No More Learning

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? CHAPTER SIX
THE INTERSECTION OF SOCIAL CIRCLES1
The difference between advanced and crude thinking is manifested in the different motives that determine the associations of ideas. The accidental juxtaposition in space and time suffices at first to connect ideas psychologically; the union of attributes that form a concrete object appears at first as a coherent whole, and each one of them stands with the others in whose company one has come to know them, in a closely associative context. It comes to consciousness as a conceptual content existing in itself only when it occurs in further and different connections; then what is common to all these appears in bright illumination and concurrently in mutual association, while it becomes increasingly free of the ties to the objective other, those linked with it only by accidental juxtaposition to the same object. Thus through the actually perceptible the association rises above the initial idea toward that supported by the content of the concepts on which the higher formation of concepts is based and toward that which extracts what is common even from its entanglements with the most varied realities.
The development that takes place here among concepts finds an analogy in the relationship of individuals among themselves. Individuals see themselves initially in a context that, relatively indifferent to their individuality, binds them to their fate and imposes a close involve- ment with those things near to which the accident of their birth has placed them; and of course this initial context means the beginning circumstances of a phylogenetic as well as an ontogenetic development. But its progression, then, moves towards associative relationships of homogeneous components from heterogeneous circles. Thus the fam- ily encompasses a number of various particular individuals who are at first dependent on this bond to the strictest degree. With further development, however, each individual weaves a bond to personalities
1 A portion of this chapter is taken from my U? ber sociale Differenzierung, sociologische und psychologische Untersuchungen (Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1890), Ch. V. [Simmel's expression 'circle' (Kreis) is often rendered 'group' in order to make the English more idiomatic--ed. ]
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? that lie outside this original circle of association and instead possess a relationship to the individual through an actual similarity of disposi- tions, inclinations, activities, etc. ; the association through superficial togetherness is more and more displaced by one of such substantive relationships. As the higher concept ties together that which is common to a large number of greatly varied intuitive complexes, so the higher practical point of view joins together similar individuals from thoroughly foreign and unrelated groups; new spheres of contact are established that position the earlier, relatively more naturally given, more physically bound relationships, into the most diverse places.
I remember, for example, that the independent groups whose asso- ciations earlier made up the universities were divided according to the nationality of the students. Their place was taken later by the divisions according to the common interests of students, the faculties. Here the relatedness, determined from the terminus a quo locally and physiologi- cally, was replaced to the most radical extent by the synthesis from the perspective of purpose, of the internally relevant, or, if you will, individual interest. Under somewhat more complicated conditions a development of the English trade unions manifests the same form. Predominant in the trade unions originally was the tendency for the individual groups on the local level to agree that workers coming from the outside were excluded; frictions and petty jealousies were unavoid- able between the divisions thusly separated. This situation, however, was superseded gradually in the direction of a united combination of the craft throughout the whole land. Subsequent reality perchance sealed this transformation. When the cotton weavers concluded a uniform piece rate, it was likely seen that this would lead to a concentration of the industry in the favorably situated location and to losses for the more distant villages. Therefore, the representatives of these also settled for it because it would be best for the craft as a whole. Although it had been from the very beginning a matter only of workers associated on the basis of the same activity, nevertheless, lying under this prerequisite was above all the emphasis of association on local proximity, which without doubt led to a closer connection of the individual craft with unions of substantially different trades but existing in the same location. The development moves away from this relationship to the union in which the similarity of activity came to be the sole determinant of its connections. In place of the city, so states one historian of trade unions regarding this change, the trade became the governing unity of the workers' organization. Evidently a factor of freedom is in effect here;
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? for however much constraint the situation of the individual worker contained, the affiliation to a trade contains in general more freedom of choice than that to a city. Generally the entire model of development suggested here is subject to the tendency for the increase of freedom: it certainly does not remove the bond, but it makes it a matter of freedom to whom one is bound. So, compared to the local or some other determining bond having nothing to do with the subject, the one freely chosen will then, as a rule, be effected by the actual characteristics of those choosing and thereby permit the construction of the group based on practical relationships, i. e. , ones residing in the nature of the subjects. For that reason it is frequently expedient to continue to take advantage of the association brought about in this way, on account of its formal solidity, for teleological purposes that lay far from its original motive for coming into being. In the Spartan syssition they sat fifteen to a table, by free election. 2 One vote sufficed to reject the applicant. This table fellowship was at the root of army unity. Entering into the role of neighborhood and blood relations for the building of community, then, were the actual tendencies and sympathies found in individuals. The organization of the army, to which this was relevant, was of the utmost strictness and practicality; however, between it and the, in its own way, likewise impersonal relationship of proximity and blood, the syssition election operated as a pivotal point, infusing the rational meaning of bond by a freedom of the quite differently constructed rationality of the army organization. Apart from this as a particular method for the establishment of military organization, however, this unconditional prerogative in itself certainly penetrated the familial manner of relationship for the Spartans. In the rest of Greece it was the same clan or the same district that would be found together in a division of the army; only in Sparta did the objective military interest break through this prejudice and purely on its own accord determine the division of the army. Certainly among indigenous peoples, e. g. , some African peoples, it has been observed how the war-centered polities destroy clan organization. Since the women as a whole represent the principle of the naturally growing, family-like belonging, the animos- ity for everything feminine is thereby explained--the powerlessness of women in warlike organizations. The relative frequency of matriarchy
