No More Learning

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. 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
376 chapter six
? 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
the intersection of social circles 377
? 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
378 chapter six
? 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.
? the intersection of social circles 379
? 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
380 chapter six
? 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.
? the intersection of social circles 381
? 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
382 chapter six
? 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,
the intersection of social circles 383
? 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
384 chapter six
? 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. Switzerland, of course, by virtue of the enormous differ- ences between cantons, has no very decisive party reality of the kind that would separate the politically like-minded in the different cantons into major parties in relation to the government as a whole. Only the Ultramontanes from all the cantons form a solid bloc in political matters. One can readily presume that this detachment of the religious from
the intersection of social circles 385
? the political groupings holds as well in reverse and alliances in the lat- ter respect are made possible that would have frustrated the continuing unity of both. The most outstanding example perhaps is the 1707 union completed between England and Scotland. For both parts the advantage of being one state was tied to the fact that the duality of the churches continued to exist. The political and religious system had been until then closely associated in both countries; only insofar as this would loosen could the political interests amalgamate, which the religious would not have tolerated. "They could," so it was said of the countries, "preserve harmony only by agreeing to differ. "11 Once this solution took place, with its possible consequence of intersection, then the freedom gained by that is no longer vulnerable to revocation from within. For that reason the principle, cuius region eius religio,12 has the force of law only if it does not need to be expressed, but expresses the organically integrated, naively undifferentiated primitive situation. Admittedly, it is rather strange when the religious viewpoint, detached from all other grounds for separation, fuses the persons and interests actually requir- ing differentiation; this integration, however, is experienced as having originated entirely parallel to and based on the simple objective grounds of differentiation. Thus in the year 1896 the Jewish laborers in Manchester formed themselves into an organization that explicitly was supposed to include all categories of workers (mainly they were tailors, cobblers, and bakers) and that wanted then to make common cause with the other trade unions in regard to the interests of workers--while these others, though, were fully constructed on the basis of the division of labor according to the objective categories of various types of work, and certainly in such a decisive manner that the trade unions, for their part, could not therefore be induced to merge with the International because it was constituted from the outset without regard for the similarity of craft activity of its members. Although that fact seems to lead back into the lack of differentiation between a religious and socio- economic community of interests, it still demonstrates their uncoupling in principle, in that the synthesis, by its voluntary coordination with
11 Source of quotation is unknown--ed.
12 Latin: 'Whose territory, that person's religion,' was a principle that goes back to
the Roman Emperor Constantine; the formula is usually associated with the Peace of Augsburg (1555), which established Lutheran and Catholic Christianities in different parts of northern Europe--ed.
? 386 chapter six
? purely objectively differentiated structures, reveals itself as an integra- tion technically for only practical purposes. With the Catholic labor unions in Germany the case is altogether different on account of the extent of their reach, on account of the political role of Catholicism as such in Germany, and because the workers here are not in so an exposed position because of their religion as are the Jewish workers. In Germany the differentiation leads inside the originally universal Catholic unions to the organization of special work cooperatives (e. g. , earlier in Aachen for a number years: of the weavers, spinners, dress- ers, needle makers, metalworkers, and construction workers); the asso- ciation is large enough to offer room for such a division without the intersection then necessarily involving these special cooperatives in a confluence with the non-confessional ones of the same craft. Never- theless, this latter did occur anyway, and that inner division is obviously the first step toward that.
Finally an intersection of a higher order arises as a result of the religious powers being sublimated into the priesthood. The sociological formula of this sublimation--the relationship of representation and leadership, control and cooperation, reverence and material concern between believers and priests--certainly varies from one religion to another, but what they typically have in common is that one can still speak, with reservations, of a formal similarity of the position of the priest within to those of quite different groups--as those of the nobil- ity, of the military, of business. Then from this initially arises interests of solidarity--a self-perception, a cohering among priests, which under certain circumstances can transcend even a substantive opposi- tion between the Protestant 'Positives' and the Catholic clerics. 13 The individual priest or the more closely knit group of priests stands at a point of intersection in which the membership in a national, confes- sional, in some way partisan association coincides with that of the association of the universal priesthood, links its in part social, in part ethical-metaphysical affinity, and which gives the individual subjects a uniquely determined character distinct from the other members of the one as well as the other group.
