Self-satisfied society
witnesses
how the alien who has joined it unexpectedly cannot be forced to acquiesce to its order.
SIMMEL-Georg-Sociology-Inquiries-Into-the-Construction-of-Social-Forms-2vol
The Free Press, then a famous American publishing house in Glencoe, Illinois, produced a book in 1955 with the double title Conflict, translated by Kurt H.
Wolff--The Web of Group-Affiliations, translated by Reinhard Bendix.
Everett Cherrington Hughes in his Foreword praises Wolff for doing "American scholars a distinct service by translating and publishing important parts of the sociological work of Georg Simmel in a volume entitled The Sociology of Georg Simmel (1950)" (Simmel 1955, 7).
Hughes then goes on welcoming Reinhard Bendix to the joint effort, thanking him for "making an additional chapter of Simmel's Soziologie available.
" This is necessary because--and Hughes, whose German was fluent, regrets that--"Americans whose mother-tongue is English (including those among them whose mother tongue was not English) are extremely loathe to learn other languages" (Simmel 1955, 7).
For
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? Wolff (see Simmel 1950) and Bendix, of course, German was a native language. If making an English translation of Simmel's work available was a distinct service to scholarship in 1955, it is certainly so in 2008. Such service has been contributed by Peter Etzkorn, Guy Oakes, Donald Levine, Deena Weinstein, Michael Weinstein and others.
Yet, crossing the language barrier--which in the past was more or less identical with crossing the Atlantic Ocean--was for Simmel's ideas a project that started much earlier than half a century ago. It appears that Simmel's two volume book Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft (Introduction to the moral science) (Simmel reprinted 1983a, 1983b) was made known in excerpts in the International Journal of Ethics very soon after it appeared in German in 1892-93 (Simmel 1893), and what has become part of the present book as The Problem of Sociology was previously published in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences in 1895 (Sim- mel 1895). This shows that Simmel was known in America during his life time (1858-1918) when of course many more American scholars than today had the ability to also read him in German, and when George Herbert Mead--to name an example--published a review on Simmel's book on money (Simmel 1907) within months after Simmel's work became available (Mead 1901).
Simmel examined from 1894 to 1908 the fundamental premises relating to a methodical basis for the new discipline of sociology. As earlier publications leading up to the 1908 book we must mention the book of 1890 On Social Differentiation, the article "Das Problem der Soziologie" ("The problem of sociology") in Schmoller's yearbook of 1894 (Simmel 1894), "The problem of sociology" of 1895 (Simmel 1895), the lecture which Robert Park apparently noted down in 1899 (Simmel 1931), and the incorporation of that lecture manuscript in the present book Soziologie (Simmel 1908).
Simmel preferred being spontaneous about picking his topics and had been publishing on a wide variety of subject matters because he was devising and testing a unified method for the humanities. But he acknowledged in a letter to Heinrich Rickert of May 28, 1901 that he felt the obligation to publish a book with the purpose of clarifying what sociology is and which theoretical approach the new discipline ought to take. It took him till 1908 before that book was finally completed, and we have it before us here in English a century later.
Simmel explains in his preface that to clarify the position of sociol- ogy in the context of the other scholarly activities, and to describe its methods and their respective usefulness, is to him a new and important
introduction to the translation by horst j. helle 3
? task that cannot be undertaken in a preface but rather must be tackled in chapter 1 of the book. In it the author wants to free sociology from its vagueness by linking it firmly to a content that is governed by a uni- fying approach. In his short preface Simmel also beseeches his readers to keep chapter 1 in mind when reading the other parts of his book: Unless regarded from the perspective developed in chapter 1, the other texts may appear to be incoherent.
Having given this brief orientation in the preface Simmel turns to The Problem of Sociology as his first chapter. Sociology came about dur- ing the nineteenth century as a reaction to the political power of the masses that established themselves over against the interests of the individual. The new discipline claims to follow up that effective power and to describe it in its consequences within society. Social classes initiate political change not by affecting the significance of individuals but rather by being part of society. As a consequence, humans became conscious of the fact that individual lives are affected by a multitude of influences from the social environment.
As a consequence of the overcoming of the individualistic perspective, Simmel argues that the traditional manner of conducting intellectual enquiry--ascribing all important phenomena to the action of individu- als--had come to an end. A new understanding was beginning to find acceptance that saw the forces of social developments as being rooted in society. The new discipline of sociology, he believed, attempted to take account of this. Simmel gives examples: art, religion, economic life, morality, technological progress, politics and health. These are all areas in which he believes people are beginning to realize that society is not only the target, but also the originator of certain events.
Simmel points out that this then-new way of looking at individual lives has given rise to relativism. It carried with it the temptation to dissolve the individual, and what is essential in itself, into outcomes of exchanges, with the singularity of the person being reduced to an intersection of social influences. He is critical of such relativistic think- ing and throughout his publications has been a strong spokesperson for the uniqueness of the individual and for the dignity of the person. Simmel is also critical of conceiving sociology as the universal disci- pline of human affairs with no distinct borders, like a newly discovered country in which every homeless or uprooted area of research can stake a claim. The fact that the thinking and acting of humans occur in the context of society is to Simmel not a sufficient and acceptable reason for dealing with every aspect of it from a sociological context.
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? Simmel also rejects any definition of sociology as a collective term for the accumulation of certain facts, empty generalizations and abstrac- tions. It is this kind of accumulation of empty concepts detached from concrete life that has brought about the "doom of philosophy" (Sim- mel, 1894: 272) and would mean the same ruin for sociology. Almost prophetically, he anticipates the dead end that certain areas of socio- logical theorization would reach. If sociology is to establish itself as a serious and respectable discipline, it must differentiate itself within the broad field of the social sciences, which includes economics, psychol- ogy and history, and be in a position to emphasize the distinctiveness of its approach.
Having outlined what he rejects, Simmel turns to positively describ- ing what he wants to constitute sociology, what he wants sociology to be. While all the humanities will have to acknowledge that humans are influenced by the fact that they live in interaction with each other, sociology differs from them not by what is under investigation but rather by how it is studied. Sociology then, is a new method, a novel approach that will investigate familiar phenomena from a new angel. For sociol- ogy to be able to establish itself as an independent new discipline, it must raise the concept of society to the level of an overarching idea to which other phenomena will then have to be subordinated. They all, by being viewed in the context of society, and to the extent to which that happens, will then became the object of one discipline, sociology.
The formative processes in society take place as a result of the large number of interactions, to which Simmel assigns the status of 'objec- tive reality. ' This is derived from the epistemological thesis that reality is embodied in relations. And it is indeed the interactions between individuals that constitute life itself. The reality with which social sci- ence is therefore concerned does not only consist of elements which are, as it were, anatomically dissected, lifeless entities; instead we are to perceive life as a unified whole, integrated through interaction. This approach applies to the psychical unity of the individual as well as the unity of society and the other complex social groups that sociology investigates.
Thus, the concept of society is central as well as crucial. It requires the distinction between form and content. However, form and content do not signify separate objects but distinct aspects of what sociology studies. Simmel calls contents those driving forces that move individual persons to interact with others, which by themselves are not yet social. Examples he mentions are impulses, interests, inclinations and psycho-
introduction to the translation by horst j. helle 5
? logical conditions of a person that cause humans to turn toward one another. Other illustrations of content are hunger, love, and religiosity. Forms come about as a result of the interaction that these contents motivate. The individuals create together and for each other social forms in the context of which their wishes can be fulfilled, their desires can be realized. The forms are based on a common interest, like a sect that serves religious needs, and all forms culminate so to speak in the form of forms at the highest level, which is society. The chapters that follow chapter 1 of this book are illustrations of the variety of forms in society.
Simmel expects his readers to grasp that well enough so they can follow him as it were to the next exercise. He points out that identi- cal forms can come about in society on the basis of totally different contents, therefore serving quite disparate purposes. His examples are competition, division of labor, subordination as forms of social behav- ior that we encounter in government offices, in business enterprises, in churches and elsewhere. The contents in these illustrations are political, economic, and religious interests; and diverse as those contents may be, they all have the potential of leading to the same forms, like competi- tion and division of labor.
On the other hand, Simmel also wants his readers to understand that identical content may produce quite divers forms. This is immediately plausible if religiosity is used as an illustration. The religious desire as a content can find its socialized form in a strict sect with near dictatorial leadership, in a liberal association of self-governing faithful, in a hierar- chical church etc. Similarly, the content of hunger resulting in economic interests has created in human history a wide variety of forms of which money (Simmel 1907) is the one that interests Simmel most.
