No More Learning

How little the conditions of the matter required these restrictions was, however, very soon revealed by their coming breakup; it was simply the, on the one hand, abstract, on the other hand, personal principle of equality that prohibited the competitive from of production. No further examples are needed here. The alternative that determines the countless provinces and individual cases of human behavior--whether to fight for a value or divide it amicably--leads here to that particular form of conflict, competition; since the parties do not wrestle directly with one another here but for the success of their achievements with a third entity, the division of the value consists then in the voluntary equivalence of these achievements. Moreover, the resolution of this does not depend entirely on the calculation of probability alone, which will demonstrate
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? at one time the gamble of competition oscillating between everything and nothing, at another the more certain equal achievement but one more limited than the greater one; in fact the mindset of the social epoch or the temperament of the individuals, often enough beyond all reckoning of reason, will decide for the one or the other, and certainly be able from this intuitive and thus general character of the decision to extend the renunciation of competition there too where the matter itself does not require it at all.
Other modifications of social interaction manifest themselves as soon as the renunciation does not concern competition as such but, during its continued existence, only certain of its means. It is a matter here of stages of development in which the absolute competition of the animal- istic struggle for existence turns into relative competition; i. e. , in which all those frictions and paralyzing of forces alike that are not needed for the purposes of competition are gradually eliminated. Not only the yield but also the intensity of competition remains untouched; the lat- ter is supposed to be really molded only from the yield and deviations therefrom diverted into channels in which the forces of both parties are reduced and thereby also subjective as well as the objective efficiency. This produces two forms that one can identify as the inter-individual and the supra-individual limitation of the means of competition. The one occurs where a number of competitors voluntarily come to an agreement to forego specific practices with which one could outdo the others: the renunciation by the one is here only good so long as the other adheres to it; thus the settlement of the retail book sellers of a location to grant no more than 10 or 5 percent or no discount at all on the selling prices; or an agreement of shop owners to close the businesses at 9 or 8 o'clock, etc. What is decisive here is only egoistic utility; the one forgoes the indicated means of gaining customers, know- ing that the other would immediately follow suit, and the additional profit they would have shared would not have equaled the additional expense they would have also shared. What is here relinquished is thus not actually competition--which always requires some inequality--but just such points in which no competition is possible because equality for all competitors derives directly from them. This type of form, although until now not purely realized all that frequently, is nevertheless of great significance because it shows as a unification of competitors on the field of competition itself to be possible, without this somehow diminishing competition; their antagonism is driven by this demonstration of a point of concurrence of interests all the more intensively on the issue, to
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? where it can play out purely, and this inter-individual limitation of the means can continue indefinitely to unburden competition of all that is not really competition because it mutually balances itself without effect. Since the means of competition consists for the most part of advantages that are offered to a third, so in like measure the third will have to bear the costs of the agreement over the renunciation regarding it--in the economy, of course, the consumer; indeed the road to cartelization is thereby directly taken. Once it has been really understood that one can save oneself from the practices of competition in this and many such ways without harm, as long as the competitors do the same, this can have, besides the already emphasized consequence of an ever more intense and pure competition, just the opposite consequence: that one sets in motion the arrangement to the point of abolishing competition altogether, to the point of an organization of firms that now not only no longer fight over the market but maintain it according to a common plan. This renunciation of competition has a whole other sociologi- cal meaning than that accentuated in the guild: because it leaves the individuals independent, their equality required the reduction even of the most capable to that level on which the weakest could also compete with them; this will be the inevitable form in which the independent elements are able to accomplish a mechanical equality. With carteliza- tion, however, it is from the beginning not at all the situation of the subject, but the objective purposiveness of the business that is the starting point. Therein the limitation of the means of competition that removes everything not serving the purposes of competition and which ultimately limits as well the still remaining character of competition now reaches its climax, because the thorough domination of the market and the dependence of consumers won thereby makes competition as such superfluous.
Finally there occurs the limitation of the means of competition that leaves the continuation of competition itself untouched by authorities that stand entirely beyond the competitors and their spheres of inter- est: by law and morality. The law denies to competition in general only those means that are also forbidden among humans in their other relationships: acts of violence and property damage, fraud and slander, threat and forgery. Otherwise, competition is that antagonism whose forms and consequences are affected relatively less by legal prohibitions than the other forms of conflict. Penal law would immediately take action if one would destroy the economic, social, familial, indeed even physical existence of someone through direct attack of that sort, as is
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? possible to do through competition by simply erecting a factory next to someone else's, installing a personnel office next to someone else's, sub- mitting a prize essay alongside someone else's. Why the goods brought to ruin through competition are not protected from it appears quite clear indeed. First of all, because competitors lack any dolus. 19 None of them wants to gain something other than by one's own achievement, and the other thereby going under is a side-effect, fully irrelevant to the victor, albeit perhaps regrettable. Moreover, because the element of actual violation is absent from competition, defeat as well as victory for that matter is simply the apt and suitable expression of the mutual measure of power: victors have available the exact same chances as the defeated, and the latter have to chalk up their ruin exclusively to their own deficiencies. As for the former, dolus directed against the person of the harmed is lacking, just as in a great number of the punishable offenses, in none of which what emerges from revenge, malice, or cru- elty appears: the bankrupt who set capital assets aside simply want to save for themselves a bit of property, and the fact that the claims of their creditors are thereby damaged may be to the bankrupt themselves a regrettable conditio sine qua non;20 those who trek through the streets at night yelling are punished for disturbing the peace even when they only want to give expression to their high-spirited mood and gave no thought at all to the fact that they thereby rob others of their night's rest. Thus at least to some extent negligence would occasion responsi- bility on the part of those who ruin another person through their bid for something. And the exculpation through the similarity of the cir- cumstances, the voluntariness of the whole action, and the justice with which the success of competition follows the strengths deployed--this would likewise argue well against the punishment of almost all types of duels. If in a brawl begun by two sides voluntarily and under identical circumstances, one side is seriously injured, punishing the other side is no more logically consistent than it would be to penalize a merchant who has driven one's competitor into the ground with fair methods. That this does not occur is due in part to legally technical grounds, but mainly doubtless socially utilitarian, in that the society does not like to forego the advantages that competition between individuals brings to it and that outweigh by far the downside that it suffers through the
19 Latin: malice. Simmel is referring to the legal standard of malicious intent--ed.
20 Latin: necessary condition--ed.
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? occasional destruction of individuals in the competitive struggle. This is the obvious provision in the legal principle of the code civil, on which the entire juristic treatment of concurrence de? loyale is built: 21
Everything someone does that causes another damage obligates the former to make reparations to the extent of the fault that produces it. 22
Society would not grant that an individual could harm another indi- vidual directly and simply for one's own advantage in the manner just described; but it allows it because this damage occurs in an indirect way on account of an objective achievement that is valuable for an indeterminate number of individuals--just as our state would not also allow officers' duels if in this case the personal interest of one individual alone actually required the annihilation of another and the inner coherence of the officer corps did not draw a strength from this concept of honor, the advantage of which for the state outweighs the sacrifice of the individual.