13 Simmel's phrase is zwischen den evangelischen Positiven und den katholischen Klerikalen. The former were adherents of 'positive theology,' a term coined by Denys Petau in the 17th century; that theology held that humans can acquire secure knowledge about God and the divine Will by means of reason and cognition. We are indebted to Hans Geser for identifying this allusion--ed.
? the intersection of social circles 387
? The development of the public mind is thus manifested in sufficiently many circles of whatever objective form and organization being at hand to afford every essential side of a multiply talented personality an asso- ciation and a society to participate in. Hereby a common approach is offered to the ideal of collectivism as well as individualism. On the one hand the individual finds, then, for every inclination and endeavor, a community that facilitates the satisfaction of them and accordingly offers a purposefully proven form for one's activities and all the advantages of group membership; on the other hand the specificity of individuality is protected by the combination of circles that can be unique in every instance. Thus one can say: society arises from individuals, the indi- vidual arises from society. When the advanced culture more and more expands the social circle to which we belong with our whole personality, the individual is still in large measure on one's own and deprived of many supports and advantages of the tightly related group: thus there is now in every establishment of circles and social groups, in which people interested in the same thing can gather in whatever numbers, a compensation for that isolation of the personality that emerges from the break with the narrow confinement of earlier conditions.
The confinement of this association is to be measured by whether and to what degree such a circle has developed a particular 'honor,' of the type that the damage or the insult to the honor of one member is experienced by every other member as a diminishment of one's own honor, or that the community possesses a personal honor collectively, changes in which play out in the experience of honor of every member. With the establishment of this specific concept of honor (family honor, officers' honor, business honor, etc. ) such circles secure for themselves the purposeful behavior of their members, especially in the area of the specific difference by which they are distinguished from the widest social circle, and in such a way that with regard to the compulsory rules for such correct behavior the state's laws contain no regulations for them. 14 Thus through specific circles, which can mean even a single person, generating particular honors for themselves and the wider circle cultivating a more abstract, universal concept of honor that differs from the narrower one of the fixed special circles, but which neverthe- less still applies to the members of these latter--in this way the fine
14 Additional particulars about this in the chapter on self-preservation.
? 388 chapter six
? points of the norms of honor become symbols of the circles. There is a professional honor with a negative sign, a professional dishonor that subtracts a certain latitude from the behavior generally counting as humanly honorable or so in the whole surrounding society, just as the positive professional honor adds demands to it. Thus there were and are--for the many categories of businesspersons and again especially the speculator, but also the low penny-a-liner, the demimonde--certain things permitted and covered with a good conscience through profes- sional consciousness, practiced by them that do not otherwise generally count as honorable. 15 Next to this profession-related disrespectability the individual can, however, be thoroughly honorable in one's universally human relations in the conventional sense, in the same way incidentally as that the protection of the specific professional honor does not hinder the individual who would act thoroughly dishonorably according to general ideas. Thus various sides of the personality can be subject to various codes of honor as reflections of the various groups to which the person belongs simultaneously. The same requirement can, e. g. , thereby receive two quite different emphases. To not tolerate being insulted can be the maxim of someone who in private life, however, acts quite dif- ferently, such as in the capacity of a reserve officer or in an office. The attention to the honor of a wife as protection for one's own manliness will have a different accent in the family of a priest as opposed to a circle of young lieutenants, so that a member of the latter, who stems from the former, can feel in himself very clearly the conflict between these concepts of honor from his membership in two circles.
In general this formation of professional codes of honor--which appear in the thousands quite rudimentarily dressed in simple nuances of feeling and action, in more personal or more material motives--reveals one of the most significant form-sociological developments. The narrow and strict attachment of earlier circumstances, in which the social group as a whole, with respect to its central authority, regulates all the behavior of the individual according to the most varied ways, limits its regula- tive power more and more to the essential interests of the totality; the freedom of the individual gains more and more domains for itself. These become filled by new group formations, but in such a way that
15 The expressions 'penny-a-liner' and 'demimonde' are given in English and French, respectively--ed.
? the intersection of social circles 389
? the interests of the individual determine which groups one will belong to; consequently, instead of external means of coercion, the sense of honor suffices to compel one to adhere to those norms necessary for the continued existence of the group. Moreover this process does not get its start only from the official power of coercion; in general where a group power originally dominates a number of individual life interests that stand materially outside a relation to its purposes? namely in the family, in the guild, in the religious community etc. --the dependence and association in relation to them are handed over to the specialized association in which participation is a matter of personal freedom, whereby then the task of creating society can be accomplished in a much fuller manner than through the earlier affiliation more negligent about individuality.