Having clarified what he means by form and content, Simmel returns to the central concept that identifies sociology as a discipline: society. This central and all encompassing idea too, has the two aspects: society as content and society as form. Society as content is the mass of people that comprise it and who of course have a reality beyond the social. To study what is content, however, is not the task of sociology. Other disciplines, like history, psychology, or economics are responsible for that. Sociology then, is the study of society as form, as the highest and overarching form that encompasses all the other forms within it.
Attached to chapter 1 is a long footnote (followed by a shorter one). In it Simmel describes the other chapters of the book as both illustrations--from the perspective of his sociological method--and as
6 introduction to the translation by horst j. helle
? fragments--from the perspective of the organization of the subject matter of the book. He also anticipates the likely critique that his text lacks systematic coherence. The chapter closes with philosophical con- siderations of sociology as a problem and with the fundamental question of how society is possible. This leads Simmel to his first excursus.
Following Kant's investigation about the prerequisites for the existence of nature--"How is nature possible? "--Simmel asks the analogous questions about society. To enquire into the requirements for the exis- tence of society is of course the most thorough method of clarifying what Simmel understands by 'society. ' In answer to the question "How is nature possible? " Kant had sought to identify the forms that make up the essence of the human intellect, since he claimed that nature was a product of intellectual activity anyway. By posing the analogous question for society, Simmel emphasize that his methodical intention is completely different from Kant's.
The qualitative threshold that divides natural philosophy from social philosophy will become clear to anyone who, like Simmel, appreciates that when dealing with data relating to nature, unity is only created in the mind of the researcher and that the objects of research remain unaffected by this. Society, in contrast, consists of conscious individuals, and their intellectual constructs create a unity (in circumstances that are the very object of investigation) not only within the individual but also as an immediate reality of society.
Thus natural philosophy creates and studies processes that do not directly influence nature, whereas social philosophy must take account of processes of the conscious mind that themselves already are, and certainly influence, social reality. There is for Simmel a new transition from nature to society in which epistemology becomes empirical science. By 1908, the year he first published this book, Simmel's epistemology had reached a level that made it possible to adapt easily to a theory of society and henceforth to become sociology. What then are the intel- lectual processes that individuals, as the elements of society, must have undergone in order for society to be possible?
Simmel attempts to outline some of the a priori conditions or forms of socialization that must exist in order to make society possible:
1. The image that one person gains of another person from personal contact is skewed in the direction of generalization using familiar categories. This image cannot be the mirror-like reflection of an unchanging reality, but is constructed in a particular way. That is a
introduction to the translation by horst j. helle 7
? necessary consequence of the fact that complete knowledge of the individuality of others is not accessible to us. For society to be pos- sible, we form generalized impressions of our fellow humans and assign each of them to a general category, despite the singularity of each. It is then possible to designate each person to a particular sphere. Within the spheres of military officers, people of religious faith, civil servants, scholars, and family members, each individual makes a certain assumption in how he or she sees the other person by implying: This person is a member of my social circle.
2. Every individual is not only a part of society but also something else besides. There can be no total social engulfment; the individual must always hold back a part of personal existence from total iden- tification with society. Simmel sees this in such a differentiated and dynamic way as to envisage the different variations of the relationship between both 'parts,' saying of the individual: The nature of one's being social is determined or partly determined by the nature of one's not being completely social. Simmel anticipates his studies and mentions as examples the stranger, the enemy, the criminal, and the poor, which are presented as social forms in other chapters of this book. The quality of interaction of people within social categories would be quite different, were each person to confront every other person only as what one is in a particular category, as representative of the particular social role one happens to be seen in.
3. Society is a combination of dissimilar elements, for even where democratic or socialist forces plan or partially realize an 'equality,' it can only be equality in the sense of being equal in value; there can be no question of homogeneity. In this diversity lies the pre- requisite for cooperation. The a priori principle Simmel is leading up to here is the assumption that each individual can find a place in society, that this ideally appropriate position for the individual in society does actually exist in social reality--this is the condition upon which the social life of the individual is based, and which one might term the universality of individuality. This a priori principle is the basis for the category of occupation (vocation), but is of course not identical with the world of working life.
It may be appropriated to state that Simmel's account of social a prioris does not possess normative status. He also repeatedly mentions that those theoretical fundamentals do not describe social conditions. He thus neither requires that these a prioris should empirically exist,
8 introduction to the translation by horst j. helle
? nor does he claim that they do. If in any concrete individual case the condition of the a priori is not fulfilled, then that particular person is not constituting society. But society as a whole is only possible because people--Simmel calls them society's elements--generally speaking do actually realize these a priori conditions.
As the author reminded his readers in the preface, the methodological directives of chapter 1 must be kept in mind in order to understand the rest of the book. It is not meaningful in this introduction to the translation to attempt a preview of the entire volume, but two important segments are picked here to use them as illustrations of how Simmel applies his method to social forms: They are competition as a form in which humans may interact under conditions of conflict, and the from of strangeness in interaction that becomes the fate and characteristic of Simmel's famous stranger.
The observations on competition are embedded in chapter 4 on con- flict. Simmel chooses his illustrations of this specific form of interaction from different contents of social life: from commerce of course--and that was to be expected--but also from erotic interaction (two men competing for the attention of a women), from religion (two denomi- nations competing for membership of the faithful), and from physical performance in sport. What competitive activities in these various areas of human behavior have in common is the transformation of intentions of the potentially selfish individual into some common good. Simmel sees here advantages for the community in which a particular type of conflict occurs, advantages that only competition can generate.
He expands on the idea that activities undertaken by an individual for purely subjective reasons have the potential of resulting in objec- tive advantages for society as a whole. This is, however, not merely a confirmation of the invisible hand behind the selfish actions of individu- als, it is for Simmel a philosophical principle of a much more general scope. In fact Simmel illustrates his point by referring to examples from religion, erotic pleasure, and scholarship. In each of these domains individualistic interests have the potential of resulting in an increase of the common good. Scholarship, for instance, is a content of the objective culture, and is realized by means of individual curiosity and drive for new insights.
All these advantages can only be achieved provided conflict occurs in the specific form of competition. That means, as Simmel has explained before, that the goal of competition between parties in society is nearly always to attain the approval of one or many third persons. This is
introduction to the translation by horst j. helle 9
? achieved in part by this incredible effect of being in a social relationship with people: it compels the competitor, who finds his fellow competi- tor at his side and only as a result of that really starts competing, to approach and appeal to the potential customer, to connect to the lat- ter, to find out the customer's weaknesses and strengths and to adapt to them. It is the society-creating effect of competition that educates people to be good competitors and thereby to be the producers of valuable services for society through artfully multiplied opportunities to make connections and gain approval. Gradually competition becomes more and more important, because to the extent to which slavery, the mechanical taking control of the human being, ceases, the necessity arises to win the person over via the soul. The more the individual is liberated from traditionalistic external control, the more the individual person must be subjected to competition.
For competition to be able to function in society, it needs to be gov- erned by prescriptions that originate from legal as well as moral sources. From both, there spring imperatives that regulate human conduct toward one another, imperatives that are not social in the conventional sense of the word--yet Simmel calls them sociological. Here Simmel hints at a fundamental conviction of his that ties sociology to ethics. Reality as experienced by humans is by necessity socially constructed, and the great cultural pespectives that humans have at their disposal for such construction include scholarship, art, religion, and indeed an integrated concept of ethics.
The texts in this volume are particularly convincing because the reader knows or senses that Simmel frequently writes as it were from within his own person. He also writes from his own experience in his excursus on the stranger in chapter 9. There is one footnote in the excur- sus that is telling and interesting. It comments on Simmel's observation that frequently strangers are blamed for political unrest or rioting:
But where this is falsely claimed on the part of those who feel attacked, it originates from the tendency of the upper strata to exculpate the lower strata who were in closer relationship with them beforehand. Because while they present the fiction that the rebels were actually not guilty, that they were only incited, that the rebellion did really not originate from them--they exculpate themselves, deny any real reason for the rebellion in the first place.
Here we have a political statement by Simmel that, in addition to the reasons that are often discussed, may have contributed to his career
10 introduction to the translation by horst j. helle
? problems. As is abundantly clear from the footnote to his excursus Der Fremde, Simmel did not identify with "the upper strata" who typically blame aliens for any serious political opposition. He interprets that tendency as the denial of "any real reason for the rebellion. " He indi- cates that there is probably a reason for a rebellion, but that members of the upper strata deny it.