French and German legislation admittedly has for some time now proceeded to limit the means of competition in the interest of the competitors themselves. The basic intention for this is to protect the individual merchant against such advantages of one's competitors that could be acquired by morally improper means. Thus, for example, all advertisements are prohibited that are supposed to lead the buyer through deceptive offers to the mistaken belief that this merchant offers more advantageous terms than any other--and if in fact an overcharging of the public is indeed not thereby occurring. Moreover it is forbidden to create an illusion on the part of the buyer by the presentation of the product that it is not otherwise obtainable for the same price--even if the quantity actually sold is for all intents and purposes the usual amount and the price is fair. A third type: a familiar firm with a large clientele can then prevent anyone of the same name from bringing to market a similar brand as though under its name when it can lead the customers thereby to think that it is the brand of that firm--no matter whether the product offered under that name is better or worse than the original.
What interests us here about these provisions is the apparently entirely new viewpoint, to protect the competitors who spurn unsavory methods
21 French for civil code; concurrence de? loyale is unfair competition--ed.
22 French in Simmel's text: Tout fait quelconque de l'homme qui cause a` autrui un dommage
oblige celui par la faute duquel il est arrive? a` le re? parer--ed.
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? of winning customers from those who would use them; while otherwise all restrictions of business practices are meant to impede cheating the public, this is no motive in the laws in question, and its absence does not hinder their application in any way. Meanwhile if one looks closely, these prohibitions are nothing other than explications of the longest existing fraud clauses; the nature of this explication is not only of legal but also of form-sociological interest. German criminal law punishes it as fraud if someone, in order to procure a pecuniary advantage, "thereby damages the welfare of another by leading the other into error by way of deception through false pretenses. " This is now thus impartially understood as though the error would have to be provoked in the same person whose welfare is supposed to be damaged. However, the wording of the law contains nothing about this identity; and while it therefore also allows it to be prosecuted as fraud if the welfare of A is thereby damaged in that an error has been evoked in a B--it includes those cases of unfair competition entirely. For these mean that a misapprehen- sion is evoked in the public--without it suffering a disadvantage--and thereby the honest competitor is injured in equity--without the false pretenses deceiving that party. Whoever lies to the buyer, saying there is a clearance sale because of a death, perhaps does no injury if the price is about the same steady one as that of the competitor, but this injures the competitor by possibly taking customers away who would have remained faithful without the dishonest enticement. Thus the law is certainly no limitation of competitive means as such, no specific protection of competitors from each other. The behavior of society vis- a`-vis competition is not captured by it now prescribing this limitation of its means, but, on the contrary, by it neglecting it for so long even though it is nothing if not an always logically needed application of valid criminal law. To this we can add the following: If the motives behind these laws everywhere emphasize that they impose no restric- tions whatsoever on honest competition but would hinder only what contravenes true competition conducted in good faith, then one can for our present purposes express it more sharply as their eliminating from competition that which in the sociological sense is just not com- petition. For this latter is indeed an attainment thoroughly fought out objectively, which benefits third parties. Those objective social criteria, however, are contravened and displaced as soon as means of advertising, enticement, deceit are resorted to, which have absolutely no material benefit but represent a kind of extra indirect, purely egoistic struggle, not one directed in a socially useful manner. What jurisprudence identifies
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? as 'honest' competition is taken precisely to be whatever conforms to that pure concept of competition. An annotation of the German law expressly excludes the following case from it: That someone place a huge competing business next to a clothing shop and sell at cutthroat prices, made known through showy advertisements, until the small merchant has been destroyed. Here is presented the most brutal violation, and the relationship between the two competitors, viewed individualisti- cally, is certainly nothing other than that between a strong robber and a weak victim. However, from the social standpoint, it is genuine, i. e. , competition exclusively conducted through the object and the third party--because the advertising, as long as it communicates only truth, serves the public. But what contained, for example, misleading state- ments, although they may do no harm, would still not be something useful, and from that point onward the protection of the competitors against ruin can therefore enter in; indeed, it even must in order to keep the competing powers entirely focused on the pure, i. e. , the socially utilitarian form of competition. Thus even the specific limitations that the law places on the means of competition are revealed precisely as a limitation of the limitations, which competition undergoes through merely subjectively individualistic practices.
All the more should one believe that here the law, as is often the case, would be complemented by morality, which, however, is not bound to social utility but rather repeatedly regulates human behavior according to norms that lie within or beyond the interests of society: according to the impulses of an immediate feeling that simply seeks peace even with oneself and finds this often precisely in the opposition to the claims of society--as in accordance with metaphysical and religious ideas that sometimes even include these claims, sometimes, however, altogether also reject them as historically limited contingencies. From both sources flow behavioral imperatives from person to person that are not social in the usual sense--albeit sociological--and by virtue of them the whole of human nature now only finds itself once again in the ideal form of the ought. That ascetic, altruistic, fatalistic morals reduce competition as much as possible, together with its means, requires no comment. Typical European morality, however, conducts itself more tolerantly towards competition than towards many other types of antagonism. This has to do with a specific combination of character traits that con- stitutes competition. On the one hand, as moral beings we hesitate all the less to employ our strength against an opponent; we are conscious of an ever further distance between our subjective personality and our
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? resolute performance called forth in struggle. Where immediate personal strengths wrestle against one another, we feel obliged rather to resort to respect and reservation, less able to avoid the appeal to compassion; indeed, a type of modesty sometimes hinders us in immediate antago- nism from letting loose our energies entirely without reservation, from revealing all our cards, from involving our whole being in a struggle in which personality stands against personality. With struggles that are driven by objective results these ethical and aesthetic reservations fall by the wayside. Consequently, one can compete with personalities with whom one would altogether avoid a personal controversy. By turning to the object, competition receives that cruelty of all objectivity that exists not from a desire for others' suffering but precisely in the subjective factors ruling out calculation. This indifference towards the subjective, as characterizes logic, law, and the money economy, allows personalities who are absolutely not cruel, nevertheless, to perpetrate all the severities of competition--and with a clear conscience, indeed not wishing evil. While here then the retreat of the personality behind the objectivity of the system unburdens the moral consciousness, the very same effect is also achieved through the immediate oppositional element of com- petition, through the exact proportionality with which the outcome of competition corresponds to the peculiar strengths called forth from the subjects. Apart from deviations that have nothing to do with the nature of competition but stem from their interweaving with other fates and relationships, the outcome of competition is the unerring indicator of the personal ability that has been objectified in accomplishment. What benefits us at the cost of others through the favor of people or conjunctures of coincidence or deeply foreordained destiny we do not exploit with as good a conscience as the yield that goes back only to our most individual action. For next to the sacrificial morality stands self- affirmation; both of them have their common opponent simply in the fact that our relationship to others is at the mercy of external powers, independent of the 'I. ' Where finally, as in pure competition, the self tips the scales, a satisfied sense of justice compensates our instinctive morality for the ruthlessness of the competition--and to be sure not only that of the victor, but perhaps also of the defeated. 23
23 This is arguably one of the points at which the relationship of competition stands out in the traits of modern existence. Humanity and its mission in life, individuality, and the material content of its activity appear before the beginning of the modern era to be in greater solidarity, more fused, as it were, in a more unselfconscious reciprocal