Furthermore, it happens that the undifferentiated domination of a social power over people, however comprehensive and strict it may be, nevertheless does not and cannot concern itself over the whole range of life's relationships, and that they will then leave to the purely individual will all those of less concern and pertinence; indeed greater coercion rules in the remaining relationships; thus the Greek and, even more so, the old Roman citizen had to subordinate himself unconditionally, certainly in everything having to do with politics only, anything then in connection to issues pertinent to the norms and purposes of his national community; however, for that reason, as lord of his house, he possessed an all-the-more unlimited domination; thus that narrowest social association, as we observed in the small groupings of indigenous peoples, gives the individual complete freedom to act in any way one desires towards all people standing outside one's tribe; thus tyranny finds in general its correlate and even its support in the most complete freedom and even lack of restraint of personalities with regard to the relationships not important for them. After this dysfunctional apportion- ment of collectivistic coercion and individualistic volition, one more appropriate and just appears, where the substantive content of the being and dispositions of persons are decisive regarding the associa- tive formation, because then collective supports for their heretofore entirely uncontrolled and individualistically determined operations are more easily found; for to the same degree to which the personality is set free as a whole, it also seeks out social affiliation for its various aspects and limits voluntarily the individualistic discretion as it finds another substitute for the undifferentiated bond to a collective power;
390 chapter six
? thus we see, e. g. , in countries with great political freedom an especially strongly cultivated unity,16 in religious communities without a strongly hierarchically exercised church authority a lively sect-formation, etc. In a word, freedom and obligation are apportioned with more balance if the social transactions, rather than the juggling of heterogeneous elements of the personality in a unitary circle, offer the possibility that the homogeneous is assembled from heterogeneous circles.
This is one of the most important ways the progressing development takes: the differentiation and division of labor are initially, so to speak, of a quantitative nature and apportion the spheres of activity in such a way certainly that for an individual or a group an other comes as one among others, but each of them includes a sum of qualitatively different relationships; however, this differentiation is later singled out and united from all these circles into one now qualitatively integrated sphere of activity. Public administration frequently develops in this manner, in such a way that the initially entirely undifferentiated center of administration sets aside an array of areas each of which is subor- dinate to an individual authority or personality. However, these areas are first of all of a local nature; thus, e. g. , a director on behalf of the French council of state is sent into a province to exercise there all the various functions that the council of state itself otherwise exercises over the entire country; it is a parceling out, depending on the quantity of work, in the form of a regional division. From that comes the later differentiation of division by functions, when, e. g. , from the council of state are formed the various ministries, each of whose activity reaches over the entire country but only in a qualitatively determined respect. The promotion of officials to the national level corresponds to this. It offers, in contrast to being restricted to the same local district, the greater possibility of always providing for the individual official the most appropriate and suitable position for one's abilities and merit, and furthermore promotes the closer functional tie of the provinces to one another. It is therefore appropriate that these promotions come only
16 Obviously this can also develop on another political basis; for example, where decidedly individualistic tendencies encounter extensive state patronization. Here the accent turns directly on the individualistic moment of the cultivation of unity, on the degree of freedom that it contains from official coercion and by which it directly grants individuality a formal support against it. As in the case cited in the text, socially borne feelings of freedom and feelings of bonding intersect even here; only here, in contrast, political groupings belong to the first and associational ones to the second. The same holds for the second example in the text [religious communities--ed. ].