2 Syssition was a military division centered around the concept of dining together-- ed.
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? among warlike peoples may, on the one hand, result from the emphati- cally contrasting nature of civil relationships versus the militaristic; on the other hand, from individual psychological motives: the warrior is certainly tyrannical and brutal at home, but yet again tired, at ease, casual, content, provided that he is cared for and another is in charge. The main objective, however, has nothing to do with these civil circum- stances; it splinters the clan and creates from its atoms a new, purely rational structure. 3 The decisive factor is simply that here the warriors form a whole organized only from military and no other interests at all; in other matters entirely different bonds might pull them apart, which then, if they interfered in that wholeness, would be irrational. In the election of comrades in the Spartan syssitia, freedom was--what it often is not--a principle of rationalization. Then, by virtue of it, the qualities of the personality became basic determinants of unifica- tion--a fully new, revolutionary, and, in spite of all arbitrariness and irrationality in any given case, nevertheless clearly rational motive for unifying, in contrast to its causes theretofore. The 'independent league' functioned in this sense in the last three centuries of medieval Germany. In the earliest era of the free village communities the solidarity of members was a locally developed one; the feudal era created then, in the relationship to one lord, an entirely different kind and yet entirely external ground for unity; the free league first laid this basis in the desires of the associated individuals themselves. It goes without saying that entirely unique formations had to be produced for the common life of individuals when those earlier, as it were, more haphazard motives, not grounded in the personality, were removed or contradicted by this new one of spontaneity.
The later kind of unity, which develops out of a more original one, need not always be more rational in nature; the consequences for the outer as well as for the inner situation of the individual will have a particular coloring when both of one's binding ties are rooted in equally deep, organic causes lying beyond one's choice. The cultur- ally much less developed Australian aborigines live in small, relatively closely bound tribes. Furthermore, though, their whole population is divided into five gentes or totem clans in such a way that in every tribe members of various gentes are found and every gens stretches over several tribes. The totem members do not form a tighter union inside the tribe; rather, their clan runs equally through all these demarcations,
3 The phrase 'main objective' translates Sachgesichtspunkt--ed.
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? all forming a large family. When in a fight between two tribes, those belonging to the same totem confront one another, they move out of each other's way and seek another opponent (which is also reported of the Mortlack Islanders); sexual relations between men and women occur without question according to these gens relations, even when they have otherwise never met one another on account of their member- ship in different tribes. For these wretched beings, who are not at all capable of an actually rational manner of association, such groupings by duality of affiliation, so sharply separated, directed more-or-less horizontally and vertically, must mean an enrichment in the feeling of being alive, an otherwise probably unreachable stretching and, so to speak, doubling of existence. A formally similar intersection of a very different content and effect is frequently brought about inside the cultivated family life through gender solidarity. Where, e. g. , the mother of the man is drawn into the differences between a married couple, her instincts--in so far as they function, so to speak, a priori and apart from all individual peculiarities of the case--will incline at one time towards the son as the blood relative, at another, however, surely also to her daughter-in-law as a member of the same gender. Sharing the same gender belongs among the causes of solidarity that perennially permeate social life and intersect with all the others in the most varied degrees and types. As a rule it will function as an organic, natural type, in contrast to which most of the others have something individual, deliberate, conscious. In the case mentioned, while one will perhaps sense that the relationship between mother and son is the one given and operative by nature, the solidarity of the woman with the woman as such, in contrast, is something secondary, reflected upon, more than a general concept because significant as an immediate energy. Sharing the same gender sometimes shows the unique type of unifying motive that is by its nature certainly primarily, fundamentally contrary to all choice--which, however, for its effectiveness often only succeeds through mediations, reflections, conscious pursuit, so that one motive substantially much later and more accidental functions relatively as the first and unavoidable one--the formula, that what is last ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? is what is first ? ? ? ? ? , proving true here too. 4
In relation to this mid-point between an organic and a rational character, having gender in common as a form sociological motive
4 Translating the Greek: "what is last to us, is what is first by nature"--ed.
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? is related to age similarity, which in relatively uncomplicated circum- stances can become a basis for division even of the whole group. Thus in Sparta there were about 220 political parties identified as ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? , ? ? ? ? , ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? , etc. ;5 thus one finds with various indigenous peoples the men organized into age groups, each of which has a particular social meaning, functions, lifestyle. This basis for unity is absolutely personal and at the same time absolutely non-individual. Obviously that last identified scheme is possible only where the culture does not yet have at its disposal any extensive objectively intellectual possession. This is because the latter directly favors the unfolding of individual differences in intellect, of intellectual inclinations, of faction by ideas, whereby then individuals show themselves as belonging together at quite different age levels. Therefore this lack of acquired intellectual content is also one of the reasons why youth as such hang together more widely, feel themselves drawn to youth much more--often with astonishing indifference towards their individuality--than occurs among elders. The division according to age groups--albeit extraordinarily crude--is an integration by personality and objectivity in the cause of group formation. The antitheses to this otherwise emphasized: the organic and the rational--are brought together here: a wholly organic, even physiological reality for individuals arises as a purely conceptual force through a consciously desired synthesis of means of association; the purely natural and personal determination by stages of life works as a fully objective principle. It is understandable that in unrefined circumstances this fixed guiding principle, deprived of all choice, which is nevertheless with regard to content one of very direct vividness and determinative of a feeling of being alive, acquires great significance for the social structure.