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? The various unitings among the parties to conflict discussed so far have revealed blendings of antithesis and synthesis, a structure with one over the other, and mutual restrictions as intensifications. Besides these, there is the further sociological importance of conflict, which it possesses not for the relationship of the parties to one another but for the inner structure of each party. Daily experience shows how easily a conflict between two individuals changes the individual not only in one's relationship to the other but also within oneself; and to be sure--quite apart from its distorting or refining, weakening or strengthening conse- quences for the individual--through the pre-conditions that it imposes, the inner alterations and adaptations that it breeds on account of their usefulness for the prosecution of the conflict. Our language provides an unusually apt formulation for the essence of these immanent changes: Combatants must 'sich zusammennehmen' ('get a grip on themselves' or 'pull themselves together'), i. e. , all their energies must be concentrated at one point as it were, so that they can be employed in any given instant in the precisely needed direction. In peacetime one may 'sich gehen lassen' ('let oneself go')--oneself, i. e. , the individual strengths and interests of one's being, which may unfold in various directions independently of one another. In times of attack and defense, however, this would bring with it a loss of power through the contrary strivings of a divided being and a loss of time through its repeated regrouping and reorganization, so that now the whole person must accept the form of concentration as one's inner disposition for conflict and chance for victory. Behavior that is similar in form is needed by a group in the same situation. This necessity of centralization--of the tightening up of the solidarity of all elements which alone insures their deployment for the respective needs
abandon than afterwards. Recent centuries have, on the one hand, created objective interests, an establishment from material culture of otherwise unheard of power and autonomy; on the other hand, deepened the subjectivity of the Ego, the belonging- to-oneself of the individual soul vis-a`-vis all material and social prejudices, likewise unheard of. This sharply differentiated consciousness of the issue and the self on the part of modern people allows the conflict form of competition to appear as though it were created for them. Here is the pure objectivity of action that owes its effect exclusively to the cause and its legal effects, along with full indifference towards the personality standing behind it. And yet here is also the full self-responsibility of the person, the dependence of success on individual strength, and to be sure precisely because here personal ability is weighed against personal ability entirely by imper- sonal forces. The deepest tendencies of modern life, the material and the personal, have found in competition one of their meeting points in which they directly belong practically together and thus demonstrate their contrariety as members of a historical unity complementing one another.
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? without a waste of time and energy--is so self-evident in conflict that in countless historical examples it prevails over even the most complete democracy of peacetime, beginning, for example, from the well-known differences of the peace and war organizations of the North American Indians to London's apprentice tailors who in the first quarter of the nineteenth century possessed completely different organizations for peace and for war with employers. In calm times they consisted of small autonomous general assemblies in 30 lodges. In times of war each lodge had a deputy; these deputies formed a council and elected in its turn a very small council, from which all commands emanated and which were to be obeyed unconditionally. In general the labor unions at that time had the principle that all should decide upon what was also in the interests of all. Here, however, the emergency demon- strated an organic formation of the most stringent effectiveness, which functioned completely autocratically and whose blessing the workers recognized without opposition. The known reciprocal effect between the condition of despotism and warlike tendencies of a group rests on this formal basis: war requires the centralistic sharpening of the group form that despotism best guarantees; and conversely once this exists and that form is realized, the energies cumulated and compressed in this manner strive very easily towards natural discharge, towards an external war. In this context an example of the reverse may be offered for its characteristic clarity--one of the most anarchistic peoples is the Greenland Eskimos. No kind of chieftainship exists among them at all; to be sure, they gladly look to the most experienced one among them when it comes to fishing, but that person possesses no kind of author- ity and there exists no means of coercion at all for those who would exclude themselves from the common endeavor. And then it is reported of these people that the only manner in which disputes among them are fought out--is a singing contest. Those who believe themselves injured by others devise derisive verses about them and recite them in an assembly of the people summoned only for this, whereupon the opponents answer in the same way. Corresponding to the absolute absence of any warlike instinct, thus, is likewise the absolute absence of any political centralization. For this reason, among all the respec- tive organizations of the totality of a group, that of the military is always the most centralized--excepting perhaps the fire department, which is formally faced with quite comparable necessities--the one in which any independent action on the part of elements is excluded by the unconditional domination of the central authority, and therefore
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? the momentum is realized without any dynamic loss in the movement of the whole. On the other hand, what characterizes a confederation as such is its unity as a war-making power. While in all other respects each state may keep its independence, in this it is not permitted when a relationship of confederation is actually supposed to exist, so that what is identified as a virtually complete confederation is that it would form an absolute unity in its--essentially yet open or latent warlike--rela- tionship to other states, while its members would possess complete independence in their relationship to one another.
In view of the incomparable benefits of a united organization for the purpose of conflict, one would believe every party would thereby have to have the most extreme interest in having the opposing party lack this unity. 24 Nevertheless, there are several cases of the contrary: the form of centralization into which the situation of conflict forces the party outgrows the party itself and provokes it to mostly prefer seeing even the opponent over against itself in this form. In the struggles of recent decades between workers and employers, this extended to a most unlikely place. The Royal Commission on Labour in England judged in 1894 that the fixed organization of workers would be favorable for the employers in an industry, and likewise that of the employers for the workers. Admittedly the result of that would then be that an out- break strike could become greatly extended and of long duration, but for both parties this would still always be more advantageous and less costly than the many local deals, work stoppages, and minor conflicts that do not cease in the absence of a strict organization of the par- ties. In the same way a war between modern states, destructive and costly as it may be, is still always better on balance than the incessant small conflicts and frictions in periods in which the governments were less strongly centralized. In Germany too the workers had recognized that one strict and effective organization of employers precisely for the fighting out of conflicts of interest is for all intents and purposes in the interest of the workers themselves. Since only that kind of an organization can present representatives with whom one is able to negotiate with full confidence, only when faced with that is the work force of the industry in question certain that the result arrived at is not immediately called into question by those employers not present. The disadvantage that a party suffers on account of the unified organization
24 Compare the earlier comments about divide et impera.
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? of the opponent--because it is also an advantage for itself--is more than offset here by the fact that with both parties so constituted the conflict itself can be one of more focus, more visibility, securing a lasting and truly general peace--whereas one certainly more often wins individual victories against a diffuse mass of foes, but arrives with great difficulty at decisive actions actually fitting the ratio of strengths. This case is thus so deeply instructive regarding the fundamental connection between the form of unity and the conflict behavior of the group because it allows the practicality of this connection to triumph over even the immediate disadvantage for the respective opponent. It reveals that centripetalism that places the objective outcome of conflict on the surest and shortest path as the objectively ideal form of the constitution for conflict; this teleology, as it were, more-or-less transcending the parties, lets each individual party do its own arithmetic and thereby be able to fashion the apparent contradiction of turning each advantage of the opponent into an advantage of its own.