? the intersection of social circles 391
? to the higher officials, while the subalterns as a rule persist for their entire lives in the same province. The greater significance of personal talent, which exists on their part in contrast to the general activity of the subaltern, is as much the cause as the effect of the sphere of one's substantive functions combining interchangeably with the characteristics and interests of multiple locations; over against the fixed locale this intersection of circles manifests the greater freedom that is the corre- late of individual life. Now a phenomenon is met that seems to negate directly the differentiation exhibited in the example from France, in reality, however, presenting yet a higher stage. In the Directorate, nearly independently, Rewbell led the Judiciary, Barras the police, Carnot the military, etc. A wholly different division of responsibilities existed, however, for appointing provincial officials: for Rewbell administered the East, Barras the South, Carnot the North, etc. The differentiation of substantive functions thus remains in force while crisscrossing all the separate locales. Now naming officials actually required expert knowl- edge only secondarily; in the first place, personal or local knowledge. Here thus was the form of local division, with its crisscrossing of all varieties of technical knowledge that would apply. The opposite of that is seen in the entirely noteworthy lack of differentiation of the Consejos, ministerial councils formed under Philip II in Spain. According to an Italian report, there were the following councils: dell' Indie, di Castiglia, d'Aragona, d'inquisizione, di camera, dell'ordini, di Guerra, di hazzienda, di giustizia, d'Italia, di stato. 17 Since all these seem to have been coordinated, the activities of the department ministers and the regional ministers must have continually collided with one another. Here there is, so to speak, only a division by function in general which is simply without principle because it allows the local and the substantive principle to function without separation.
If the specialization in the healing arts in ancient Egypt had already developed one physician for the arm and another for the leg, this was also a differentiation from the perspective of site, in contrast to which modern medicine consigns similar pathological conditions to which body members are subject to the same specialist, so that the functional simi- larity then prevails in place of grouping by accidental external features. This gets reversed then again--albeit in a different respect--with those
17 Italian: that of the Indies, Castille, Aragon, inquisition, parliament, warrants, war, finance (hazzienda, archaic Spanish), justice, Italy, state--ed.
? 392 chapter six
? specialists who do not treat only specific illnesses and only them, but all illnesses, but only with one particular method or one means. Thus, e. g. , the natural healers who cure everything ultimately with water. Here then evidently this one-dimensionality is the same as with those Egyptian physicians, only that it has a functional rather than site-related character, thanks to modern development--thereby proving that there is even within that character yet again the distinction between exter- nally mechanical and substantively adapted methods. That new form of apportionment, going beyond the older differentiation and grouping, is manifested further, for example, by the businesses that handle all the various materials for the production of complex objects, e. g. , the whole of railroad materials, all the articles for restaurateurs, dentists, shoe manufacturers, warehouses for house and kitchen equipment, etc. The integrating perspective, resulting after the combination of the objects stemming from the most varied spheres of production, is their connec- tion to an integrating purpose that they collectively serve, the terminus ad quem, while the division of labor takes place as a rule according to the integration of the terminus a quo, of the like kind of manufacture. These businesses, which have the latter certainly as a presupposition, represent a magnified division of labor in that, from entirely hetero- geneous branches that however already operate in themselves with a wide division of labor, they belong together from one point of view and, so to speak, include the divisions into a new keynote of harmony. Finally consumers' co-operatives represent yet another wholly different crisscrossing and collection of materials by a principle heterogeneous to them, especially those that are formed for specified occupational categories, for laborers, military officers, officials. In them the stocked articles are with few exceptions the same for the latter two professions; a purely formal moment of separation, fully independent of the material, allows each an existence for itself. What function this contains, however, is to be managed from this: the department store for German officials is a corporation that stands before its consumers like any merchant, that fulfills its purpose as such all the better the more that is purchased with it without the limitation to a particular clientele in and for itself being necessary for their business and one or another result. Accordingly, if it had been opened then simply as a consumers' co-operative that is immediately accessible or even only as an ordinary business that sells reliably at reasonable prices, the outcome would certainly have remained far behind what was actually achieved. Precisely this materially fully unnecessary personal restriction removes hindrances and uncertain-
the intersection of social circles 393
? ties that otherwise make business difficult and effects a strong appeal to all those included in this restriction, albeit if actually for no other reason than because it excludes everyone else. All these facts, as such, have--with perhaps the exception of the last one mentioned--evidently no social significance. They serve here only as analogies of sociological combinations and developments to show that in them universal forms and norms prevail that are operative widely over the sociological realm. The external-mechanical unity of things, their dismantling and the rational-substantive combination of elements, the manufacture of new aggregates from higher transcendent viewpoints--all these are in general typical forms of human mentality. As sociological forms are realized by an unlimited quantity of contents, so those forms themselves are arrangements of more deeply situated, more universally mental, basic functions. Everywhere form and content are only relative concepts, categories of knowledge for managing phenomena and their intellec- tual organization, so that in any relationship the very same thing that emerges as a form when seen from above, as it were, must be noted in another one as content when seen from below.