Simmel introduces the stranger using as illustration the European Jew who as businessman would travel long distances, as Simmel's father used to do. "The stranger is a member of the group itself, no different from the poor and the various inner enemies --a member whose immanent presence and membership include at the same time being an outsider and in opposition. " This description probably describes his father's as well as Georg Simmel's own position in Berlin quite well.
Simmel examines the status of minorities in society under the concept of the stranger. He sees a remarkable dynamism in the contact between two groups that are initially distinct, but where each group provides the other with individual aliens; this dynamic process initiates change in both groups with a quite compelling predictability. This idea was adopted by William Isaac Thomas (Thomas, 1923). Simmel describes the "convergence of hitherto separated circles" as follows:
a. Two populations are distinct from one another in important char- acteristics, that is to say that all the members within each group are similar to each other in one particular respect and different from the members of the other group. The requirement of solidarity within each of the two groups initially means that members must suppress personal peculiarities or distinctive features and preferably demonstrate those qualities that show them to be typical or even model representatives of the particular group they belong to. They would thus be required to dress and behave in a uniform manner.
b. The increase in population intensifies competition in the struggle to survive. Under the influence of this increased competition, individu- als gradually develop much more distinctive characteristics of their own. This happens in both of the originally distinctive groups in a similar way, since, according to Simmel, the number of 'human formations' is limited. This fiercer competition thus forces both groups to depart increasingly from their traditional uniformity, so that these various 'human formations' can assert themselves as individual deviations from the group norm.
introduction to the translation by horst j. helle 11
? c. This process of departure from uniformity in a process of increas- ing individualization affects both groups of this theoretical model in the same way, and thus brings about a decrease in the differences between them. Almost totally independent of the original nature of their difference, therefore, there is eventually considerable conver- gence between the two populations.
The stranger plays an important part in this process of social change. Depending on the place of origin, the stranger may come from a faraway country and yet now be close at hand, and thus demonstrates in a quite concrete and practical way that there are different forms of life, not only as a distant, utopian theory but personified in the here- and-now as an alien person. The stranger thus signifies to the native what one might term an 'alternative lifestyle,' to use an unfortunate expression. Of course, the benefits rendered in terms of new life forms as represented by the very presence of the stranger also involves a loss of uniformity, consensus, solidarity and inner unity in the groups. Since the peculiarities of the groups become increasingly worn away, they become so similar that belonging to one group or the other is almost of no matter to the individual. The population becomes individualized and the state of being a stranger applies to everyone.
Simmel describes being a stranger as a particular form of interaction. Wherever and whenever human beings come to encounter one another, they assume that elements of closeness and distance are both present. Set against this general assumption, the interaction between native and alien represents a rather exceptional and particularly interesting case. Thus as far as Simmel is concerned, a stranger is a person from afar who is now close at hand because of coming to stay, although leaving again is possible.
The stranger is not "the wanderer who comes today and goes tomorrow, but the one who comes today and stays tomorrow--the potential wanderer, as it were. . . " The stranger's status in the newly joined social environment is characterized by the fact that one "does not originally belong to it, and that one brings qualities to it that do not and cannot originate from this new environment. " As a potential wanderer, the alien's consciousness and forms of action are not limited to a particular locality. The stranger has no home, so to speak, or, to put it positively, that home is nowhere, in the land of 'Utopia. ' This is why the stranger's thought can be 'U-topian', not tied to any topos--that is to say not bound by any restraints of locality.
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? The advent of the stranger repeatedly shatters the native society's sense of being a universal society.
Self-satisfied society witnesses how the alien who has joined it unexpectedly cannot be forced to acquiesce to its order. This very presence thus makes society see the falsehood of such a claim to universality. In the presence of the stranger, a suppos- edly universal orientation is revealed as locally restricted and provincial. Thus the alien has both a destructive and constructive effect at one and the same time, as a representative of alternative patterns of thought and an initiator of social change. At the same time the alien also pro- vides a new, constructive goal, demonstrating a Utopia towards which the locals can orientate their future efforts. Thus while providing an impulse to innovation, the stranger may also cause offence to members of conservative circles. The stranger is initially and principally an indi- vidual who is not integrated into the host society, and very often one who does not wish for such integration, in many historical instances compensating for the burden that this imposes with a strong belief in predestination or divine election.
In order better to understand the conditions under which Simmel was displaying his unusual creativity as author, it may be helpful to look at his biography. Isaak Simmel, the grandfather of Georg, had lived in Silesia, and there he received, as a mature man, citizenship rights in Breslau around 1840. He was the founder of a successful merchant family. His son Edward, Georg Simmel's father, was born there in 1810. Edward was a merchant himself. During one of his numerous travels, between 1830 and 1835, he converted in Paris from the Jewish faith to Christianity, becoming a Roman Catholic. In 1838 Edward Simmel married Flora Bodenstein, who also came from Breslau. Her family too had converted from Judaism to the Christian faith. Georg Simmel's parents moved to Berlin where Edward Simmel founded the chocolate factory called Felix & Sarotti, which he later apparently was able to sell advantageously (Gassen and Landmann 1958:11; an earlier version of this biography was published in Helle 2001:12-18).
When Edward Simmel died early in 1874, he left a sizeable estate. He was survived by his wife and seven children, of which Georg was the youngest. The early death of the father would have meant a catastrophe in material respects for the family had there not been the inheritance. Julius Friedlaender, a friend of the family and an important music publisher, became the legal guardian of Georg Simmel. Later on, Simmel dedicated his doctoral dissertation to him "with gratitude and love" (Gassen and Landmann 1958:11).
introduction to the translation by horst j. helle 13
? Like his mother, Georg Simmel was baptized as a Protestant. During World War I he left the church, not so much because he wanted to turn his back on the Christian faith, but out of a "need for religious indepen- dence" (Gassen and Landmann 1958:12; see also Becher 1984:3-17). Gertrud Kinel, whom he married in 1890, also came from a religiously mixed family. Georg and Gertrud Simmel had a son, Hans, who became an associate professor of medicine in Jena; he died in the late 1930s as an immigrant in the United States (see Ka? sler 1985).
Georg and Gertrud Simmel's household in Berlin became a cultural center: It was there that Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George, Edmund Husserl, Reinhold and Sabine Lepsius, Heinrich Rickert, Max and Marianne Weber, and others were regular guests. Simmel's presence at the University of Berlin had a great attraction for audiences from quite diverse social circles: Simmel's lectures about problems of logic, ethics, esthetics, sociology of religion, social psychology, and sociology were sometimes acclaimed as cultural events, announced in newspa- pers and occasionally even critiqued. As many colleagues scornfully noted, his audiences included many foreigners, intellectually interested non-academics, students from all disciplines, and especially numerous women. Those who had heard his lectures unanimously told of Simmel's fascinating style of presentation, of his ability to attach almost physi- cal substance to his train of thought, and to make the objects of his lectures appear in the mental eye of the audience, instead of presenting ready-made, seemingly undeniable results as did many of his colleagues (Schnabel 1976:272).
He received his entire schooling and university education, which con- tributed to Simmel's later successes as a university teacher, in Berlin. At the age of 18 he successfully finished his secondary school. He enrolled in the summer semester of 1876 at the University of Berlin, where he studied for five years. Here he attended courses in history under The- odor Mommsen, attended lectures about cross-cultural psychology by Lazarus und Steinthal, and finally studied philosophy as a student of the less-well-known professors Zeller and Harms, who introduced him to the works of Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche; of these, Kant had the strongest influence on Simmel. The importance of the University of Berlin can be inferred from the fact that during his studies Simmel had as his teachers Droysen, von Sybel, von Treitschke, Jordan, and Hermann Grimm (Simmel 1881:33; Tenbruck 1958:588).
During 1881 Simmel applied for permission to take the doctoral examinations. The topic of his dissertation was Psychological-Ethnological
14 introduction to the translation by horst j. helle
? Studies about the Origins of Music. This dissertation was not accepted! According to the available documents and written evaluations, the professors in charge cited as reasons for the rejection the patchwork-like sketchiness and the insufficient precision of the line of reasoning. While admitting that the topic of research was extraordinary, they criticized the manner in which it was carried out--many typographical errors, illegible quotations, etc. In other words, one would have to assume that the dissertation Simmel wrote and submitted was somewhat sketchily done.