It makes an essential difference for the sociological meaning of a formation whether a group as a whole enters into an antagonistic rela- tionship with an externally situated power, and thus the tightening of its bonds and increase in its unity occurs in consciousness and action; or every element of a larger grouping has its enemy, and, because this is the same one for all, now more than ever a federation of all comes about--whether formerly they had in general nothing to do with each other or whether at least for the moment new formations develop among them. It must still be emphasized for the first case that conflict or war can on the one hand get a group past various discrepancies and individual deviations within it; on the other hand, however, it can often bring to the relationships within it a clarity and decisiveness achieved in no other way. This is to be observed especially in groupings that are smaller and have not yet attained the objectification of a modern state. If a political party that unites multiple interests sees itself forced into a very definite and one-sided situation of conflict, this is a straightforward opportunity for secessions; in such moments all that is left is to forget about the internal opposing interests or to expressly clarify them by expelling certain members. Should a family contain individuals with strong but latent differences, the moment danger or attack forces them into the greatest possible closeness will be just the one that secures its unity in the long run or destroys it permanently, the moment at which it is decided absolutely accurately how great a cooperation of such per- sonalities is possible. When a school class plans a prank on the teacher
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? or a brawl with another class, it takes care certainly on the one hand to silence all kinds of inner enmities, but on the other hand, however, it always causes certain students to break off from the rest, not only out of material motives but rather because they do not want to join in on such peremptory attacks with them and the others with whom they readily cooperate in other respects within the framework of the class. In short, the condition of peace for a group permits antagonistic elements within it to live among themselves in an unsettled situation because each one can go one's own way and can avoid confrontations. The condition of strife, however, pulls the elements so firmly together and places them under an impulse of such unification that they have to get along with each other or completely repel each other; for that reason too an external war is sometimes the final means for a state shot through with internal hostilities to overcome them; sometimes, however, precisely that allows the whole to disintegrate definitively.
For that reason groups who find themselves in some kind of state of war are not tolerant; they can tolerate individual deviance from the unity of the principle of cohesion only up to a critically limited extent. The method for this is occasionally an apparent tolerance exercised in order to be able to exclude with all the more resoluteness those not definitively falling into line. The Catholic Church found itself actually forever in a double state of war: against the entire complex of various teachings that together comprise heresy, and against the life interests and powers alongside it that lay claim in some way to a realm of power independent of it. The cohesive form of unity that it needed in this situation was thereby won by it nevertheless treating dissidents as long as possible as still belonging to it; from the moment, however, when this was no longer possible, it repudiated them with an incomparable energy. For that kind of formation a certain flexibility of its form is of the utmost importance,25 not in order to produce a conversion and reconciliation with the antagonistic powers but rather precisely to set itself in opposition to them with extreme severity, yet without somehow suffering the loss of useful elements. The flexibility is not an extension beyond its own boundary; rather that closes off the flexible body no less unequivocally than it marks the boundary of a rigid one. This malleability characterizes, e. g. , the monastic orders, through which the
25 On the flexibility of social forms in general, compare the end of the chapter on self-preservation.
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? mystical or fanatical impulses, surfacing in all religions, could here live out their absolutely arranged life style innocently in one church, while exactly the same thing in Protestantism, with its sporadically much greater dogmatic intolerance, often led to secessions from and splin- terings of its unity. Sociological patterns of action that are specific to the female gender appear to go back to the same motive. Among the most diverse elements of which all the relationships between men and women consist, there is found also a typical animosity emergent from the two sources--that women, as the physically weaker, are always in danger of economic and personal exploitation and absence of rights,26 and that they, as the objects of the sensual desire of men, must maintain a defensive posture against them. So seldom then does this struggle, flowing through the inner and personal history of human gender, lead to a direct cooperation of women against men, that there is instead a transpersonal form that serves as a means of protection against both of these dangers and in which therefore the female gender is interested, so to say, in corpore: custom--whose sociological nature, characterized above, is to be drawn upon once again for its current implications. The strong personality knows to protect itself individually against attacks or, if needed, simply needs legal protection; the weak would be lost, in spite of the latter, if the individuals with superior power did not them- selves somehow abstain from the exploitation of this superiority. This occurs in part through morality; but since morality has no executive apart from the conscience of the individual, it functions uncertainly enough that it needs to be supplemented by custom; admittedly this does not have the precision and certainty of the legal norm, but in any case it is guaranteed by an instinctive aversion to and by some perceptibly unpleasant consequences of its violation. Now custom is the real protection of the weak who would be no match in a fight of unfettered forces. Its character is thus essentially that of prohibition, of restriction; it effects a certain equality between the weak and the strong that goes so far in its constraint on the merely natural relationship of the two that it even favors the weak--as chivalry demonstrates, for example. In the chronic struggle between men and women those that are the stronger and the aggressor are compelled into the protection
26 I speak here of the relationship as it has existed for the greater part of known history, and leave aside whether that will henceforth become or has already become partially invalid through the modern development of rights and strengths of women.
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? of custom, so they are assigned--assigned by their own interest--to be its guardians. For that reason they themselves are of course also occupied most strictly with the observance of the whole complex of custom codes, as well as where it is not at all immediately a matter of masculine harms: all norms of customs exist together in a dense interrelationship; the violation of each one weakens the principle and thereby every other one. For this reason women tend out of necessity to stick together; here an actual unity corresponds to the peculiar ideals with which men generalize about them when they speak of 'women' as such, and which certainly has the character of a partisan-like opposition. This solidarity which they have apart from men and which is already expressed by Freidank:27 "The man bears his dishonor alone--But when a woman falls--They all come under reproach"--this gender- like solidarity has in its interest in custom a real vehicle as its shared means of conflict. And therefore finally repeated here is the sociological form now under consideration. As a rule women know, concerning one woman, only the complete inclusion or the complete exclusion from the realm of custom. There exists among them the tendency, as far as possible, not to admit a breach in custom by a woman, to interpret it as insignificant except where scandal mongering and other individual motives are working against it. If this, however, is no longer possible, they pass a judgment of exclusion from 'good society,' unable to be appealed and unconditionally harsh; if the breach of custom must be acknowledged, the guilty one is radically eliminated from that unity that is held together by the shared interest in custom. So one knows that women make the same damning judgment of Gretchen as they do the Lady of the Camellias, Stella as well as Messalina,28 without making an adjustment for those standing between the inside and the outside of custom by way of a concession to distinctions of degree. The defensive position of women does not allow for the wall of custom to be reduced at even just one point; the party of women knows no compromise in principle, but only dogmatic acceptance of an individual into the ideal totality of 'decent women' or just as dogmatic expulsion from it--an
27 Freidank was a 13th-century poet who became known for his aphorisms-ed.
28 Two references seem to be the successive wives, Gretchen and Stella, in Lilian
Gask's The Fairies and the Christmas Child; Gretchen made her husband jealous by giv- ing hospitality to an old man who turned out to be an elf, and Stella was a wealthy but scolding wife. Alexandre Dumas favored a courtesan, to whom he referred as his "camellia lady. " Messalina, the third wife of the Roman Emperor Claudius, had a poor reputation because of her intrigues and multiple affairs--ed.