A coalescence into an integrated social consciousness that is especially interesting for the supra-individual distinctiveness by virtue of its height of abstraction is found in the solidarity of laborers as such. No matter what the individuals make, whether cannons or toys, the formal fact that they work for wages at all unites them with those located in the same situation; the common relationship to capital forms to some extent the identifying particularization18 that permits the distinction between what is in common from all the various types of jobs and creates an integration for all therein engaged. The immeasurable importance that the psychological differentiation of the concept of 'worker' in general had from that of the weaver, the mechanical engineer, the miner, etc. became definitely clear by the English reaction at the beginning of the nineteenth century; through the Corresponding Societies Act it was established that every written agreement of the labor unions among themselves and furthermore all societies that had been compounded from various branches were prohibited. There was apparently an awareness that if the merger of the general form of the relationship of
18 'Identifying particularization'--Simmel's term is Exponenten; he seems to have in mind 'exponent' as used in lingusitics to refer to a unit of discourse that concretizes another more abstract unit--ed.
? 394 chapter six
? worker with the specialty area were once dissolved, once the co-operative integration of a range of branches were shifted by an opposed paralysis of differences to an illumination of what they all have in common--the formula and the aegis of a new social circle would be thereby created and the circle's relationship to the earlier unpredictable complica- tions would yield. After the differentiation of labor forms its various branches, the more abstract consciousness finds again a common thread that ties together what these hold in common into a new social circle. The logical process manifests itself here in interaction with the socio- historical. It required the expansion of industry, hundreds or thousands of workers placed under exactly the same objectively personal condi- tions, and precisely with the advancing division of labor the different branches becoming all the more dependent on one another; it required the complete penetration of the money economy, which reduces the importance of personal ability entirely to its financial value; it required the heightening of the demands of life and their lack of fit to wages--to lend to the element of wage labor as such the decisive emphasis. In the universal concept of wage labor those social forces, relationships, circumstances collect as in a flash-point, to diffuse out from it again, as it were, in radiating effects that they would not have been able to find without this logico-formal recapitulation. And if the International had formed its sections, as mentioned, at first without regard for the trade differences, it later changed, however, and organized in trade unions--in that way, though, this was only a technical arrangement, with which they believed then to be serving the universal interest of labor; underly- ing even this, as starting and endpoint, was simply the concept of 'the worker. ' And this, in itself a concept neutralizing all the differentiations of labor, grew from a merely logical into a legal position: the right of worker safety, worker insurance, etc. generated a legal concept of the worker and filled it with a content whereby the mere fact that someone is a worker at all secures certain legal consequences. And next to the logical, ethical, legal meanings of this traversing of all the varieties of labor, the 'general strike' thereby becomes a distinct possibility--a strike that is not undertaken for the purposes of an individual trade but for pressing the political rights of the entire work force, like the Chartist strike of 1842 or the Belgian workers' strike of 1893. It is interesting how this concept, once it arose as an absolute generality, introduces the same character and its consequences even into smaller formations. In France since 1884 a law about professional associations exists, whereby twenty and more persons who practice the same or related profession
the intersection of social circles 395
? can establish themselves as a professional syndicate without authoriza- tion of the government. Thereupon, soon afterwards a syndicate of 'railroad workers' was founded, for whose members that similarity of activity does not actually exist. The common element of the blacksmiths and porters, switchmen and upholsterers, conductors and engineers is exclusively that they are all workers in support of the railroad. Of course the reason for forming syndicates is that by means of them the individual profession can exert pressure on management for which an isolated power is not enough. The meaning of 'workers in general' was narrowed here, under the same formal-logical modus procedendi, to that of 'railroad workers in general,' in which all distinctions of activity are eliminated, and became immediately practical to the extent of the narrowing. The form under which the same thing succeeds for that wider idea tends to be the coalition of coalitions. Here, where indeed the initial union of all personnel has been dismissed and only the pure concept of cabinetmaker or shoemaker, glass blower or weaver pre- vails, the concept of the worker, under the removal in principle of all distinctions of the work content, comes all the more easily and sharply to greater authority. To the mason as such it is of course immaterial whether the calico printer, who belongs to the same union federation, receives a higher or lower hourly wage. The acquisition of more favor- able working conditions is thus not the task of the cartel with regard to a single worker, but rather only to workers as a collective party.