On the other hand, shortly before he applied for opening the formal procedures that were surposed to lead to his doctoral degree, he had won a prize with another scholarly work. This successful work carried the title, Presentation and Examination of Several of Kant's Perspectives on the Essence of Matter. The professors who were dissatisfied with his "dissertation" suggested that he should withdraw his work on the origin of music and present in its place this prize-winning work he had written on another occasion. Simmel gladly accepted this friendly advice and he could thus be granted the doctoral degree. The oral doctoral examinations were in the fields of philosophy, history of art, and medieval Italian. The new dissertation became Simmel's first book, published in 1881 in Berlin under the title, The Essence of Matter According to Kant's Physical Monadology (Simmel 1881). Despite the successful completion of his doctoral exams, it is certain that Georg Simmel's degree-process was to be remembered as characterized by extremely unusual events.
Two years after receiving his doctoral degree, Simmel applied to the same faculty of philosophy at the University of Berlin for the formal permission to teach in the area of philosophy. During this application procedure, which should promote him to the rank of an independently teaching faculty member (Privatdozent), even more difficult problems arose. For his postdoctoral dissertation, he had again written a work about Kant, this time about Kant's theory of space and time. The pro- fessors whom the Dean had appointed to judge this dissertation--among them Wilhelm Wundt--turned it down. According to them, this work was not bad from a scientific point of view but it circled around the topic without fully dealing with it. Only after Professors Dilthey and Zeller forcefully came to Simmel's defense was it finally accepted as a Habilitationsschrift.
After the academic trial lecture (Probevorlesung) that Simmel had to deliver, the oral examination of the candidate by the faculty members was marked by an unheard-of and dramatic event; Professor Zeller
introduction to the translation by horst j. helle 15
? remarked that he considered a specific lobe of the brain to be the seat of the human soul, whereupon Simmel--ignoring the social situation he was in--uncompromisingly declared Zeller's point of view to be nonsense. As an immediate consequence, Simmel did not pass this examination on his first try (Schnabel 1976:273).
The extraordinary circumstances with regard to his doctoral and post- doctoral examination procedures presumably left a mark in the memory of the faculty members in Berlin, although in both cases Simmel finally succeeded in obtaining the degree. In addition to anti-Semitism, which is widely mentioned in the literature and which would have played a role especially in the social circles of the Ministries of Cultural Affairs, one can safely assume that these occurrences contributed to preventing a smooth academic career path for Simmel. At any rate, in January of 1885 Simmel passed the postdoctoral examinations in philosophy and thereby became a Privatdozent at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Berlin.
The general style of work and life, which he was to then adopt, has been described in this way:
Simmel used to work in the mornings and evenings, whereas he preferred to see guests and friends in the afternoons. His closest friend was the economist Ignaz Jastrow. Both talked to each other in such a manner that the one hardly listened to what the other said; despite this, they always had the impression of having understood each other well. Simmel's pro- duction came easy to him. For his lectures, he made almost no notes and improvised as he talked. He wrote articles one after the other, without second drafts or corrections, as if he already could see them take form in his mind's eye. (Gassen and Landmann, 1958:13).
In 1898 the faculty to which he belonged as Privatdozent requested that he be promoted to an associate professor (Extraordinarius), which would have been equivalent to giving him a permanent position. (See, however, Coser 1968). The Ministry of Cultural Affairs, however, did not grant this request. In February 1900, the same academic body repeated its attempt to make Georg Simmel an Extraordinarius, this time finally with success. Then: In 1908 the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Heidelberg had an opening to be filled, its second full professorship in philosophy. Following the recommendation of Gothein and Max Weber, Dean Hampe suggested on February 17th to the Ministry of Cultural Affairs in Karlsruhe as a first choice (primo loco) the name of Rickert and as a second choice Simmel.
16 introduction to the translation by horst j. helle
? Although Rickert declined the call for this chair, Georg Simmel did not get the chance to go to Heidelberg. The position remained vacant for a while until a certain Schwarz was called to fill it. Georg Simmel is said to have had an offer to teach in the United States that, probably because of World War I, did not materialize. Finally, in 1914, Simmel got a call to the University of Strassburg (now Strasbourg). As much as he may have been delighted to finally become a full professor, the farewell from Berlin must have been painful for him because he had become part of its cultural and scholarly life.
That Simmel now leaves the university where he had worked for thirty years not only means a loss for it, but also for himself. Such a personal, such an irreplaceable style of teaching as Simmel's has its audience, as in a theater, and one knows: the audience does not necessarily follow the stage director whom it holds in high esteem into a new house. (Ludwig 1914:413).
Simmel belonged to those who are not willing to accept artificially created forms of intellectual discipline as rituals. He made full use of the economic independence that he was fortunate to have, in order to remain intellectually independent as well. This is one of the keys towards understanding the admirable creativity and diversity that char- acterized his scholarly work up until his death. When he felt himself to be incurably ill, he asked his doctor: How long do I still have to live? He needed to know because his most important book still had to be finished. The doctor told him the truth and Simmel withdrew and completed Perspective on Life (Lebensanschauung). He confronted death like an ancient philosopher. "I await the Delian ship," he wrote to a friend. On September 26, 1918, he died from cancer of the liver in Strasbourg, where he had been appointed four years before. Death at this point in time was perhaps a blessing because many former Strasbourg professors fell into utter poverty shortly thereafter, when Alsace became French again (Gassen and Landmann 1958:13).
Following the already mentioned published dissertation about Kant, Simmel started his publishing activity in 1882 with an article in the Journal of Ethno-Psychology and Linguistics (Zeitschrift fu? r Vo? lkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft) under the title, "Psychological and Ethnological Studies about Music" (Simmel 1882). These are the rescued fragments of the dissertation that had been declined. The first book that he pub- lished after his dissertation appeared in 1890 under the title of "On Social Differentiation--Sociological and Psychological Studies (Simmel 1890).
introduction to the translation by horst j. helle 17
? The subtitle expressly signals the claim of presenting a contribution to sociology. Parts of chapter 5 of that book have become part of chapter 6 in this one, as Simmel acknowledges in a footnote here at the beginning of chapter 6.
The title of this translation--as of its original--is Sociology (Soziologie). The subtitle reads: Inquiries into the Construction of Social Forms. The Ger- man original is available in 2008 in two versions: a) the sixth edition as published 1983 by Duncker and Humblot in Berlin, the publisher who has the original copyright to much of Simmel's works, and b) volume 11 in the collected works of Georg Simmel (Gesamtausgabe in 24 Ba? nden) available at Suhrkamp publishers in Frankfurt, Main. The Suhrkamp cloth edition is sold out, but the paperback version can be ordered. There is an obvious interest in Simmel today, and this book has become a classic work that is read today as it was a century ago.
References
Becher, Heribert Josef. 1984. Georg Simmel in Strassburg. Sociologia internationalis 22(5):3-17.
Coser, Lewis. 1968. Georg Simmel's Style of Work: A Contribution to the Sociology of the Sociologist. American Journal of Sociology 63:635-41.
Gassen, Kurt, and Michael Landmann. 1958. Buch des Dankes an Georg Simmel: Briefe, Erinnerungen, Bibliographie. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Helle, Horst J. 2001. Georg Simmel: Introduction to his Theory and Method/Einfu? hrung in seine Theorie und Methode. Mu? nchen and Wien: R. Oldenbourg Verlag.
Ka? sler, Dirk. 1985. Hans Simmel--Zwei Briefe. Lebenslauf an Earle Eubank, 1938. Rekonstruktion einer Biographie aufgrund von Gespra? chen mit Arnold Simmel. In Dirk Ka? sler (ed. ) Soziologische Abenteuer. Earle Eubank besucht europa? ische Soziologen im Sommer 1934. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 182-89. [ET: Sociological Adventures: Earle Eubank's Visits with European Sociologists. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transac- tion, 1991]
Ludwig, Emil. 1914: Simmel auf dem Katheder. Die Schaubu? hne, 10(1):411-13.
Mead, George H. 1901: Book review: Philosophie des Geldes by Georg Simmel. Journal
of Political Economy 9:616-19.
Schnabel, P. -E. 1976. Georg Simmel. In Dirk Ka? sler (ed. ) Klassiker des soziologischen
Denkens. Mu? nchen: C. H. Beck, I, 267-311.
Simmel, Georg. 1881. Das Wesen der Materie nach Kants physischer Monadologie. Inaugural-
Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwu? rde von der Philosophischen Fakulta? t der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universita? t zu Berlin genehmigt und Freitag, den 25. Februar 1881 o? ffentlich verteidigt. Berlin.
----. 1882. Psychologische und ethnologische Studien u? ber Musik (Studies in psychol- ogy and cultural anthropology of music). Zeitschrift fu? r Vo? lkerpsychologie und Sprachwis- senschaft 13:261-305.