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? alternative whose purely moral justification is in no way beyond all doubt and is conceivable only in terms of the demand for an indivis- ible unity that the party, united against an opponent, must provide its elements. For this same reason a reduction of its membership even for political parties can be advantageous, as soon as this purifies them of the elements inclined to negotiations and compromises. For this to be advisable, two conditions must usually be jointly met: an acute state of conflict, secondly, that the conflicting group is relatively small; the type is the minority party and to be sure especially when it is not limited to the defensive. English parliamentary history has proven this numer- ous times; when, for example, the Whig party in 1793 had a complete meltdown, it functioned to strengthen it, when in turn a defection of all those members still in any way compromising and lukewarm occurred. The few very resolute personalities remaining behind could only then operate a consistent and radical politics. The majority group need not consist of such pro-and-con decisiveness. Waffling and provisional hangers-on are less dangerous for it because a large area can tolerate such phenomena at the periphery without it affecting its center; but with groups of narrower circumference where the periphery stands very near to the center, any kind of uncertainty of an element immediately threatens the core and thereby the cohesiveness of the whole; because of the narrow range between the elements, what is lacking is the elasticity of the group that is here the condition of tolerance.
For this reason, groups and minorities who live among conflict and persecution often reject cooperation and acquiescence from the other side because the solidarity of their opposition, without which they cannot continue to fight, is thereby blurred.
For example, this emerged more than once in the confessional disputes in England. Immediately under James II, as well as under William and Mary, the nonconformists and independents, Baptists, Quakers occasionally experienced from the government a cooperation to which they were not completely in agree- ment. Thus the more flexible and irresolute elements among them were accorded a temptation and possibility to take half-way measures or at least to soften their hostility. Any flexibility from the other side, which is however only partial, threatens the uniformity in the opposition of all members and thus that cohesive uniformity of which a fighting minor- ity with an uncompromising alternative must consist. For this reason the unity of groups is so often generally lost when they no longer have an enemy. One can emphasize this with Protestantism from a variety of angles. Simply because 'protest' would have been essential for it, it
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? would thus lose its energy or its inner uniformity as soon as the oppo- nent against whom it protests is out of the range of fire; indeed, this is so to such a degree that Protestantism in this case would duplicate the conflict with the enemy even in itself and would break up into a free and an orthodox party; just as in North America's party history the complete withdrawal of one of the two great parties repeatedly had the immediate consequence that the other would dissolve into subgroups with their own partisan differences. It is not necessarily even advanta- geous for the unity of Protestantism that it does not have any actual heretics. The conscious solidarity of the Catholic Church, in contrast, has been decisively strengthened by the reality of heresy and by the combative attitude towards it. The many various elements of the Church have always gotten their orientation, as it were, by the irreconcilabil- ity of the opposition against heresy and, in spite of some discordant interests, can become conscious of her unity. Consequently complete victory over its foe is not always, in a sociological sense, a fortunate event for a group, because the energy that guarantees its cohesiveness thereby declines, and the disintegrative forces that are always at work gain ground. The collapse of the Roman-Latin Federation in the fifth century BCE has been accounted for by the fact that the common foe was then overcome. Perhaps its basis--protection from one side, devo- tion by the other--had already for some time no longer been entirely natural; but this emerged now just where no common opponent any longer sustained the whole over its internal contradictions. Indeed, it may just be really politically shrewd inside some groups to look for an enemy so that the unity of the elements would remain consciously and effectively its vital interest.
The last mentioned example allows a transition to the broadening of this integrating significance of conflict: that by it is not only an existing unity in itself more energetically concentrated, and all elements that could blur the sharpness of its boundaries against the enemy are radi- cally excluded--but also that it generally unifies persons and groups who otherwise have nothing to do with one another. The energy with which conflict operates in this direction explicitly comes to that argu- ably most decidedly when the link between the conflict situation and unification is strong enough for it to become also already meaningful in the opposite direction. Psychological associations generally show their strength in their also being effective in an inverse way; when, for example, a certain personality is introduced under the idea of the hero, the link between both images is then proven to be firmest if the idea of
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? the hero cannot be thought at all without the image of that personality appearing. As alliance for purposes of conflict is an event experienced countless times, sometimes the mere bonding of elements, even where it is concluded with no kind of aggressive or generally conflict-like purposes, appears to other powers as a threatening and hostile act. The despotism of the modern state points above all to medieval thinking on unification, so that ultimately every association, as such, between cities, estates, knights, or any elements of the state for that matter were regarded by the government as a rebellion, as a struggle against it in latent form. Charlemagne prohibited guilds as sworn allegiances and permitted them without oath exclusively for charitable purposes. The point of the prohibition lies in the sworn commitment itself with purposes that are permitted because state-threatening purposes could be easily tied to them. Thus the Moravian land ordinance of 1628 dictates: "Thus to enter into or to erect foedera or alliances, to whatever end and against whomever it may be intended, pertains to nobody other than the king. " That the dominating authority, nevertheless, sometimes even favors or establishes associations proves nothing on the contrary but that everything is supposed to be conducted for this cohesiveness, and certainly not only in the most obvious case of counteracting the association of an existing party of opposition but in the more interesting case of diverting the drive for association in a harmless direction. After the Romans had dissolved all the political associations of the Greeks, Hadrian created an association of all Greeks (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? )29 with ideal purposes: games, commemorations, preservation of an ideal, an entirely nonpolitical Panhellenism.
Now the historical cases make particularly obvious for the relation- ship here immediately in question that it can only be a matter of the degree of unification that is in this way achievable. The establishment of the unity of the state stands above all. Essentially France owes the consciousness of its national cohesiveness primarily to the struggle against the English; the Spanish territories were turned into one people by the war with the Moors. The next lower level is marked by federal states and confederations of states according to their coherence and the measure of power of their central power in further various grada- tions. The United States had need of its Civil War, Switzerland of the struggle against Austria, the Netherlands of the rebellion against Spain,
29 Koinon sunedrion ton Hellenon, literally <<common council of the Greeks>>---ed.
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? the Achaean League of the fight against Macedonia; the foundation of the new German Reich had its counterpart. The formation of unified estates belongs in this realm; for them the moment of conflict, latent and open oppositions, is one of such obvious significance that I mention only a negative example. That in Russia no actual aristocracy exists as a closed stratum would have to appear actually to favor the broad and unrestrained development of a bourgeoisie. In reality just the opposite is the case. Had there been, as elsewhere, a powerful aristocracy, it would surely have set itself frequently in opposition to the prince, who in turn in that struggle would have depended on an urban bourgeoisie. Obviously such a situation of conflict then would have interested the princes in developing a unified bourgeois class. The elements of such a one found in this case not even in general anything so conflict-relevant as to join together into a class because no conflict existed between the nobility and the central power in which they would have been able to share in winning some prize by being in league with one side or the other. In all positive cases of this type the indication is that the unity came about certainly through strife and for the same purposes, but exists beyond fighting and no longer allows interrelated interests and unifying energies to merge with warlike purpose. The significance of conflict here is actually only in putting the latently existing relation- ship and unity into effect; even more, it is here the occasion for the internally necessary unifications, as well as their purpose. Inside the collective interest in conflict there is admittedly yet another nuance: whether the unification for the purpose of conflict is meant for attack and defense or only for defense. This last is probably the case for the majority of coalitions of already existing groups, namely wherever it is a matter of very many groups or groups very diverse from one another. The goal of defense is the collectivist minimum because it is for every single group and for every individual the most unavoidable test of the instinct of self-preservation. The more and the more varied are the ele- ments that unite, the narrower apparently is the number of interests in which they concur, and in the most extreme case it reverts to the most primitive instinct: the defense of existence. Over against the fear, for example, on the part of the business community that all English trade unions could at the same time make common resolve, one of their most unconditional supporters sincerely emphasized: even if it came to that, it could be exclusively for the purposes of defense!