One of the simplest examples of the superstructure of a circle ori- ented to the immediately organic according to objective viewpoints is the one cited: the original association of the family group being modified by the individuals' individuality placing them in other circles; one of the highest, the 'republic of scholars,' that half ideal, half real bond of all personalities coming together in a circle of such a highest universal goal as knowledge in general, who in other respects belong to groups most diverse in relation to nationality, personal and special interests,
5 Literally: presbyteroi, elders; neoi, younger ones; neaniskoi, youth--ed.
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? social position, etc. Yet stronger and more characteristic than in the present, the Renaissance period manifested the energy with which intel- lectual and cultural interest singles out those associated from the most various circles and brings them together into a new community.
The humanistic interest broke through the medieval segregation of groups and strata and gave people who came from the most different points of origin and who frequently still remained true to the most varied occupations, to a common active or passive participation in thought and knowledge that crossed the former forms and divisions of life at the most manifold points. The precise fact that humanism appeared at that time to all peoples and circles from the outside as something equally alien to them enabled it to become a common realm for them all, i. e. , to elements of each of them. The idea prevailed that the distinguished belong together; this is manifest during the fourteenth century in the appearance of collections of biographies that simply depict outstand- ing people as such, collected in a standard work, be they theologians or artists, statesmen or philologists. In characteristic forms state leaders recognize this basis for a new classification, a new analysis and synthesis of circles, so to speak: Robert of Naples concluded a friendship with Petrarch and gave him his own purple mantel; two hundred years later this social motif lost its lyrical form and took on one more substantial and more strictly limited: Francis I of France wanted to turn the circle that centered around scholarly studies into one self-contained and even independent of the universities. The latter, which were intended for the training of theologians and lawyers, were supposed to make room for a type of academy whose members would dedicate themselves to research and teaching without any practical purpose. As a consequence of that kind of separation of the purely intellectual eminence from all that was otherwise held as valuable, the Venetian Senate could write to the Curia at the extradition of Giordano Bruno: Bruno may be one of the worst heretics, have done the most reprehensible things, led a dissolute and plainly diabolical life--otherwise, however, he may be one of the most excellent minds that one could imagine, of the rarest erudition and intellectual greatness. 6 The wanderlust and adventurousness of the humanists, indeed their character, in part, richly deviant and unreli- able, was in accord with this independence of the mind from all other
6 Simmel does not cite a source or use quotation marks for what appears here to be a translated direct quotation--ed.
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? demands on people; and that independence shaped the center of their life and made them indifferent toward these demands. The individual humanist, while moving about in the colorful variety of life circum- stances, replayed the lot of humanism that enveloped the poor scholar and monk as well as the powerful commanders and resplendent princes in one milieu of intellectual interest. Thereby what was of the highest significance for the finer structure of society was anticipated--that which admittedly already had its model in antiquity: that the criterion of intellectuality can function as a basis for the differentiation and the new formation of circles. Such had been heretofore either volitional (economic, military, political in the wider and narrower senses) or affective (religious) or based on a mixture of both (familial). That now intellectuality, the interest of knowledge, forms circles whose members are gathering together from all kinds of already existing ones, is like an intensification of the phenomenon of relatively recently developing group formations, often bearing a rational character, whose content is created by conscious deliberation and intellectual purpose. This formal entity of secondary formations, with the centering of circles around interests of intellectuality, has achieved its most powerful manifestation, determining even the contents.
The number of various circles then in which the individual stands is one of the indicators of culture. If the modern person belongs at first to the family of origin, then to that founded by oneself along with one's spouse, then to one's occupation, which frequently incorporates one into several more circles of interest (e. g. , in every occupation that contains dominant and subordinate persons, everyone stands in the circle of one's particular business, office, bureau, etc. , which always combines the high and the low, as well as in the circle that forms from the the equally ranked in different businesses); if one is conscious of one's citizenship as well as belonging to a definite social rank, is more- over a reserve officer, belongs to a couple of clubs and possesses a social circuit touching on the most varied circles, then this is indeed a very great variety of groups, some of which are certainly coordinated, but others of which get ordered in such a way that the one appears as the original alliance from which the individual on the basis of one's own particular qualities changes over to a more distanct circle, thereby separating from the members left in the first circle. The connection to them can continue further, just like one aspect of a complex idea, if psychologically long ago it also acquired purely substantive associa- tions; nevertheless, the bond to the complex, with which it exists just
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? spatially and temporally, need not in any way be lost. In less of an individualistic manner typical circles of belonging during the Middle Ages were offered to individuals beyond that of one's town citizenship. The Hanseatic League linked city with city and allowed individuals to take part in a sphere of action that reached not only beyond each individual but far beyond the borders of the kingdom; the guild com- munities, on the other hand, also did not ask for the municipal area, but organized individuals beyond their town citizenship into associations that stretched throughout all of Germany. And like the guild association transcending city boundaries, so the journeymen's association reached beyond the guild boundaries.
