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.
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Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 677 Index of Topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 679
? 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. ]
? 364 chapter six
?
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;
the intersection of social circles 365
? 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.
? the intersection of social circles 367
? 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.
? the intersection of social circles 369
? 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
the intersection of social circles 371
? 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
372 chapter six
? 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.
? the intersection of social circles 373
? 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
374 chapter six
? 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.
? the intersection of social circles 375
? 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.
Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 677 Index of Topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 679
? 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. ]
? 364 chapter six
?
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;
the intersection of social circles 365
? 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.