From the cases, then, in which the collectivizing effect of strife extends beyond the moment and the immediate purpose, what can happen even
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? with the same minimum mentioned is that their extension devolves further to the cases in which the union occurs really only ad hoc. Here the two types are distinguishable: the cooperative federal union for a single action that, however frequent, especially in actual wars, requires the service of all the energies of the elements; it produces a total unity that, however, after the achievement or failure of their urgent purpose, releases its parts again to their former separate existence, somewhat as with the Greeks after eliminating the Persian danger. With the other type the unity is less complete but also less transitory; it forms a group not so much around a time as around the contents regarding a singular purpose of conflict, which has no effect on the other aspects of the elements. So a Federation of Associated Employers of Labour has existed in England since 1873, founded to counter the influence of the trade unions; also several years later in the United States a federa- tion of employers as such was formed, without regard for the various branches of business, to defy the strike movement of the workers as a whole. The character of both types appears then naturally at its most acute when the elements of the fighting entity are not just indifferent towards one another but hostile, either in other periods or in other relationships; the unifying power of the principle of conflict never mani- fests such strength as when it cuts a temporal or material enclave out of relationships of competition or animosity. The opposition between the other antagonism and the momentary comradeship-in-arms can develop to such an extent under certain circumstances that precisely the absoluteness of their enmity forms for the parties the direct cause of their union. The opposition in the English Parliament has sometimes comes to such a point that the extremists became dissatisfied with the ministerial direction of the government and formed a party with the primary opposition, held together by the common opposition towards the Ministry. So the ultra-Whigs under Pulteney joined with the high Tories against Robert Walpole. It was thus precisely the principle of radicalism, which lives by the hostility toward the Tories, that fused its adherents together with them: were they not so strongly opposed to the Tories, they would not have merged with the Tories in order thereby to bring about the downfall of the Whig minister who was not Whiggish enough for them. This case is so glaring because the common opponent brings together the otherwise enemies based on the perception of both of them that the opponent stands too far on the other side. By the way, though, it is only the purest example of the banal experience that even
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? the bitterest enmities do not hinder bonding, as soon as it concerns a common enemy. This is especially the case if each or at least one of the two of the now cooperating parties has very concrete and immedi- ate ends for the achievement of which it needs only the removal of a certain opponent. In France's history from the Huguenots to Richelieu we observe with respect to the internal parties that it is enough that the one appears more hostile towards Spain or England, Savoy or Holland, so that immediately the other joins this external political power, with no concern over its harmony or disharmony with their positive tenden- cies. These parties in France had, however, thoroughly tangible goals in sight, simply freedom from the opposition, and needed only space for them. They were therefore ready to ally themselves with any opponent whatever of this opponent, insofar as this one had the same intention, fully indifferent to their relationship otherwise. The more purely negative or destructive an enmity is, the more readily will it bring about an alliance among those who otherwise lack any motive for mutuality.
Finally the lowest step on this scale, the least acute form, is formed by the alliances consisting simply of a shared mentality. One knows that one belongs insofar as one has a similar aversion or a similar prac- tical interest against a third, however without it needing to lead to a common action in conflict. Here also two types are distinguished. The large-scale enterprise, few employers standing over against the masses of workers, has apparently succeeded in actually bringing about not only several effective alliances of the latter to the conflict over working conditions, but also the whole general mindset that all wage workers somehow belong together because they all stand in principle in the same struggle with the employers. At several points this mindset certainly crystallizes into several actions of political party formation or of wage dispute. However, as a whole it cannot become essentially practical; it remains the mindset of an abstract solidarity by way of the common opposition against an abstract foe. If here the feeling of unity is abstract, but ongoing, then in the second case concrete but fleeting; this is the case, e. g. , when personalities of the same high levels of cultivation and sentiment, otherwise foreign to one another, find themselves in a social circle, in a train car, or someplace similar, with persons raw and vulgar in behavior. Without it coming to any kind of commotion, without a word or glance being exchanged, the former feel as a party held together by the common aversion, at least in the ideal sense, against the aggressive boorishness of the others. With its most extremely delicate
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? and sensitive character, with a simultaneous ambiguity, this common mindset seals off the ranks of those for whom fully alien elements are brought together by the commonality of an antagonism.
Where the synthesizing power of a common opponent is not a ques- tion of the quantity of points of interest but of the duration and the intensity of the alliance, it works especially well if, instead of the actual fight, there is the ongoing threat from a foe. From the beginning of the Achaean league, about 270 BCE, the emphasis was placed on Achaia being surrounded by enemies who had, however, everything else to do at the moment but attack it; and such a period of danger, which would always threaten but be forever put off, would have been especially suit- able to strengthen the feeling of unity. This is a case of the unique type: a certain distance between the elements to be united on the one hand and the point and interest that unites them on the other hand being an especially favorable constellation for the binding, especially where it is a matter of an extensive circle. This applies to religious relations: in contrast to the tribal and national deities, the universal God of Christianity stands an infinite distance from the believers; fully absent from God are the peculiar characteristics relative to the individual; for this reason, God can then assemble even the most heterogeneous peoples and personalities into one incomparable religious community. Even further: clothing always characterizes certain social strata as belonging together; and it now often seems to fulfill this social function best when it comes from the outside. To clothe oneself as one does in Paris signifies a narrow and exclusive society of a certain social level in other lands; certainly the prophet Zephaniah speaks of the behavior of wearing foreign clothing as such. 30 The very many meanings that the symbol 'distance' covers have varying psychological associations; almost always, e. g. , a substantive idea that is presented as somehow 'removed' seems to function more impersonally. The individual reaction that results from close proximity and contact is thereby less intense, carries a less immediately subjective character, and can therefore be the same for a greater number of individuals. As the general concept that is supposed to encompass a number of individual beings is all the more abstract, i. e. , moves all the farther away from each individual one of them, and
30 Simmel seems to be alluding to Zephaniah 1. 8: "And on the day of the Lord's sacrifice--I will punish the officials and the king's sons and all who array themselves in foreign attire" (RSV translation)--Ed.