The latter configurations had the characteristic of taking hold of the individual not as an individual but as a member of a circle and of incorporating that circle as such into wider circles. To be sure the association of associations places individuals in a plurality of circles; but because these do not actually intersect they then have their own relevance to the problem of individuality, distinct from the mentioned social constellations of the circles, which will be discussed later. In the medieval league the idea existed--however often practice deviated from it--that only similar people could be united, in easily obvious relation to the completeness with which the medieval person turned one's existence over to the league. Therefore, initially cities allied with cities, monasteries with monasteries, guilds with related guilds. This was an expansion of the egalitarian principle, even if members of one corpora- tion might be quite unlike those of the other allied to it; but as members of a corporation they were equal to each other, and only insofar as they were this, not insofar as they were outwardly individually differentiated, the alliance held true. But even as that modus operandi spread to alliances of different kinds of league, these were precisely as leagues, as factors of power inside new complexes, but still experienced as similarity; the individual as such remained outside the broader agreement, so that a person's membership in it added nothing of a personally individual- izing element for that person. After all, this was, even as it was being carried out, the transitional form from the stricter sense of the medieval league that, by that sense, most telling perhaps in the old guilds and earlier medieval fraternities, did not permit the individual to join other circles--to the modern unions whose fellowship the isolated individual can join in any number desired.
From this, then, various consequences result. The groups to which the individual belongs form, as it were, a system of coordinates in such
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? a way that each additional one defines the individual more exactly and unambiguously. The attachment to any given one of them still leaves individuality wide latitude; however, the more there are, the more unlikely it is that yet other persons will manifest the same combination of groups, that this many circles would yet again intersect at one point. As the concrete object of our knowledge loses its individuality when we bring it under a universal concept according to some characteristic but recovers it to the degree that other concepts are emphasized, under which its other characteristics place it, so that each thing, platonically speaking, shares in as many different ideas as it possesses qualities and thereby acquires its individual specificity; precisely so is it the case for the personality in relation to the circles to which it belongs.
Just as one has appealed to the substantial object that stands before us as the synthesis of sense impressions--so that each object has, as it were, all the more definite being the more sensed qualities have been found together at its occurrence--so we form from the individual ele- ments of life, each of which is socially constructed or interwoven, that which we call subjectivity ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ,7 the personality that combines the elements of culture into an individual style. After the synthesis of the subjective brought forth the objective, the synthesis of the objective produces then a newer and higher subjective--just as the personality submits itself to the social circle and loses itself in it, only then, through the unique intersection of the social circles, to regain its individual- ity in that intersection. Incidentally its purposeful determination thus comes to be in a way the reverse image of its causal: by its origin one explained it as a point of intersection of countless social threads, as the consequence of the inheritance from the most varied circles and periods of adaptation, and its individuality as the particularity of the quanta and combinations in which the generic elements come together. Now it is attached with the variety of its drives and interests to the social structure; so it is then, as it were, a radiation and restoration of that which it received, in an anologous but conscious and enhanced form.
The moral personality develops entirely new certitudes but also entirely new tasks when it goes from the settled establishment in one circle into the intersection of many circles. At first the earlier unam- biguity and certainty yield to a fluctuation of life tendencies; in this sense, says an old English proverb: "Whoever speaks two languages is
7 Greek: according to prominence--ed.
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? a rascal. " That conflicts of an inner and outer nature arise through a multiplicity of social affiliations, conflicts that threaten the individual with a mental duality, indeed with mental rupture, is no proof against its stabilizing effect, strengthening personal unity. Since that dualism and this unity support each other reciprocally precisely because the personality is a unity, the division can become an issue for it; the more varied group interests meet and press for settlement together inside us, the more definitely does the 'I' become conscious of its unity. It has always been the case that affiliation to several families has above all been that which marriage effects for each of the spouses, the site of enrichment, but also of conflicts that bring the individual to an internal and external adjustment as well as to energetic self-assertion. In the make-up of ancient gentes the intersection of the circles in the individual is often so obvious as to belong to the lineage or totem tribe of the mother instead of that of the narrower familial or local tribe of the father. But these simpler people are not on a par with conflicts such as those just indicated, in a deep connection with the personality not yet having been cultivated into an acute awareness in them. With charac- teristic purposefulness both types of association are therefore frequently so essentially differently designed that they do not encroach on each other. It is the maternal affinity that has a more ideal, mental essence, the paternal, however, a real, more material, directly active one. The maternal relations or totem bond among the Australians, the Hereros, and many indigenous hunting peoples in general holds no significance for the ongoing everyday life; it is generally not operative in daily life but only in those ceremonial occasions of deeper meaning: weddings, funerals, blood revenge; that latter, inside the life of indigenous peoples, has an ideal, as it were, abstract character. The totem group, which the maternal lineage possesses and is therefore frequently scattered through many clans or tribes, is held together often only by common dietary restrictions and ceremonies, above all by special names and coats-of-arm symbols. The paternal relations, in which everyday real life is carried out, warfare, alliances, inheritance, the hunt, etc. do not have such, but do not require it either because their local unity and melding of their immediate interests takes care of their collective consciousness. On this level every local bond tends not to carry a more ideal charac- ter--whereas it is of a peculiarly higher development for a solidarity to be able to be supra-local and yet thoroughly of a realistic and concrete nature. Those indigenous circles, however, in whose point of intersec- tion their individuals stand--the patrilocal and matrilineal--must be
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? separated from one another as concrete and abstract social values in order to make this indistinct way of thinking possible at all, to bring both together in one and the same person.