----. 1890. U? ber sociale Differenzierung--Sociologische und psychologische Unter- suchungen. Leipzig: Dunker & Humblot.
----. 1893. Moral Deficiencies as Determining Intellectual Functions. Short Excerpt from Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft. International Journal of Ethics 3:490-507.
18 introduction to the translation by horst j. helle
? ----. 1894. Das Problem der Soziologie. Jahrbuch fu? r Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volk- swirtschaft im Deutschen Reich 18:272-77, 1301-07.
----. 1895. The Problem of Sociology.
2 introduction to the translation by horst j. helle
? Wolff (see Simmel 1950) and Bendix, of course, German was a native language. If making an English translation of Simmel's work available was a distinct service to scholarship in 1955, it is certainly so in 2008. Such service has been contributed by Peter Etzkorn, Guy Oakes, Donald Levine, Deena Weinstein, Michael Weinstein and others.
Yet, crossing the language barrier--which in the past was more or less identical with crossing the Atlantic Ocean--was for Simmel's ideas a project that started much earlier than half a century ago. It appears that Simmel's two volume book Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft (Introduction to the moral science) (Simmel reprinted 1983a, 1983b) was made known in excerpts in the International Journal of Ethics very soon after it appeared in German in 1892-93 (Simmel 1893), and what has become part of the present book as The Problem of Sociology was previously published in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences in 1895 (Sim- mel 1895). This shows that Simmel was known in America during his life time (1858-1918) when of course many more American scholars than today had the ability to also read him in German, and when George Herbert Mead--to name an example--published a review on Simmel's book on money (Simmel 1907) within months after Simmel's work became available (Mead 1901).
Simmel examined from 1894 to 1908 the fundamental premises relating to a methodical basis for the new discipline of sociology. As earlier publications leading up to the 1908 book we must mention the book of 1890 On Social Differentiation, the article "Das Problem der Soziologie" ("The problem of sociology") in Schmoller's yearbook of 1894 (Simmel 1894), "The problem of sociology" of 1895 (Simmel 1895), the lecture which Robert Park apparently noted down in 1899 (Simmel 1931), and the incorporation of that lecture manuscript in the present book Soziologie (Simmel 1908).
Simmel preferred being spontaneous about picking his topics and had been publishing on a wide variety of subject matters because he was devising and testing a unified method for the humanities. But he acknowledged in a letter to Heinrich Rickert of May 28, 1901 that he felt the obligation to publish a book with the purpose of clarifying what sociology is and which theoretical approach the new discipline ought to take. It took him till 1908 before that book was finally completed, and we have it before us here in English a century later.
Simmel explains in his preface that to clarify the position of sociol- ogy in the context of the other scholarly activities, and to describe its methods and their respective usefulness, is to him a new and important
introduction to the translation by horst j. helle 3
? task that cannot be undertaken in a preface but rather must be tackled in chapter 1 of the book. In it the author wants to free sociology from its vagueness by linking it firmly to a content that is governed by a uni- fying approach. In his short preface Simmel also beseeches his readers to keep chapter 1 in mind when reading the other parts of his book: Unless regarded from the perspective developed in chapter 1, the other texts may appear to be incoherent.
Having given this brief orientation in the preface Simmel turns to The Problem of Sociology as his first chapter. Sociology came about dur- ing the nineteenth century as a reaction to the political power of the masses that established themselves over against the interests of the individual. The new discipline claims to follow up that effective power and to describe it in its consequences within society. Social classes initiate political change not by affecting the significance of individuals but rather by being part of society. As a consequence, humans became conscious of the fact that individual lives are affected by a multitude of influences from the social environment.
As a consequence of the overcoming of the individualistic perspective, Simmel argues that the traditional manner of conducting intellectual enquiry--ascribing all important phenomena to the action of individu- als--had come to an end. A new understanding was beginning to find acceptance that saw the forces of social developments as being rooted in society. The new discipline of sociology, he believed, attempted to take account of this. Simmel gives examples: art, religion, economic life, morality, technological progress, politics and health. These are all areas in which he believes people are beginning to realize that society is not only the target, but also the originator of certain events.
Simmel points out that this then-new way of looking at individual lives has given rise to relativism. It carried with it the temptation to dissolve the individual, and what is essential in itself, into outcomes of exchanges, with the singularity of the person being reduced to an intersection of social influences. He is critical of such relativistic think- ing and throughout his publications has been a strong spokesperson for the uniqueness of the individual and for the dignity of the person. Simmel is also critical of conceiving sociology as the universal disci- pline of human affairs with no distinct borders, like a newly discovered country in which every homeless or uprooted area of research can stake a claim. The fact that the thinking and acting of humans occur in the context of society is to Simmel not a sufficient and acceptable reason for dealing with every aspect of it from a sociological context.
4 introduction to the translation by horst j. helle
? Simmel also rejects any definition of sociology as a collective term for the accumulation of certain facts, empty generalizations and abstrac- tions. It is this kind of accumulation of empty concepts detached from concrete life that has brought about the "doom of philosophy" (Sim- mel, 1894: 272) and would mean the same ruin for sociology. Almost prophetically, he anticipates the dead end that certain areas of socio- logical theorization would reach. If sociology is to establish itself as a serious and respectable discipline, it must differentiate itself within the broad field of the social sciences, which includes economics, psychol- ogy and history, and be in a position to emphasize the distinctiveness of its approach.
Having outlined what he rejects, Simmel turns to positively describ- ing what he wants to constitute sociology, what he wants sociology to be. While all the humanities will have to acknowledge that humans are influenced by the fact that they live in interaction with each other, sociology differs from them not by what is under investigation but rather by how it is studied. Sociology then, is a new method, a novel approach that will investigate familiar phenomena from a new angel. For sociol- ogy to be able to establish itself as an independent new discipline, it must raise the concept of society to the level of an overarching idea to which other phenomena will then have to be subordinated. They all, by being viewed in the context of society, and to the extent to which that happens, will then became the object of one discipline, sociology.
The formative processes in society take place as a result of the large number of interactions, to which Simmel assigns the status of 'objec- tive reality. ' This is derived from the epistemological thesis that reality is embodied in relations. And it is indeed the interactions between individuals that constitute life itself. The reality with which social sci- ence is therefore concerned does not only consist of elements which are, as it were, anatomically dissected, lifeless entities; instead we are to perceive life as a unified whole, integrated through interaction. This approach applies to the psychical unity of the individual as well as the unity of society and the other complex social groups that sociology investigates.
Thus, the concept of society is central as well as crucial. It requires the distinction between form and content. However, form and content do not signify separate objects but distinct aspects of what sociology studies. Simmel calls contents those driving forces that move individual persons to interact with others, which by themselves are not yet social. Examples he mentions are impulses, interests, inclinations and psycho-
introduction to the translation by horst j. helle 5
? logical conditions of a person that cause humans to turn toward one another. Other illustrations of content are hunger, love, and religiosity. Forms come about as a result of the interaction that these contents motivate. The individuals create together and for each other social forms in the context of which their wishes can be fulfilled, their desires can be realized. The forms are based on a common interest, like a sect that serves religious needs, and all forms culminate so to speak in the form of forms at the highest level, which is society. The chapters that follow chapter 1 of this book are illustrations of the variety of forms in society.
Simmel expects his readers to grasp that well enough so they can follow him as it were to the next exercise. He points out that identi- cal forms can come about in society on the basis of totally different contents, therefore serving quite disparate purposes. His examples are competition, division of labor, subordination as forms of social behav- ior that we encounter in government offices, in business enterprises, in churches and elsewhere. The contents in these illustrations are political, economic, and religious interests; and diverse as those contents may be, they all have the potential of leading to the same forms, like competi- tion and division of labor.
On the other hand, Simmel also wants his readers to understand that identical content may produce quite divers forms. This is immediately plausible if religiosity is used as an illustration. The religious desire as a content can find its socialized form in a strict sect with near dictatorial leadership, in a liberal association of self-governing faithful, in a hierar- chical church etc. Similarly, the content of hunger resulting in economic interests has created in human history a wide variety of forms of which money (Simmel 1907) is the one that interests Simmel most.
Having clarified what he means by form and content, Simmel returns to the central concept that identifies sociology as a discipline: society. This central and all encompassing idea too, has the two aspects: society as content and society as form. Society as content is the mass of people that comprise it and who of course have a reality beyond the social. To study what is content, however, is not the task of sociology. Other disciplines, like history, psychology, or economics are responsible for that. Sociology then, is the study of society as form, as the highest and overarching form that encompasses all the other forms within it.
