal becomes most wonderfully intertwined in this form with the objectivity of the end result; a supra-individual unity of a material or social nature includes the parties and their conflict; one struggles against without directly opposing the opponent, non-contact, so to speak. Thus the subjective antagonistic incitement leads us to the realization of objective values, and the victory in the contest is not actually the result of a fight, but simply the realization of values that lie beyond the conflict.
Therein then lies the enormous value of competition for the social circle, provided that the competitors are enclosed by it. While the other types of conflict--that in which either the prize is originally in the hands of the one party, or where the subjective hostility and not the winning of a prize shapes the motive for conflict--let the values and strengths of the opponents be mutually consumed, and frequently as a result all that remains for the totality is what is left over from the simple subtraction of the weaker power from the stronger; competi- tion, wherever it is kept free from mixing with other forms of conflict, functions conversely, usually increasing value through its incomparable combination: because viewed from the standpoint of the group it offers subjective motives as a means for producing objective social values and, from the standpoint of the party, utilizing the production of the objectively valued as a means to win subjective satisfactions. 16
16 This is a very clear case of a common type: a means being for the species, for the group, in short, for the encompassing formation what an end goal is for the indi- vidual, and vice-versa. At its highest this holds on a wide scale for the relationship of people to the metaphysical totality, to their God. Hence the idea of a divine plan for the world develops because the end goals of the individual being are nothing more than stages and means that help realize the absolute end goal of all earthly activities, as it is set in the divine mind; for the subject, however, in the absoluteness of its ego interests, not only the empirical but also that transcendental reality is only a means for one's goal: one's welfare on the earth or one's salvation in the beyond, happy repose, redemptive completion, or ecstatic fullness of the divine is sought through God who mediates all this to people; just as God as the absolute Being obtains selfhood indirectly via humanity, so humanity obtains selfhood itself via God. This was observed a long time ago with regard to the relationship between the individual and the individual's species in the biological sense; erotic pleasure, for the former a self-justifying end goal in itself, is for the species only a means by which to secure its continuation beyond every temporary population; this preservation of the species, which counts at least analogically as its goal, is for the individual often enough only the means to perpetuate oneself in one's children, to secure a kind of immortality for one's possessions, one's qualities, one's vitality. In social relationships what it amounts to simply is what one describes as a harmony of interests between the society and the individual. The action
? conflict 261
? However, the material advance that competition gains through its characteristically mediated pattern of interaction is not as important here as the directly social. While the goal over which competition among parties exists within a society still favors probably one or more third persons continuously, it drives each of the two parties between whom it occurs with extraordinary closeness against that third. One tends to emphasize competition's poisoning, disrupting, destroying effects and to concede only incidentally those substantive values as its products. Along with it, however, there is nevertheless this enormous society- forming effect: it forces the candidate, who has a competitor nearby and frequently only then becomes an actual competitor, to meet with and to approach other competitors, to combine with them, to explore their weaknesses and strengths and to adapt to them, to seek out or to construct all the bridges that could combine one's own being and capacity with theirs. Of course this happens often at the price of per- sonal dignity and of the material value of production; above all, the competition between the producers of the highest spiritual activities causes those who are set for the leadership of the mass to submit to it; in general just to get to an effective exercise of one's function as teacher or party leader, as artist or journalist, what is required is obedience to the instincts or moods of the mass, as soon as the mass, because of competition, has its choice of the candidates. Thus, of course, substan- tively an inversion of rank ordering and social valuation is created, but this does not lessen the importance of competition for the synthesis of
of the individual is normed and harnessed to carry and develop the legal and moral, the political and cultural conditions of the people; however, what is thereby accom- plished as a whole is only that the individual's own eudaemonistic and moral, material and abstract interests seize those supra-individual values as a means; thus science, for example, is a content of the objective culture and as such a self-sufficient end goal of social development, which is realized through the means of the individual drives for knowledge; for the individual, however, the entirety of the science at hand including the part of it worked on by the individual self is merely a means for the satisfaction of the individual's personal drive for knowledge. Now these relationships indeed are in no way always of such harmonious symmetry; in fact, often enough they harbor the contradiction that certainly the whole as well as the part deals with itself as end and thus the other as means; neither one of them, however, wants to accept this role as means. From this arise frictions that are palpable at every point of life and allow the realization of the goals of the whole as well as of the part only with a certain loss. The mutual self-annihilation of engergies that is of no advantage for positive results, and the futility and wastefulness of those proven to be weaker generate just such reductions inside of competition, which otherwise manifests so clearly that symmetry of one another's parallel goals.