Wholy unique in kind and consequence were the phenomena of intersection that took place with the Catholic priesthood. No stratum was excluded from supplying priests and monks; the power that was unique to the church's station lured the highest as well as the lowest social elements. With regard to medieval England it is noted that in general strong class aversions prevailed, but the clergy, although strongly closed in on itself as a class, nevertheless produced no class hatred because it came from all classes, and every family had some member in it. The counterpart to that was that church landholdings were found every- where; while thus next to the unendingly many titles to property in every province, almost in every community, there existed one standing under that aspect, a regional unity of the spiritual stratum arose that was counterpart, consequence, and foundation of the material one. This is the most gigantic example in prior history of a formation of a circle that intersected all other existing groups--but at the same time is characterized thereby as creating no coincidence in the individuals. The priesthood to some extent could have, from any perspective, such a fully unprejudiced outreach to the existing social ranks because it thereby simply removed the individual, whom it grasped, from his social stratum and did not allow him to maintain any determinants from there, even one's name itself, that would then have fully specified the newly acquired personality; the latter was defined rather fully from the new circle--indeed with the consequence that our context confirms, e contrario, that the priest is not permitted any individuality in the other valid senses, no differential determination, but, because he is entirely a priest, must be also entirely a priest. 8 The encounter with the circle is then not at all functional for the individual, but only for the profession as a whole in which the earlier affiliations of all strata and circles are found together. The thoroughgoing positive sociological security that the higher social structure gained here from the intersection of the circles in it resulted from the fact that it had no relationship with one that it did not have with another. Among the means that Catholicism employed to place the individual priest beyond the intersection of circles, that of celibacy is the most radical. This is because marriage
8 The phrase, e contrario, is Latin for 'on the contrary'--ed.
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? means such a sociologically binding specification that the individual is frequently no longer entirely free to take a position inside of another circle that would accept a person, a position that would be determined just by the interest of this second circle. It is noteworthy that the lower Russian clergy, whose duties necessitate a life among the people, is generally married, but the higher governing clergy is celibate--while even the lowest Roman Catholic priest assumes a position in his village that is, so to speak, abstract, set apart from a life in common with his surroundings. Certainly insofar as the Russian priesthood actually forms a transition to the Protestant clergy, in principle entirely interwoven in civic life, it is as such almost exclusively endogamous: the priest seldom marries anyone other than a priest's daughter. Hence the consequences of marriage for the other sociological ties of the spouse are frequently so considerable that the affiliations are distinguished specifically by whether the marriage of their members has a significance for them or not. In the Middle Ages and even later the marriage of a journeyman was viewed by fellow journeymen very unhappily; indeed, in some guilds the entry of a married journeyman was made with great difficulty. This was because marriage limited the journeymen's mobility, which was required not only for maintaining the vitality of the unity and internal linkage among the profession of journeymen, but also for the facilita- tion of mobility of the members according to work opportunities; the marriage of the journeyman broke through the uniformity of interests, the appearance independent from the masters, the closed nature of the craft. The intersection of ties, because of the particular structure of marriage and family, had here the unavoidable consequence of largely removing the individual from the other bond. It goes without saying that on analogous grounds bachelorhood was also viewed for soldiers as the proper state wherever there existed a strongly differentiated 'military stratum'; rather in accord with the case of the Russian clergy, marriage or concubinage was permitted for the Macedonian regiments of the Ptolemies and after that for the soldiers in the Roman imperial era--but then the troops were frequently replenished by the offspring of these unions; not until the deep rooting of the modern army in the organic life of the people were officers completely exempted in this respect. Incidentally it is obvious that the same form-sociological constellation can also appear in substantively different conditions, albeit not so typically and essentially as with marriage. Just as the old student universities in Bologna denied admission to native students and with- drew membership rights from members who acquired citizenship in the
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? city after more than ten years residence in the city, so the Hanseatic League of German merchants excluded any affiliate in Flanders who had acquired Flemish citizenship. If groups diverge too far from one another in their meaning and their requirements of the individual, they do not intersect at all, or at least not in terms of their purposes. And a circle that wants to take in its member into itself unconditionally finds--alongside the more substantial motive of jealousy--a formal contradiction therein in that the differentiation of individuals requires toleration for their concurrent membership in others.