Attached to chapter 1 is a long footnote (followed by a shorter one). In it Simmel describes the other chapters of the book as both illustrations--from the perspective of his sociological method--and as
6 introduction to the translation by horst j. helle
? fragments--from the perspective of the organization of the subject matter of the book. He also anticipates the likely critique that his text lacks systematic coherence. The chapter closes with philosophical con- siderations of sociology as a problem and with the fundamental question of how society is possible. This leads Simmel to his first excursus.
Following Kant's investigation about the prerequisites for the existence of nature--"How is nature possible? "--Simmel asks the analogous questions about society. To enquire into the requirements for the exis- tence of society is of course the most thorough method of clarifying what Simmel understands by 'society. ' In answer to the question "How is nature possible? " Kant had sought to identify the forms that make up the essence of the human intellect, since he claimed that nature was a product of intellectual activity anyway. By posing the analogous question for society, Simmel emphasize that his methodical intention is completely different from Kant's.
The qualitative threshold that divides natural philosophy from social philosophy will become clear to anyone who, like Simmel, appreciates that when dealing with data relating to nature, unity is only created in the mind of the researcher and that the objects of research remain unaffected by this. Society, in contrast, consists of conscious individuals, and their intellectual constructs create a unity (in circumstances that are the very object of investigation) not only within the individual but also as an immediate reality of society.
Thus natural philosophy creates and studies processes that do not directly influence nature, whereas social philosophy must take account of processes of the conscious mind that themselves already are, and certainly influence, social reality. There is for Simmel a new transition from nature to society in which epistemology becomes empirical science. By 1908, the year he first published this book, Simmel's epistemology had reached a level that made it possible to adapt easily to a theory of society and henceforth to become sociology. What then are the intel- lectual processes that individuals, as the elements of society, must have undergone in order for society to be possible?
Simmel attempts to outline some of the a priori conditions or forms of socialization that must exist in order to make society possible:
1. The image that one person gains of another person from personal contact is skewed in the direction of generalization using familiar categories. This image cannot be the mirror-like reflection of an unchanging reality, but is constructed in a particular way. That is a
introduction to the translation by horst j. helle 7
? necessary consequence of the fact that complete knowledge of the individuality of others is not accessible to us. For society to be pos- sible, we form generalized impressions of our fellow humans and assign each of them to a general category, despite the singularity of each. It is then possible to designate each person to a particular sphere. Within the spheres of military officers, people of religious faith, civil servants, scholars, and family members, each individual makes a certain assumption in how he or she sees the other person by implying: This person is a member of my social circle.
2. Every individual is not only a part of society but also something else besides. There can be no total social engulfment; the individual must always hold back a part of personal existence from total iden- tification with society. Simmel sees this in such a differentiated and dynamic way as to envisage the different variations of the relationship between both 'parts,' saying of the individual: The nature of one's being social is determined or partly determined by the nature of one's not being completely social. Simmel anticipates his studies and mentions as examples the stranger, the enemy, the criminal, and the poor, which are presented as social forms in other chapters of this book. The quality of interaction of people within social categories would be quite different, were each person to confront every other person only as what one is in a particular category, as representative of the particular social role one happens to be seen in.
3. Society is a combination of dissimilar elements, for even where democratic or socialist forces plan or partially realize an 'equality,' it can only be equality in the sense of being equal in value; there can be no question of homogeneity. In this diversity lies the pre- requisite for cooperation. The a priori principle Simmel is leading up to here is the assumption that each individual can find a place in society, that this ideally appropriate position for the individual in society does actually exist in social reality--this is the condition upon which the social life of the individual is based, and which one might term the universality of individuality. This a priori principle is the basis for the category of occupation (vocation), but is of course not identical with the world of working life.
It may be appropriated to state that Simmel's account of social a prioris does not possess normative status. He also repeatedly mentions that those theoretical fundamentals do not describe social conditions. He thus neither requires that these a prioris should empirically exist,
8 introduction to the translation by horst j. helle
? nor does he claim that they do. If in any concrete individual case the condition of the a priori is not fulfilled, then that particular person is not constituting society. But society as a whole is only possible because people--Simmel calls them society's elements--generally speaking do actually realize these a priori conditions.
As the author reminded his readers in the preface, the methodological directives of chapter 1 must be kept in mind in order to understand the rest of the book. It is not meaningful in this introduction to the translation to attempt a preview of the entire volume, but two important segments are picked here to use them as illustrations of how Simmel applies his method to social forms: They are competition as a form in which humans may interact under conditions of conflict, and the from of strangeness in interaction that becomes the fate and characteristic of Simmel's famous stranger.
The observations on competition are embedded in chapter 4 on con- flict. Simmel chooses his illustrations of this specific form of interaction from different contents of social life: from commerce of course--and that was to be expected--but also from erotic interaction (two men competing for the attention of a women), from religion (two denomi- nations competing for membership of the faithful), and from physical performance in sport. What competitive activities in these various areas of human behavior have in common is the transformation of intentions of the potentially selfish individual into some common good. Simmel sees here advantages for the community in which a particular type of conflict occurs, advantages that only competition can generate.
He expands on the idea that activities undertaken by an individual for purely subjective reasons have the potential of resulting in objec- tive advantages for society as a whole. This is, however, not merely a confirmation of the invisible hand behind the selfish actions of individu- als, it is for Simmel a philosophical principle of a much more general scope. In fact Simmel illustrates his point by referring to examples from religion, erotic pleasure, and scholarship. In each of these domains individualistic interests have the potential of resulting in an increase of the common good. Scholarship, for instance, is a content of the objective culture, and is realized by means of individual curiosity and drive for new insights.
All these advantages can only be achieved provided conflict occurs in the specific form of competition. That means, as Simmel has explained before, that the goal of competition between parties in society is nearly always to attain the approval of one or many third persons. This is
introduction to the translation by horst j. helle 9
? achieved in part by this incredible effect of being in a social relationship with people: it compels the competitor, who finds his fellow competi- tor at his side and only as a result of that really starts competing, to approach and appeal to the potential customer, to connect to the lat- ter, to find out the customer's weaknesses and strengths and to adapt to them. It is the society-creating effect of competition that educates people to be good competitors and thereby to be the producers of valuable services for society through artfully multiplied opportunities to make connections and gain approval. Gradually competition becomes more and more important, because to the extent to which slavery, the mechanical taking control of the human being, ceases, the necessity arises to win the person over via the soul. The more the individual is liberated from traditionalistic external control, the more the individual person must be subjected to competition.
For competition to be able to function in society, it needs to be gov- erned by prescriptions that originate from legal as well as moral sources. From both, there spring imperatives that regulate human conduct toward one another, imperatives that are not social in the conventional sense of the word--yet Simmel calls them sociological. Here Simmel hints at a fundamental conviction of his that ties sociology to ethics. Reality as experienced by humans is by necessity socially constructed, and the great cultural pespectives that humans have at their disposal for such construction include scholarship, art, religion, and indeed an integrated concept of ethics.
The texts in this volume are particularly convincing because the reader knows or senses that Simmel frequently writes as it were from within his own person. He also writes from his own experience in his excursus on the stranger in chapter 9. There is one footnote in the excur- sus that is telling and interesting. It comments on Simmel's observation that frequently strangers are blamed for political unrest or rioting:
But where this is falsely claimed on the part of those who feel attacked, it originates from the tendency of the upper strata to exculpate the lower strata who were in closer relationship with them beforehand. Because while they present the fiction that the rebels were actually not guilty, that they were only incited, that the rebellion did really not originate from them--they exculpate themselves, deny any real reason for the rebellion in the first place.
Here we have a political statement by Simmel that, in addition to the reasons that are often discussed, may have contributed to his career
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? problems. As is abundantly clear from the footnote to his excursus Der Fremde, Simmel did not identify with "the upper strata" who typically blame aliens for any serious political opposition. He interprets that tendency as the denial of "any real reason for the rebellion. " He indi- cates that there is probably a reason for a rebellion, but that members of the upper strata deny it.
Simmel introduces the stranger using as illustration the European Jew who as businessman would travel long distances, as Simmel's father used to do. "The stranger is a member of the group itself, no different from the poor and the various inner enemies --a member whose immanent presence and membership include at the same time being an outsider and in opposition. " This description probably describes his father's as well as Georg Simmel's own position in Berlin quite well.