? 262 chapter four
? the society. 17 What works for it countless times is what as a rule works only for love: spying out the innermost wishes of others before they have even become conscious of those wishes themselves. The antagonistic tension of opposition to competitors sharpens the sensitivity on the part of merchants for the preferences of the public to the point of a nearly clairvoyant instinct for the impending changes in its tastes, fashions, interests; but not only with merchants but also with journalists, artists, booksellers, politicians. Modern competition, which is identified as the conflict of all against all, is at the same time, though, the conflict of all for all. Nobody will deny the tragedy therein--that the elements of society work against one another instead of with one another, that immense energy is squandered in the struggle against competitors, energy that would be useful for positive work, that in the end even the positive and valuable achievement comes to nothing, unutilized and unrewarded, as soon as a more valuable or at least more attractive one enters into competition with it. However, all these liabilities of competi- tion on the social balance sheet still stand right along side the immense synthetic power of the fact that competition in society is nevertheless competition for people, a wrestling for praise and employment, for concessions and commitments of every kind, a wrestling of the few for the many as well as the many for the few; in short, an interweaving of a thousand social threads by the concentration of consciousness on the desire and emotions and thinking of one's fellow human beings, by the adapting of supply to demand, by the ingenious manifold pos- sibilities of winning connection and favor. Since the narrow and nai? ve solidarity of primitive and social systems of decentralization gave way, which had to be the immediate result of the quantitative expansion of groups, the effort of people for people, the accommodation of the one to the others just for the prize of competition seems possible, hence the simultaneous conflict against a neighbor for the third--against whom, by the way, one competes perhaps in another kind of relation- ship for the former. Many kinds of interests that ultimately hold the circle together from member to member seem to be vital only with the expansion and individualization of society, when the need and the heat of competition force them onto the conscious subject. Also the socializing power of competition in no way manifests itself only in these coarser, so to speak, official cases. In countless combinations of family
17 Synthesis is in English in the original--ed.
? conflict 263
? life as well as the erotic, of social chitchat as well as the disputation aimed at persuasion, of the friendship as well as the satisfactions of vanity, we meet the competition of the two for the third; frequently, of course, only in hints, comments immediately dropped, as aspects or partial manifestations of a total process. Everywhere it appears, how- ever, there corresponds to the antagonism of competitions an offering or enticement, a promise or attachment, which brings each of the two into relationship with the third; for the victor especially this frequently acquires an intensity to which it would not have come without the characteristically continual comparison of one's own accomplishment with that of another, made possible only through competition, and without the excitation by the opportunities of competition. The more liberalism is inserted, besides the economic and political, also into the familial and social, church-related and friendship-related, hierarchical and across-the-board interactive relationships, in other words, the less these are predetermined and governed by universal historical norms and the more they are abandoned to the unstable equilibrium, produced on a case-by-case basis, or the shifting of powers--the more their form will depend on continuing competition; and the outcome of this, in turn, will depend in most cases on the interest, the love, the hopes, that the competitors, to varying extent, know to excite in the third party or parties, the center of competing movements. The most valuable object for human beings is the human being, both directly and indirectly. The latter because in it the energies of the subhuman nature are stored up, just as in the animal that we consume or put to work for us, are those of the plant kingdom, and just as in the latter those of sun and earth, air and water. Humanity is the most condensed structure and the most productive for exploitation, and to the extent that slavery comes to an end, i. e. the mechanical seizing of a very self, the need arises to win humans over psychologically. Conflict with humans, which was a conflict over them and their enslavement, thus changed into the more complicated phenomenon of competition in which one person certainly fights with another, but over a third. And winning over this third--to attain in a thousand ways only through the social means of persua- sion or convincing, outbidding and underbidding, suggestion or threat, in short, through psychological connection--also means in its results just as frequently only one such bond, only the establishment of one, from the momentary purchase in the store to that of marriage. With the cultural increase of the intensity and condensation of the contents of life, the struggle for this most condensed of all goods, the human
264 chapter four
? soul, must occupy ever greater space and thereby likewise increase as well as deepen the intensity of social interactions that are its means as well as its goal.