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? the more there are differences among them, so then a social point of unity, having a greater distance from the allying elements--and certainly in the spatial as well as in the figurative sense--appears specifically to exercise integrating and encompassing functions. Such a unification by a danger that, however, has more of a chronic than acute character, a struggle not settled but always latent, will be most effective where an ongoing unity of elements of somehow differing aspirations is in ques- tion. So it happened with the Achaean League, which I cited above; as Montesquieu comments: while calm and trust would generate glory and security for the monarchy, a republic would find it necessary to fear someone. 31 Obviously emotion is here the basis for the purported constellation: the monarchy as such certainly looks after the cohesion of potentially antagonistic elements; where these, however, have no one over them who coerces them into unity, but they possess relative sovereignty, then they will readily break apart if one of all the respec- tive dangers does not force them together--a danger that can hold up obviously not as a one-time conflict as such but only as an ongoing threat and guarantee an enduring structure.
While this is more a question of degree, the essential connection of the collectivity with hostility still needs perhaps supplementation as fol- lows. Conflictual undertakings are much more inclined than peaceable ones, from the time of their formation, to call upon as large a number as possible of members for collaboration, who, otherwise separated from one another, would not have begun the undertaking on their own initiative. With peaceable actions one tends as a whole to limit oneself to those also otherwise close associates; but for 'allies'--in itself an indif- ferent concept which has indeed received a warlike flavor in linguistic usage--often enough one takes elements with whom one has hardly anything in common, indeed, would not care to. It happens, first, that war, and not only the political one, often presents an emergency in which one cannot be choosy about the acquisition of additional helpers; second, that the objective of the action lies outside the field or other immediate peripheries of interest of one's allies, and they can thus, after a completed conflict, return again to their former distance; third, that gain through conflict does tend indeed to be a dangerous but at best a
31 Montesquieu's reference to the Greek confederacy that Simmel has in mind is probably that in the opening paragraphs of Book IX, Charles Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (New York: Hafner, 1949)--Ed.
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? particularly rapid and intensive one, and therefore exercises on certain temperaments a formal attraction, which peaceful undertakings must bring about only by their specific content; fourth, that the conflict ren- ders the truly personal unimportant among those fighting and thereby even allows the alliance of elements otherwise quite heterogeneous. Thereupon follows finally the motive, that hostilities themselves readily excite one another. Certainly inside one and the same group, when it comes to a feud against another, all possible latent or half forgotten animosities among its individuals break out towards those in the other. And thus the war between two groups tends to arouse in a third every ill will and resentment towards one of them that would not have led to an outbreak but, now that another has paved the way, provoke the alignment with their action. It is entirely in this sense that, especially in earlier times, the unifying relationships of peoples were in general only those of war, while other relationships, such as commerce, hospitality, and intermarriage, still involved only a relationship among individuals that would make the agreement between the groups of people possible but would not on its own set them into motion.
When a historical development occurs in a continuous rhythmical change in periodical pairs, one achieving its own meaning equally and simply in relationship with the other and in antithesis to the develop- ment--then the unified picture that we form from such a process sel- dom repeats its objective harmony and the persisting plane on which its elements alternate with one another. Rather we almost unavoidably give the change in the development a kind of teleological accent, so that the one period is viewed always as the starting-point, objectively primary, from which the other develops, while the transition again from the latter to the former appears as a retrogression. The world process, e. g. , is then to be an eternal change of qualitative regularity of combined quantities of matter and of differentiated dispersion of the very same, and we would like to be convinced that one always emerges from the other, and then again the other from the one; however, as our categorical concepts function at this time, we hold, however, the condition of undifferentiation to be the first, i. e. , our need to explain strongly requires contrarily that multiplicity derive from the uniform, although it would be objectively perhaps more correct to accept neither as the first but rather as one eternal rhythm in which we stop at no calculated stages; rather, they have to always originate from an earlier, opposing one. It is similar with the principles of rest and movement. They alternate endlessly with one another just as much as in the sev-
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? eral series of existence; but one tends to sense the state of rest as the original or even as the definitive, that which would need no derivation, so to speak. Thus while we examine two periods together, either the one always seems to be the explanatory one or the one being reduced to, and only in this rank-ordering do we believe we have grasped the meaning of their alternation: we are not satisfied with their mere alternation, as the phenomenon reveals it, and no element therein authorized as the primary and none as the secondary. Humanity is simply too much a differentiating, evaluating, and purposeful being for it not to subdivide the unbroken flow of alternating periods by such emphases, and would interpret them according to the form, as it were, of master and servant, or preparation and fulfillment, or intermediate states and definitive ones. And so it is with conflict and peace. In the after-one-another as well as in the next-to-one-another of societal life they inextricably intermingle in such a way that in every state of peace the conditions for the future fight are building, in every fight those for the future peace; should one trace backwards the succession of social developments under these categories, one is unable to stop anywhere; in the historical reality both states point continuously to the other. Nevertheless, we sense an inner difference of its phases in this succession: conflict appears as the temporary, whose purpose lies in peace and its contents. While the rhythm of these elements, objectively considered, proceeds fully equally on one plane, our valuation constructs from it, as it were, iambic verses, with war as thesis and peace as arsis. Thus in the oldest constitution of Rome the king must ask the citizenry their consent first if he wants to begin a war; but this consent is not required--it being presupposed as obvious--if it is a matter of concluding peace. This already suggests that the transition from conflict to peace will offer a more essential problem than the reverse. The latter requires actually no particular consideration; because the situations inside peace, from which the open conflict emerges, are themselves already conflict in dif- fuse, unnoticed, or latent form. Since, if, e. g. , the economic flourishing of the North American southern states before the Civil War, which they had by virtue of the slave economy in advance of the northern states, was also the reason for the war, it stands at rest in this way as long as no additional antagonism arises from it, but there exist only immanent conditions of one and the other realm, generally beyond the specific question of war and peace. In the moment, however, in which the inclination leading towards war approached it, this inclina- tion itself was simply already an accumulation of antagonisms: hateful
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? attitudes, newspaper polemics, frictions between private persons and, on the verge of war, mutually moralistic suspicions in realms outside the central point of contention. The end of peace thus is not marked by a unique sociological situation, but antagonism develops directly from all kinds of material relationships inside of peace, albeit not uniformly in its clearest or strongest form. Quite otherwise though in the reverse: peace does not likewise accumulate on strife; the conclusion of strife is a specific undertaking that belongs neither in the one nor in the other category, just as a bridge is something different from either of the banks that it connects. The sociology of conflict thus needs, at least as an appendix, an analysis of forms in which a conflict is ended and which present several specific patterns of interaction observed under no other circumstances.