Simmel examines the status of minorities in society under the concept of the stranger. He sees a remarkable dynamism in the contact between two groups that are initially distinct, but where each group provides the other with individual aliens; this dynamic process initiates change in both groups with a quite compelling predictability. This idea was adopted by William Isaac Thomas (Thomas, 1923). Simmel describes the "convergence of hitherto separated circles" as follows:
a. Two populations are distinct from one another in important char- acteristics, that is to say that all the members within each group are similar to each other in one particular respect and different from the members of the other group. The requirement of solidarity within each of the two groups initially means that members must suppress personal peculiarities or distinctive features and preferably demonstrate those qualities that show them to be typical or even model representatives of the particular group they belong to. They would thus be required to dress and behave in a uniform manner.
b. The increase in population intensifies competition in the struggle to survive. Under the influence of this increased competition, individu- als gradually develop much more distinctive characteristics of their own. This happens in both of the originally distinctive groups in a similar way, since, according to Simmel, the number of 'human formations' is limited. This fiercer competition thus forces both groups to depart increasingly from their traditional uniformity, so that these various 'human formations' can assert themselves as individual deviations from the group norm.
introduction to the translation by horst j. helle 11
? c. This process of departure from uniformity in a process of increas- ing individualization affects both groups of this theoretical model in the same way, and thus brings about a decrease in the differences between them. Almost totally independent of the original nature of their difference, therefore, there is eventually considerable conver- gence between the two populations.
The stranger plays an important part in this process of social change. Depending on the place of origin, the stranger may come from a faraway country and yet now be close at hand, and thus demonstrates in a quite concrete and practical way that there are different forms of life, not only as a distant, utopian theory but personified in the here- and-now as an alien person. The stranger thus signifies to the native what one might term an 'alternative lifestyle,' to use an unfortunate expression. Of course, the benefits rendered in terms of new life forms as represented by the very presence of the stranger also involves a loss of uniformity, consensus, solidarity and inner unity in the groups. Since the peculiarities of the groups become increasingly worn away, they become so similar that belonging to one group or the other is almost of no matter to the individual. The population becomes individualized and the state of being a stranger applies to everyone.
Simmel describes being a stranger as a particular form of interaction. Wherever and whenever human beings come to encounter one another, they assume that elements of closeness and distance are both present. Set against this general assumption, the interaction between native and alien represents a rather exceptional and particularly interesting case. Thus as far as Simmel is concerned, a stranger is a person from afar who is now close at hand because of coming to stay, although leaving again is possible.
The stranger is not "the wanderer who comes today and goes tomorrow, but the one who comes today and stays tomorrow--the potential wanderer, as it were. . . " The stranger's status in the newly joined social environment is characterized by the fact that one "does not originally belong to it, and that one brings qualities to it that do not and cannot originate from this new environment. " As a potential wanderer, the alien's consciousness and forms of action are not limited to a particular locality. The stranger has no home, so to speak, or, to put it positively, that home is nowhere, in the land of 'Utopia. ' This is why the stranger's thought can be 'U-topian', not tied to any topos--that is to say not bound by any restraints of locality.
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? The advent of the stranger repeatedly shatters the native society's sense of being a universal society.
Self-satisfied society witnesses how the alien who has joined it unexpectedly cannot be forced to acquiesce to its order. This very presence thus makes society see the falsehood of such a claim to universality. In the presence of the stranger, a suppos- edly universal orientation is revealed as locally restricted and provincial. Thus the alien has both a destructive and constructive effect at one and the same time, as a representative of alternative patterns of thought and an initiator of social change. At the same time the alien also pro- vides a new, constructive goal, demonstrating a Utopia towards which the locals can orientate their future efforts. Thus while providing an impulse to innovation, the stranger may also cause offence to members of conservative circles. The stranger is initially and principally an indi- vidual who is not integrated into the host society, and very often one who does not wish for such integration, in many historical instances compensating for the burden that this imposes with a strong belief in predestination or divine election.
In order better to understand the conditions under which Simmel was displaying his unusual creativity as author, it may be helpful to look at his biography. Isaak Simmel, the grandfather of Georg, had lived in Silesia, and there he received, as a mature man, citizenship rights in Breslau around 1840. He was the founder of a successful merchant family. His son Edward, Georg Simmel's father, was born there in 1810. Edward was a merchant himself. During one of his numerous travels, between 1830 and 1835, he converted in Paris from the Jewish faith to Christianity, becoming a Roman Catholic. In 1838 Edward Simmel married Flora Bodenstein, who also came from Breslau. Her family too had converted from Judaism to the Christian faith. Georg Simmel's parents moved to Berlin where Edward Simmel founded the chocolate factory called Felix & Sarotti, which he later apparently was able to sell advantageously (Gassen and Landmann 1958:11; an earlier version of this biography was published in Helle 2001:12-18).
When Edward Simmel died early in 1874, he left a sizeable estate. He was survived by his wife and seven children, of which Georg was the youngest. The early death of the father would have meant a catastrophe in material respects for the family had there not been the inheritance. Julius Friedlaender, a friend of the family and an important music publisher, became the legal guardian of Georg Simmel. Later on, Simmel dedicated his doctoral dissertation to him "with gratitude and love" (Gassen and Landmann 1958:11).
introduction to the translation by horst j. helle 13
? Like his mother, Georg Simmel was baptized as a Protestant. During World War I he left the church, not so much because he wanted to turn his back on the Christian faith, but out of a "need for religious indepen- dence" (Gassen and Landmann 1958:12; see also Becher 1984:3-17). Gertrud Kinel, whom he married in 1890, also came from a religiously mixed family. Georg and Gertrud Simmel had a son, Hans, who became an associate professor of medicine in Jena; he died in the late 1930s as an immigrant in the United States (see Ka? sler 1985).
Georg and Gertrud Simmel's household in Berlin became a cultural center: It was there that Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George, Edmund Husserl, Reinhold and Sabine Lepsius, Heinrich Rickert, Max and Marianne Weber, and others were regular guests. Simmel's presence at the University of Berlin had a great attraction for audiences from quite diverse social circles: Simmel's lectures about problems of logic, ethics, esthetics, sociology of religion, social psychology, and sociology were sometimes acclaimed as cultural events, announced in newspa- pers and occasionally even critiqued. As many colleagues scornfully noted, his audiences included many foreigners, intellectually interested non-academics, students from all disciplines, and especially numerous women. Those who had heard his lectures unanimously told of Simmel's fascinating style of presentation, of his ability to attach almost physi- cal substance to his train of thought, and to make the objects of his lectures appear in the mental eye of the audience, instead of presenting ready-made, seemingly undeniable results as did many of his colleagues (Schnabel 1976:272).
He received his entire schooling and university education, which con- tributed to Simmel's later successes as a university teacher, in Berlin. At the age of 18 he successfully finished his secondary school. He enrolled in the summer semester of 1876 at the University of Berlin, where he studied for five years. Here he attended courses in history under The- odor Mommsen, attended lectures about cross-cultural psychology by Lazarus und Steinthal, and finally studied philosophy as a student of the less-well-known professors Zeller and Harms, who introduced him to the works of Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche; of these, Kant had the strongest influence on Simmel. The importance of the University of Berlin can be inferred from the fact that during his studies Simmel had as his teachers Droysen, von Sybel, von Treitschke, Jordan, and Hermann Grimm (Simmel 1881:33; Tenbruck 1958:588).
During 1881 Simmel applied for permission to take the doctoral examinations. The topic of his dissertation was Psychological-Ethnological
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? Studies about the Origins of Music. This dissertation was not accepted! According to the available documents and written evaluations, the professors in charge cited as reasons for the rejection the patchwork-like sketchiness and the insufficient precision of the line of reasoning. While admitting that the topic of research was extraordinary, they criticized the manner in which it was carried out--many typographical errors, illegible quotations, etc. In other words, one would have to assume that the dissertation Simmel wrote and submitted was somewhat sketchily done.
On the other hand, shortly before he applied for opening the formal procedures that were surposed to lead to his doctoral degree, he had won a prize with another scholarly work. This successful work carried the title, Presentation and Examination of Several of Kant's Perspectives on the Essence of Matter. The professors who were dissatisfied with his "dissertation" suggested that he should withdraw his work on the origin of music and present in its place this prize-winning work he had written on another occasion. Simmel gladly accepted this friendly advice and he could thus be granted the doctoral degree. The oral doctoral examinations were in the fields of philosophy, history of art, and medieval Italian. The new dissertation became Simmel's first book, published in 1881 in Berlin under the title, The Essence of Matter According to Kant's Physical Monadology (Simmel 1881). Despite the successful completion of his doctoral exams, it is certain that Georg Simmel's degree-process was to be remembered as characterized by extremely unusual events.