The social definition of the individual will be all the greater when the defining circles are juxtaposed rather than concentric; i. e. gradu- ally narrower circles, such as nation, social class, occupation, singular categories inside them, will provide the person participating in them no special individual place because the smallest of them all by itself signifies membership in the wider ones. Nevertheless, these affiliations stuffed inside one another, so to speak, define their individuals in a by no means always unified manner; their relationship of concentricity can be a mechanical rather than an organic one, so that in spite of this relationship they influence their individuals as though independently juxtaposed to one another. This is shown to a degree in early law when someone guilty of an offense is punished twice: by the narrower circle to which the offender belongs and by the larger that surrounds it. When in late medieval Frankfurt a guild member had not fulfilled his military service, the guild leaders punished him, but besides them then the city council as well. Likewise with slander and libel, after they were atoned for by the guild, the affronted still sought justice through the courts. Conversely, in the older guild orders the guild had reserved for itself the punishment of offenders even when the court had already done this. This two-in-one proved very clearly to the person affected that both circles surrounded one concentrically in certain respects, in other respects, though, intersected in that person, and the involve- ment in the narrower one still did not quite include everything that involvement in the wider one meant--as in the foregoing example, certainly membership in one particular category inside a wider general occupational circle presupposes all the determinants that pertain to the latter. A positively antagonistic relationship between the narrower and the wider circle in its particular significance for the situation of the individual--next to the countless cases where it is a matter of the overall general conflict between the whole and the part--manifests the
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? following type. When a larger group A consists of the smaller groups m and n, it happens then that A in its narrower but essential sense of existence is identical only with m, while n stands in opposition to m precisely in that respect. This was the relationship of the free Burgenses or Bu? rger communities and the bishop-led ministries, which frequently made up the bulk of the city population in the early Middle Ages. Actually both together formed the broader concept of the city. In the narrower sense, though, only the first were 'the city. ' The vassals of the bishop had thus a double status: they were members of the citizenry and yet extended on another side with interest and law into another circle altogether; they were on the one side a part, on the other the opposite of the Burgenses. The very position that alienated them from the city, as vassals of the bishop, made them in every individual case a member of that particular city. If these more proper citizens were perchance distributed in guilds, then each individual was uniformly enveloped by this narrower and the wider circles of the city. The circle of ministries, however, was likewise certainly encircled on the one side by the circle of the city, on the other side, however, cut off from it. This relationship was so contradictory that the ministries were transferred either into the actual Bu? rger communities or eliminated altogether from the sphere of the city. In spite of such inconveniences and difficulties that arise for the position of the individual from membership in concentric circles closing in around one, this is, however, one of the first forms yet in which partnership in such a plurality is possible for the individual who began a social existence absorbed into one circle. The uniqueness of the nature of medieval solidarity in contrast to the modern has often been accentuated: it occupied the whole person; it served not only a particular objectively circumscribed purpose but was an association, encompassing the whole persons of those who had come together for that purpose. The drive for the formation of association functioned yet further, so that it was satisfied when these unions assembled altogether to form a higher order of unions. As long as the intentional association had not yet been found, the possibility of functioning collectively with others with purely objective contributions for purely objective purposes and thereby reserving the totality of the 'I'--that form was then the simply emerging but in reality sociologically brilliant means for allowing the individual to participate in a plurality of circles without becoming alienated from the local membership in the original one. The enrich- ment of the individual as a social being thusly attained was admittedly
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? a limited one, which is not to be gained by virtue of the purpose-driven association, but nevertheless great enough, since what the higher association brought to the individual was thus in no way contained in its narrower one, just as the concept tree, to which the oak belongs simultaneously, includes already all the features of the concept plant, which in turn contains that of the tree. And it itself would have gained nothing other than what this metaphor indicates--thus the assignment under the concept plant has a meaning for the oak, which it, under the concept tree, so very logically for the conceptual content of the plant includes but yet does not possess: the relationship, of course, to all that that is plant but is not a tree. The concentric structure of circles is thereby the systematic and frequently also the historical intermediate stage whereby they, lying next to one another, encounter one another in one and the same personality.
In personal consequences, it admittedly differs immeasurably from the concentric form if someone belongs to a scientific association quite outside an occupational status, is a consultant for a corporation, and occupies a volunteer city office; the less participation by oneself in one circle leaves room for participating in another one, the more definitely is the person affected by standing in the intersection of them both. As far as the participation in offices and institutions comes into question here, it depends of course on the breadth of its division of labor whether a characteristic combination of talents, a particular latitude of action, allows the union of several functions in a person to appear in it. The structure of the objective social formations also offers in this manner the greater or lesser possibility of constituting or expressing through them the distinctiveness and singularity of the subject. In England it was for a long time common for a plurality of quite different authorities to be formed from the same personnel. Already in the Middle Ages one and the same person could operate as a circuit court judge ( justice in eyre), a member of the treasury staff (Baron of the Exchequer), a member of the judiciary (justice in banco). While the same circle of persons were clustered in such varied official councils, obviously a particular character- istic of the subjects is not given in this synthesis: the objective contents of the functions could not yet be adequately differentiated under such circumstances to make the unification of the individuals into a ratio essendi or cognoscendi9 of a completely individual solidarity.