Herein was already suggested how very much the sociological char- acter of the circle differs by the extent and type of competition that it permits. This is obviously an aspect of the problem of correlation, to which each part of the previous arrangements made a contribution: there exists a relationship between the structure of each social circle and the degree of hostilities that it can tolerate among its elements. For the political whole, criminal law in many cases sets the limit up to which dispute and vengeance, violence and cheating are still compatible with the continued existence of the whole. When one has character- ized the content of criminal law in this sense as the ethical minimum, then it is not fully applicable--for the simple reason that a state would thus always break apart if, with the strictest prevention, all punishable prohibitions were enacted against all those attacks, injuries, hostilities. Every penal sanction counts on the widespread and predominant part played by inhibitions to which it itself contributes nothing to restrain- ing the development of those corroding energies. The minimum of ethical peaceable behavior, without which the civil society cannot exist, thus goes beyond the categories guaranteed by penal law itself; then it is simply presupposed that these disturbances left exempt from punishment do not themselves overstep the level of social tolerance. The more closely the group is unified, the more the enmity between its elements can have entirely polarizing meanings: on the one hand the group can, precisely because of its closeness, tolerate an internal antagonism without breaking apart, the strength of the synthesizing forces being equal to that of the antithetical; on the other hand a group whose principle of life is an extensive uniformity and solidarity is to that extent directly threatened especially by each internal dispute. Even this same centripetalism of the group renders it, vis-a`-vis the dangers from the enmities of its members, dependent on various circumstances, either more capable of antagonism or less.
Such close unions as marriage show both simultaneously: there is probably no other union that could endure such maniacal hatred, such total antipathy, such continuous contention and irritation without fall- ing apart; and then again it is, if not the only one, nevertheless one of the very few forms of relationship that can, through the outwardly most unremarkable, literally indescribable rupture, indeed through a
conflict 265
? single antagonistic word, so lose the depth and beauty of its meaning that even the most passionate desire on the part of both parties does not gain it back. In larger groups two structures, ostensibly entirely contrary to one another, will allow a considerable measure of internal hostilities. At once easy to mention, a certain solidarity producing ties. By virtue of these, damages that are produced through hostile clashes here and there can be made good relatively easily; the elements grant so much power or value to the whole that it can also secure for the individuals freedom for antagonisms, certainly in that the expenditure of energy effected through them is compensated at the same time by other earnings. This is one reason why very well organized communities can tolerate more internal divisions and frictions than more mechani- cal, internally disjointed conglomerates. The unity which is precisely acquired in greater measure only through more fine-tuned organizations can more easily bring the assets and liabilities into balance within the totality and bring the available strengths somewhere right to the place where weaknesses have arisen through disagreements between the ele- ments--as well as through any other kinds of loss. The inverse structure has precisely the same general effect: comparable to the configuration of the ship's hull made out of opposing firmly closed chambers so that by any damage to the hull the water itself cannot pour through the whole ship. The social principle here is thus precisely a certain sealing off of those parties colliding with one another, who, whatever they do to each other, are then to settle with one another, having to bear their damages, however, without thereby the existence of the whole being damaged. The correct choice or combination of the two methods: the organic solidarity with which the whole compensates for the damages through partial conflicts, or the isolation by which it shelters itself against those damages--is of course a vital issue for every union, from the family to the state, from the economic to the merely psychological sense of unity. The extremes are identified, for example, on the one hand in the modern state, which not only readily tolerates the disputes of political parties, even expending considerable energy in the process, but uses them for its own equilibrium and development, and on the other hand the ancient and medieval city-state, which was often weakened to the point of annihilation by internal party conflicts. On the whole the bigger a group is the better able it will be to unite both methods, and certainly in that form the fact that the parties have to settle their primary damages accruing from the dispute; however, the secondary
266 chapter four
? consequences for the life of the whole can be paid from its reserves--a combination that is obviously difficult when the group is small and all its elements are thereby in action near one another.