Two years after receiving his doctoral degree, Simmel applied to the same faculty of philosophy at the University of Berlin for the formal permission to teach in the area of philosophy. During this application procedure, which should promote him to the rank of an independently teaching faculty member (Privatdozent), even more difficult problems arose. For his postdoctoral dissertation, he had again written a work about Kant, this time about Kant's theory of space and time. The pro- fessors whom the Dean had appointed to judge this dissertation--among them Wilhelm Wundt--turned it down. According to them, this work was not bad from a scientific point of view but it circled around the topic without fully dealing with it. Only after Professors Dilthey and Zeller forcefully came to Simmel's defense was it finally accepted as a Habilitationsschrift.
After the academic trial lecture (Probevorlesung) that Simmel had to deliver, the oral examination of the candidate by the faculty members was marked by an unheard-of and dramatic event; Professor Zeller
introduction to the translation by horst j. helle 15
? remarked that he considered a specific lobe of the brain to be the seat of the human soul, whereupon Simmel--ignoring the social situation he was in--uncompromisingly declared Zeller's point of view to be nonsense. As an immediate consequence, Simmel did not pass this examination on his first try (Schnabel 1976:273).
The extraordinary circumstances with regard to his doctoral and post- doctoral examination procedures presumably left a mark in the memory of the faculty members in Berlin, although in both cases Simmel finally succeeded in obtaining the degree. In addition to anti-Semitism, which is widely mentioned in the literature and which would have played a role especially in the social circles of the Ministries of Cultural Affairs, one can safely assume that these occurrences contributed to preventing a smooth academic career path for Simmel. At any rate, in January of 1885 Simmel passed the postdoctoral examinations in philosophy and thereby became a Privatdozent at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Berlin.
The general style of work and life, which he was to then adopt, has been described in this way:
Simmel used to work in the mornings and evenings, whereas he preferred to see guests and friends in the afternoons. His closest friend was the economist Ignaz Jastrow. Both talked to each other in such a manner that the one hardly listened to what the other said; despite this, they always had the impression of having understood each other well. Simmel's pro- duction came easy to him. For his lectures, he made almost no notes and improvised as he talked. He wrote articles one after the other, without second drafts or corrections, as if he already could see them take form in his mind's eye. (Gassen and Landmann, 1958:13).
In 1898 the faculty to which he belonged as Privatdozent requested that he be promoted to an associate professor (Extraordinarius), which would have been equivalent to giving him a permanent position. (See, however, Coser 1968). The Ministry of Cultural Affairs, however, did not grant this request. In February 1900, the same academic body repeated its attempt to make Georg Simmel an Extraordinarius, this time finally with success. Then: In 1908 the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Heidelberg had an opening to be filled, its second full professorship in philosophy. Following the recommendation of Gothein and Max Weber, Dean Hampe suggested on February 17th to the Ministry of Cultural Affairs in Karlsruhe as a first choice (primo loco) the name of Rickert and as a second choice Simmel.
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? Although Rickert declined the call for this chair, Georg Simmel did not get the chance to go to Heidelberg. The position remained vacant for a while until a certain Schwarz was called to fill it. Georg Simmel is said to have had an offer to teach in the United States that, probably because of World War I, did not materialize. Finally, in 1914, Simmel got a call to the University of Strassburg (now Strasbourg). As much as he may have been delighted to finally become a full professor, the farewell from Berlin must have been painful for him because he had become part of its cultural and scholarly life.
That Simmel now leaves the university where he had worked for thirty years not only means a loss for it, but also for himself. Such a personal, such an irreplaceable style of teaching as Simmel's has its audience, as in a theater, and one knows: the audience does not necessarily follow the stage director whom it holds in high esteem into a new house. (Ludwig 1914:413).
Simmel belonged to those who are not willing to accept artificially created forms of intellectual discipline as rituals. He made full use of the economic independence that he was fortunate to have, in order to remain intellectually independent as well. This is one of the keys towards understanding the admirable creativity and diversity that char- acterized his scholarly work up until his death. When he felt himself to be incurably ill, he asked his doctor: How long do I still have to live? He needed to know because his most important book still had to be finished. The doctor told him the truth and Simmel withdrew and completed Perspective on Life (Lebensanschauung). He confronted death like an ancient philosopher. "I await the Delian ship," he wrote to a friend. On September 26, 1918, he died from cancer of the liver in Strasbourg, where he had been appointed four years before. Death at this point in time was perhaps a blessing because many former Strasbourg professors fell into utter poverty shortly thereafter, when Alsace became French again (Gassen and Landmann 1958:13).
Following the already mentioned published dissertation about Kant, Simmel started his publishing activity in 1882 with an article in the Journal of Ethno-Psychology and Linguistics (Zeitschrift fu? r Vo? lkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft) under the title, "Psychological and Ethnological Studies about Music" (Simmel 1882). These are the rescued fragments of the dissertation that had been declined. The first book that he pub- lished after his dissertation appeared in 1890 under the title of "On Social Differentiation--Sociological and Psychological Studies (Simmel 1890).
introduction to the translation by horst j. helle 17
? The subtitle expressly signals the claim of presenting a contribution to sociology. Parts of chapter 5 of that book have become part of chapter 6 in this one, as Simmel acknowledges in a footnote here at the beginning of chapter 6.
The title of this translation--as of its original--is Sociology (Soziologie). The subtitle reads: Inquiries into the Construction of Social Forms. The Ger- man original is available in 2008 in two versions: a) the sixth edition as published 1983 by Duncker and Humblot in Berlin, the publisher who has the original copyright to much of Simmel's works, and b) volume 11 in the collected works of Georg Simmel (Gesamtausgabe in 24 Ba? nden) available at Suhrkamp publishers in Frankfurt, Main. The Suhrkamp cloth edition is sold out, but the paperback version can be ordered. There is an obvious interest in Simmel today, and this book has become a classic work that is read today as it was a century ago.
References
Becher, Heribert Josef. 1984. Georg Simmel in Strassburg. Sociologia internationalis 22(5):3-17.
Coser, Lewis. 1968. Georg Simmel's Style of Work: A Contribution to the Sociology of the Sociologist. American Journal of Sociology 63:635-41.
Gassen, Kurt, and Michael Landmann. 1958. Buch des Dankes an Georg Simmel: Briefe, Erinnerungen, Bibliographie. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Helle, Horst J. 2001. Georg Simmel: Introduction to his Theory and Method/Einfu? hrung in seine Theorie und Methode. Mu? nchen and Wien: R. Oldenbourg Verlag.
Ka? sler, Dirk. 1985. Hans Simmel--Zwei Briefe. Lebenslauf an Earle Eubank, 1938. Rekonstruktion einer Biographie aufgrund von Gespra? chen mit Arnold Simmel. In Dirk Ka? sler (ed. ) Soziologische Abenteuer. Earle Eubank besucht europa? ische Soziologen im Sommer 1934. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 182-89. [ET: Sociological Adventures: Earle Eubank's Visits with European Sociologists. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transac- tion, 1991]
Ludwig, Emil. 1914: Simmel auf dem Katheder. Die Schaubu? hne, 10(1):411-13.
Mead, George H. 1901: Book review: Philosophie des Geldes by Georg Simmel. Journal
of Political Economy 9:616-19.
Schnabel, P. -E. 1976. Georg Simmel. In Dirk Ka? sler (ed. ) Klassiker des soziologischen
Denkens. Mu? nchen: C. H. Beck, I, 267-311.
Simmel, Georg. 1881. Das Wesen der Materie nach Kants physischer Monadologie. Inaugural-
Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwu? rde von der Philosophischen Fakulta? t der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universita? t zu Berlin genehmigt und Freitag, den 25. Februar 1881 o? ffentlich verteidigt. Berlin.
----. 1882. Psychologische und ethnologische Studien u? ber Musik (Studies in psychol- ogy and cultural anthropology of music). Zeitschrift fu? r Vo? lkerpsychologie und Sprachwis- senschaft 13:261-305.
----. 1890. U? ber sociale Differenzierung--Sociologische und psychologische Unter- suchungen. Leipzig: Dunker & Humblot.
----. 1893. Moral Deficiencies as Determining Intellectual Functions. Short Excerpt from Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft. International Journal of Ethics 3:490-507.
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? ----. 1894. Das Problem der Soziologie. Jahrbuch fu? r Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volk- swirtschaft im Deutschen Reich 18:272-77, 1301-07.
----. 1895. The Problem of Sociology.