9 Mostly Latin: basis of being or recognizing--ed.
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? On the other hand, quite apart from the contents of the clusters, the mere fact that the individual of the heretofore single, one-dimensionally determining bond affiliates with new associations is certainly sufficient to give oneself a stronger consciousness of individuality in general, at least to go beyond the presumptive self-understanding from the earlier association. For this reason--which is important at yet other places in these investigations--the representatives of the existing bonds are already oriented towards the purely formal reality of the new ones, even if in their contents these offer absolutely no competition with the former. The frequent imperial prohibitions of the German federated cities in the 12th and 13th centuries might well have been intended to meet concrete dangers. However, the federal government and the hierarchy in the French and at first also in the German empires coming out against the guilds is something much more abstract and important; here it was a matter of the purely free union as such, the nature of which permitted an unlimited increase, giving competition to the exist- ing associative powers, a matter of the personality acquiring a unique situation through the mere fact of multiple associations in which the bonds are oriented to the personalities, while in the earlier, so to speak, singly dominating syntheses the personalities remained oriented to the bonds. Thereby the potential for individualization also grows immea- surably so that the same person in the various circles to which that person concurrently belongs can appropriate entirely different relational positions. This is already important with respect to the intersection of familial social circles. The dissolution of the proto-Germanic clan for- mation became considerable by taking account of the female lineage, fostered indeed merely by the in-law relations. Then one could belong to various familial circles at the same time; the rights and duties from each of them competed so effectively with each of the others that, as has been expressed, no kinship communities existed, but only relatives. This result, however, could not have occurred with the same intensity at all, indeed, the whole situation could not at all have come about, if the individual had assumed the same position in each familial lineage. However, while one stood at one time in a central position but at the same time elsewhere in a peripheral one, possessed in the one lineage a position of authority but in the other a position coordinated with many others, here located in a more economically relevant situation but there only in one of personal significance, and the structure of these relations excluded the possibility of a second individual occupying the exact same position inside the same concerns--the result was an individual situation
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? that was impossible with a mono-lineal kinship community. 10 Since even here the individual would likely be born at a totally determinant position, the accent of importance always attached to it because this line provided a lineage for a person; in itself it ruled the individual, while conversely at the intersections it was the individual who brought about the contact of one lineage with the other. Now apart from such possibilities inside the familial bonds of, so to speak, self-initiating posi- tions and their individual combinations--there is immediately produced once more, in a more active manner, by every new union under an egalitarian viewpoint a certain inequality in itself, a differentiation between the leadership and the led; if a unifying interest, perhaps something like the mentioned humanistic one, was a common bond for high and low persons which neutralized their other difference, a new distinction between high and low then arose inside this commonality and according to its own categories, which stood wholly apart from any parallel with the high and low inside their other circles, but then thereby distinguishing the personality all that much more and situating it from all that many more angles. However, the same characteristic result can also occur by means of the very equality that prevails inside of a newly formed circle: when, for instance, its members appropriate and main- tain positions of extremely different standing in the groups previously encompassing them. Then it is precisely this reality, that one standing low in an original circle and another standing high, are now equal in a social sense, which is a most highly peculiar social development for each of them. For example, the medieval knighthood functioned in this sense. With it, the officials--the court dependents attached to the prince--were established in a community of equal rank to which the prince, indeed the emperor himself, belonged and which made all its members equally high in rank in knightly things. This gave the officials a position that had nothing to do with their ministerial duty and rights that did not stem from their lord. The difference by birth of the noble, the free, and the vassal was thus not eliminated, but it was intersected by a new line that from beginning to end contained one level: that of the, not concretely but ideally, operative fellowship of being united by an identical knightly right and custom. Outside the circles in which one stood either high or low, whoever was now concurrently classified in one in which everyone stood absolutely 'equal' acquired by that an individu-
10 Simmel gives 'concerns' in English--ed.
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? alizing synthesis; the structure of the circles in which one participated had to enrich and determine one's feeling of life uniquely as a social being. While the level of the positions which one and the same person in various groups assumes are fully independent of one another, rare combinations can arise such as those in lands with universal military duty, so that the intellectually and socially highest ranked person has to be subordinate to a non-commissioned officer, or in the Parisian beggars guild that possesses an elected 'king' who was originally only a beggar like all of them and, insofar as I know, also ongoingly remains such, who is vested with truly princely honors and preferment--perhaps the strangest and most individualizing union of a low and high estate in one and the same social position. Also this intersection can occur inside one single relationship as soon as it includes a plurality of relations in itself, as, e. g. , the private tutor--and even more so with the earlier private tutors of youths of the nobility. The tutor is supposed to have superior- ity over the pupil, to dominate and lead--and is yet still the servant of that master; or when in Cromwell's army any corporal especially well versed in the Bible could deliver a morally reprimanding sermon to his major while he obeyed him unreservedly in official matters. Finally the issue of these intersections with the determining consequences falls back for the individual even closer onto oneself; so, e. g. , in the characteristic phenomenon of aristocrats with liberal attitudes, the cosmopolitan with prominent churchly tendencies, the scholar who seeks out exclusively relations among practical persons, etc.