There is probably no soul who would entirely deny the formal allure of conflict and that of peace, and since each of the two exists to some extent in every moment, the excitement of the newness of change between the two grows. It is only the rhythm of this alteration which is sought by the individual nature, which part of it is experienced as an arsis and which as a thesis, whether it evokes it on its own initiative or expects it from the developments of fate--only this distinguishes its individuality. The first motive of the end of strife, the need for peace, is therefore something much more substantive than the mere fatigue with the struggle; it is that rhythm that allows us now to long for peace, as well as for an entirely real situation that in no way means only the absence of conflict. Only, one must not understand the rhythm entirely mechanically. Admittedly it has been said that intimate relationships, such as love and friendship, required occasional differences in order to be reminded of the contrast with the estrangement endured before their great happiness; or in order to interrupt the closeness of the relationship, which simply has something obsessive, encompassing for the individual, by a departure that renders its oppressiveness imperceptible. It will not be the deepest relationships that require such a cycle; it will more likely be peculiar of rougher natures that demand bluntly stimulating differences and whose life moments favor the change into contrasts: it is the type of the rabble brawling one moment and amicable the next, that requires discord for the preservation of the relationship. The very deep and refined relationship will manage without an antagonistic interval and find its stimulating contrasts in the surrounding world, in the dissonances and animosities in the rest of existence that deliver
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? sufficient background for the consciousness of its respite. However, to differentiate on the one hand the exhaustion of the powers that can place the requirement of peace unequivocally next to the ongoing desire to fight, on the other hand the diversion of interest from the strife by a greater interest in another object, belongs to the indirect motives for the desire for peace. The interest in another object produces various moral hypocrisies and self-deceptions: one pretends or believes to be burying the hatchet out of ideal interests in peace while in reality only having lost interest in the object of conflict and preferring to free up one's powers for other matters.
While the end of conflict in deeply grounded relationships comes about through their indivertible undercurrent coming to the surface again and smoothing out the counter-movements within it, entirely new nuances arise where the abolition of the object of dispute ends the antagonism. Every conflict that is not of an absolutely impersonal kind makes use of the available powers of the individual; it functions as a point of crystallization around which they are organized to a greater or lesser degree--internally repeating the form of core and auxiliary troops--and thereby provides the entire complex of the personality, once in conflict, its own peculiar structure. If the conflict ends in one of the usual ways--through victory and defeat, through reconciliation, through compromise--this mental structure is reconstructed back into that of the peaceful condition; the central point gives the engaged ener- gies its transformation from an excited state into a calm one. Instead of this organic, albeit endlessly multiply developing process of inner cessation of the conflictual movement, however, a wholly irrational and turbulent one often comes about if the object of conflict suddenly falls away, so that the whole activity is suspended, so to speak, in a void; this happens especially since our feelings are more conservative than our intellect, and thus their stimulation in no way ceases at the moment that the mind recognizes that their cause is no longer valid. Confusion and damage occur everywhere when mental activities that originated on account of a specific matter are suddenly deprived of it, so that they can no longer develop and find completion in a natural manner but sustain themselves groundlessly or grasp for a meaningless substitute object. So if chance or a higher power makes off with its goal while the dispute is in progress--a rivalry whose contested object decides for a third, a dispute over plunder that is in the meantime stolen by another, theoretical controversies whose problem a superior
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? mind suddenly solves so that both of the competing claims prove to be wrong--there is thus often still an empty continuation of conflict, an unfruitful mutual recrimination, a resurgence of earlier, long-buried dif- ferences; this is the lingering reverberation of conflict activity that must under these circumstances have its fling in some kind of quite senseless and tumultuous style before coming to rest. Most notably, this occurs perhaps in those cases where the object of dispute is recognized by both parties as illusory, not worth the fight. Here shame over the error often allows the conflict to continue for yet a long time, with a rootless and tiresome expenditure of energy, but with all the more bitterness towards the opponent who drives us to this Don Quixotism.
The simplest and most radical type of turning conflict into peace is victory--a quite unique phenomenon of life for which there are certainly countless individual forms and degrees--which, however, possesses a similarity with no other identified phenomenon that can otherwise occur among human beings. Out of the many varieties of victory that give the subsequent peace a particular quality, I mention only that which is brought about not exclusively through the overpowering of one party but at least partially by the acquiescence of the other. This surrender, declaring oneself defeated or submitting patiently to the victory of the other without having already exhausted all powers for resistance and possibilities, is not always a simple phenomenon. It can function as a certain ascetic tendency, the desire for self-abasement and self-sacrifice, not strong enough to surrender without a fight beforehand but emerging as soon as the mindset of the defeated begins to seize the soul, or even finding its most sublime allure for the antithesis of the still animated conflict mentality. Pressing one to the same conclusion, moreover, is the feeling that it is nobler to submit than to cling to the very last to the unlikely chance of a turnaround. To drop this chance and, at the price of one's own defeat, avoiding it in its complete unavoidability being demonstrated right up to the last--this has something of the great and noble style of human beings who are certain not only of their strength but also their weakness without having to be perceptibly assured of it again every time. Finally, in this voluntary act of self-declared defeat lies another final proof of the power of the subject who is at least capable of this last act; indeed, it has thereby actually given something to the victor. For this reason it is sometimes observed in personal conflicts that the submission of the one party before the other has yet actually achieved its goal by its own power, is experienced from this as a kind
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? of affront--as though it were actually the weaker party to whom one submitted on some basis other than that it was necessary. 32
Ending a conflict through compromise stands in complete contrast to doing so through a victory. It is one of the most characteristic clas- sificatory kinds of conflicts whether they are by their nature amenable to a compromise or not. This is in no way only a matter of whether what is at stake forms an indivisible unity or whether it can be shared among the parties. With regard to certain objects, compromise through sharing is out of the question: between rivals for the favor of a woman, between prospective buyers for one and the same indivisible item for sale, also conflicts whose motives are hatred and revenge. Nevertheless conflicts over indivisible objects are still open to compromise when they are justifiable; so the actual prize of conflict can in fact fall only to the one, who, however, compensates the other for compliance with something else of value. Whether goods are fungible in this manner naturally does not depend on some objective equivalence between them but on the inclination of the parties to end the antagonism through concession and compensation. This chance ranges between the cases of pure stubbornness, on the one hand, in which the most rational and generous compensation, for which the party would otherwise gladly give up the contested object, is rejected only for the reason that it is offered precisely by the opponent--and the other, in which the party from the beginning seems attracted by the uniqueness of the contest prize, but then relinquishes it willingly to the other, compensated by an object whose ability to substitute for that remains often fully mysterious to any third party.
32 This belongs in the category of forms of relationships in which an indulgence is an offence. There are cases enough of politeness that are insults, gifts that humiliate, sympathetic sharing that functions as fresh importunity or increases the suffering of its victim, kindnesses by which the forced gratitude or the relationship established by them is more unpleasant than the deprivation remedied by them. That such sociological constellations are possible goes back to the frequent and deep discrepancy that exists between the objectively expressed contents of a situation or behavior, composed as a particular concept on the one hand, and its individual realization on the other, the latter of which it experiences as a mere element of one richly complicated totality of life. This is the formula for distinguishing whether one treats the ailment or the sick person, whether one punishes the offense or the offender, whether the teacher imparts educational material or educates the students. Thus some are objectively a good deed, according to its conceptual contents, while it can be the opposite as an individually experienced reality.
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