While I now return to the particular relationship of the competitive conflict to the structure of its circle, the difference appears first of all: whether the substantive interest of the circle is determined by a form that by itself forbids or limits the competition--or whether it, in itself probably susceptible to the competition, is hindered only by its particular historical formation through principles generally existing in it and apart from the matters at issue. The first is possible under two conditions. Competition enters in when a good, not plentiful enough or accessible to all contenders, falls only to the victor of a competition among them--it is thus obviously excluded where either the elements of a circle do not in general strive for a good that would equally be desired by them--or where it is certainly the case that the good is, however, equally plentiful for all. Everywhere the presumption then speaks in favor of the former wherever the social interaction does not come from a common terminus ad quem but a common terminus a quo of a unifying source. Thus it is above all with the family. Occasional competitions may indeed occur in it: the children can compete for the love or for the inheritance of the parents, or even the parents among themselves for the love of the children. This is, however, determined by personal happenstance--not unlike when two brothers, for example, are business competitors--and without reference to the principle of family. This principle is in fact the one of organic life; the organism is but its own purpose; as such, it does not refer beyond itself to a goal external to itself, for the acquisition of which its elements would have to compete. Purely personal hostility arising out of the clash of personalities is, of course, sufficiently opposed to the principle of peace without which the family cannot exist in the long run; however just the closeness of life together, the social and eco- nomic compatibility, the rather monumental presumption of unity--all this directly brings about friction, tension, and opposition especially easily; indeed, family conflict is a form of conflict sui generis. Its cause, its intensity, its expansion to those uninvolved, the form of the fight as that of the reconciliation is, by its course on the basis of an organic unity matured by thousands of internal and external ties, fully idiosyn- cratic, comparable to no other conflict. However competition is absent in this combination of symptoms since family conflict spins directly from person to person, and the indirectness of orientation toward an objec- tive goal that is innate to competition probably arises by chance rather
conflict 267
? than originating from its specific energies. The other sociological type of competition-free conflict is exemplified by the religious community. Here indeed parallel strivings of all are directed at one and the same goal for all, but it does not become competitive because the reaching of this goal by the one does not exclude the others from it. At least according to the Christian concept there is room in God's house for all. When, nevertheless, predestination withholds this place from some and preserves it for others, the immediate senselessness of any competition is thereby enunciated. This is in fact a characteristic form and destiny of candidatures running in parallel, which one could designate as passive competition; the lottery and games of chance are pure manifestations of precisely the same type. Certainly it is a rivalry for a prize, but it lacks the essence of competition: the difference in individual energies as the basis for winning and losing. The outcome is for sure in some kind of prior concession, but its distinction is not linked to the difference in the latter. 18 This produces, among individuals of a circle incorporated by that kind of chance, a thoroughly unique relationship, an entirely new blend of similarity and dissimilarity of conditions in contrast to real competition. Where a number of people perform exactly the same action and stand exactly the same chances of success, but know that a force they cannot influence is denying success altogether or granting it altogether, on the one hand an indifference will prevail among them, entirely unlike competition where success depends on the comparison of performance; on the other hand consciousness of earning or losing the prize on the basis of the quality of effort operates soothingly and objectively based on identification with the others, while here, where this feeling is lacking, envy and embitterment have their intrinsic place. The elect in a predestination, the winners in trente-et-quarante, will not be hated by the loser but envied; since the performances are indepen- dent of one another, the two competitors have a greater distance and a priori indifference towards one another than the competitors of an economic or sport contest; and with one such precisely the deservingness of the loser will easily produce the characteristic hatred that exists in the projection of one's own feelings of inadequacy onto the one who is responsible for our feeling so. The affinity--always by the way very loose--within that circle, then, insofar as a predestination of godly or
18 The tranlsation loses some word play here, which reads literally "but its distinction (Verschiedenheit) is not linked to the distinction (Verschiedenheit) in that"--ed.
? 268 chapter four
? fate-like or human authorities constitutes what they have in common, is a specific intertwining of indifference and latent envy that becomes actualized after the decision along with the corresponding feelings of the victor. As this deviates very much from the mutually stimulating feelings of competition, as there is still also a smaller or stronger blend of this affinity by way of shared chances even in every genuine com- petition, some kind of an appeal is made to a something in the power over the parties that decides on its own and not from performance. The very transforming extent of this fatalistic addition produces an entirely particular graduation of the relationship of competition up to the type of the election by grace, in which that alone is determinative and the active and differentiating factor that competition as such sug- gests is completely eliminated.
As a second apparent competition in religious groups, jealous passion stands out, trying to outdo others in the production of the highest good, which may increase effort a great deal--the fulfillment of commands and meritorious work, the devotions and the asceticism, prayers and donations. However, that additional feature of competition is absent whereby the prize must remain denied to one because it falls to the other. Here there is a sociologically noticeable difference that one may indicate as that between competition and rivalry. In every competition, even for the ideal goods of honor and love, the meaning of performance is determined by the relationship that it has with the performance of the next person; the performance of the victor, remaining exactly the same, would yet produce a fully different objective return for the victor if that of the competitor were greater than it instead of lesser.