Those intersections taking place inside of a single group find their typical example in the competition among persons who possess alle- giances in different directions. The merchant is, on the one side, tied to other merchants in a circle that has a large number of common interests: economic-political legislation, social standing of the merchant class, its public image, uniting against the public for the maintenance of definite prices, and many others--so it goes with the whole world of business as such and allows them to appear as a unity agaisnt third parties. On the other hand, however, each business person is in a competitive position against any number of others; entrance into this profession simultaneously creates for them association and isolation, similar and different positioning; they look after their interest through the most bitter competition with those with whom they nevertheless must frequently join together most closely on account of their shared interest. This internal contradiction is probably at its admittedly crassest in the realm of the business person, while also existing in some way in
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? all other realms, down to the ephemeral socializing of the evening get- together. An immeasurable possibility of individualizing combinations open up thereby in the individual belonging to a multiplicity of circles in which the proportion of competition and association vary greatly. It is a trivial observation that the instinctive needs of human beings for both of these go in contrary directions, that one desires to feel and deal with others but also against others; a definite measure of one and the other and their proportion is a purely formal necessity for human beings that they satisfy with the most diverse contents--and for sure in such a way that frequently the grasping for certain contents of life is not at all understandable based on their material significance but only on the satisfaction that those formal drives find in them. Individuality, with respect to its natural striving as well as its historical emergence, is thereby characterized by a quantitative proportion between association and competition that is decisive for it. And the opposite tendency also arises directly from that: that the need for a clearly outlined, unambigu- ous development of individuality drives individuals to the choice of certain circles in whose intersection they would place themselves and from whose solidarity--one in essence offering the form of connection, the other the form of competition--they would obtain a maximum of that individualization. Thus where strong competition prevails within one circle, the members gladly seek for themselves other groups that are as uncompetitive as possible; therefore in the business stratum a decided preference for convivial clubs is found, whereas the class con- sciousness of aristocrats, for the most part excluding competition inside its own circle, renders that kind of supplementation rather superficial for them and suggests to them instead associations that in themselves promote strong competition, e. g. , all that is maintained by interests in sport. Finally, I mention here also the frequently discrepant intersections that emerge when an individual or a group is ruled by interests that are opposed to one another and which therefore allow them to belong at the same time to entirely opposed parties. For individuals such a real- ity occurs when a strong political party life prevails in a pluralistically developed culture; then of course there is a tendency for the emergence of the phenomenon of political parties differing from one another in the various perspectives even with regard to issues that have nothing to do with the politics, so that a particular trend in literature, arts, religiosity, etc. is associated with one party, the opposite trend with another; in the end the line that divides the parties extends entirely through the totality of life interests. Then it goes without saying that the individual,
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? who does not wish to be put entirely under the influence of the party, will perhaps join up with a group of aesthetic or religious conviction that is amalgamated with one's political opposition. One stands at the intersection of two groups who are normally consciously opposed to one another.
The most significant and at the same time most characteristic exam- ple is offered perhaps by religious affiliation since the detachment of religion from its originally national or local bond, so immeasurably important for the history of the world, has occurred. In both socio- logical forms: that either the religious community signifies at the same time the community in other essential or most far-reaching interests-- or that it is fully freed precisely from all solidarity with that which is not religion--the essence of religion is equally fully expressed in both, only in each case in a different language or on a different level of development. That existence together, that a sharing of life interests, is not possible with people with whom one does not share faith is fully understandable; for the deeply justified need of such a unity in the entire ancient world, Semitic as well as Greco-Roman, it was a priori sufficient that religion arose as a matter of the clan or the state, i. e. --with few exceptions--God was merged directly with the interests of the political group, the duties towards God directly with the all-encompass- ing duties towards it. But the power of the religious motive is no less evident where it is independent and strong enough to unite fellow believers above all the variations from their other ties, directly opposite all connections from other motives for combining. The latter religious situation is obviously an eminently individualistic one; the religious attitude has cut itself off from the foothold it had from being bound up with the total complex of social ties, and while it withdraws into the individual soul and its responsibility, it reaches out to others equally qualified only in this respect, and perhaps in no other. That Christianity is, in its pure sense, an entirely individualistic religion--surpassed in that only by the original Buddhism, which, however, is actually not a religion but teaches exclusively a salvation attainable on an absolutely personal path without any transcendent intervention--this made the spread of Christianity possible throughout all the varieties of national and local groups; just as, looked at from the other side, the conscious- ness of Christians that they carry their church membership into any community whatsoever has to have definitely produced the feeling of individual determination and self-confidence, whichever other charac- ter and whichever other duties may also accrue to them from that
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? community. This sociological significance of religion is the reflection of its entirely universal dual relationship to life: it stands at one time in opposition to all the contents of our existence, is the counterpart and equivalent of life in general, untouchable by life's secular move- ments and interests; and at another time yet again it sides with a party among the parties of this life, above which it had in principle risen, becomes an element next to all of life's other elements, involves itself in a multiplicity and succession of relationships within life that it had rejected a moment ago. So here emerges this strange interweaving: the rejection of every sociological bond, as happens in deeper religiosity, makes the contact possible for individuals of one's religiously inclined circle with all other possible circles whose members do not have those interests in common with them; and the connections occurring thereby serve in turn as the sociological accentuation and definition of the individuals as well as the religious groups. This schema continues into the particulars of the religious person and into particular intermingling with the remaining interests of the subjects. In the disputes between France and Spain the Huguenots once put themselves at the service of the king when it was a matter of opposing Catholic Spain and its friends inside France; another time, oppressed by the king, they allied directly with Spain. Another distinct situation of duality arose at the time of the cruel oppression of the Irish Catholics by England. One day the Protestants of England and Ireland would experience themselves allied against the common religious foe without regard to nationality; the next day the Protestants and Catholics of Ireland would join together against the oppressor of their common fatherland without regard to religious difference. In contrast it appears to peoples among whom the primitive unity of the circle exists in a still unbroken religious and political relationship, as in China, as something entirely unheard of and inconceivable that European nations would intervene for the pro- tection of Chinese and Turkish Christians. Where this unity, however, is so decayed, as in Switzerland, the abstract nature of religion--which then again acquires from its abstractness a rather definite position in relation to all other interests--gives rise directly to very characteristic intersections.