Of course it is similarly the case when employers in different branches form coalitions; the employer in one industry has no interest as such in the relationship of the employer to the workers in another; the inten- tion of a coalition is only a matter of a strengthened position of the entrepreneur in general vis-a`-vis the worker in general. This universal concept of entrepreneur has to be generated as a correlate to that of the worker. Only, this logical synchronism does not immediately become a psychological and practical one. In essence this probably comes about from three causes: by the smaller number of entrepreneurs vis-a`-vis that of the workers (the more instances of a type come under consideration, the sooner its universal concept is formed); by the com- petition of employers among themselves, which does not exist among the workers; finally by the merging of entrepreneurial activity with its respective particular content--diminished only in the most recent period by sublimated capitalism. Modern industrial technology renders the worker much more indifferent to one's specific kind of work, just as it is correspondingly the case for the entrepreneur regarding one's
396 chapter six
? factory. Nevertheless in the end the solidarity of the worker at many points allows also the solidarity of the entrepreneurs to congeal into an effective universal of concept for the latter. There emerged not only coalitions of employers of the same branch but also coalitions of completely different coalitions. In the United States already in 1892, in view of the increasing number of strikes by workers, a federation of employers as such had been formed in order to place a party-like, united resistance against them. The earlier theoretical unity of the relationship between employers and employees, in spite of all disagree- ments, nevertheless rested on the merging of the content of the work with those formal positions. Through these correspondingly individu- ally determined relationships the differentiated universal concepts of the worker-in-general and the entrepreneur-in-general laid a diagonal line and acquired superiority over that unity. In their place came the correlation of two universal formal concepts, which are thus, as it were, determined essentially according to their logical opposition, and for which the individual worker and the individual employer, amid the withdrawal of the substantial link through the content of the work, had come to be merely incidental examples.
The rise of the business class as a partly real, partly ideal complex of persons--each one of which is just a business person in general, irrespective of what is sold--is related to the social origin of the work- ing class. However, the detachment of the universal from the specific is made easier here since the form of activity in the function of the individual merchant already possesses a great deal of independence from its content. For while the activity of the worker is thoroughly dependent on it, what the worker does then does not easily constitute itself as a pure concept of activity relative to it; the activity of the merchant is relatively independent from that with which the merchant deals, and includes, even in more primitive situations, an important diversity in the same functions of purchasing, transporting, delivering, not at all predetermined by a change in objects. So we hear originally of the 'merchant' purely and simply and find frequently even today in small German cities the business sign, Warenhandlung (Merchandise Dealer) without anything added regarding the type of goods handled. What the functional character of the individual business person reveals, the multiplicity of business people in the developed economy repeatedly is now ready to do. The variety of material contents, based on the division of labor, surrenders all the specialties of commercial business and permits then the commonality that was not in any case definitely
the intersection of social circles 397
? closely linked with a specialty to become the logical bond of the business class, whose differences in contents are traversed then by an inclusive concept of common interests. And likewise this concept marks also the dissolution of dividing lines between business people who are situated beyond the distinctiveness of the objects of their occupation. Up to the beginning of the modern era in the centers of large business exchange, individual foreign 'nations' had specific privileges that distinguished them from one another and from the local people and joined each to a particular group. But in the 16th century in Antwerp and Lyon when freedom of trade was granted, business people streamed there, unbound by those antitheses and syntheses; together and with the heretofore unheard-of concentration of trade, there arose then, from the individuals of the former 'nations' a universal 'entrepreneurship' whose rather homogeneous rights and customs were no more altered by the variety of their enterprises than their individual and national peculiarities. Once again one is able to note that the norms for trade among business people separate all the more cleanly from the special conditions necessary for a branch; accordingly economic production splits into more branches while, e. g. , in industrial cities that are essen- tially limited to one branch it is to be observed how the concept of the industrial still did not detach much from that of the iron, textile, and tool industries, and the customs even of the other kinds of industrial trade in general borrow their character principally from the branches shaping consciousness. The practical phenomena thoroughly follow even here the psychology of logic: were there only one single type of tree, the concept of tree in general would never have come to be formed. So too people who are in themselves strongly differentiated and vari- ously educated and occupied are more inclined towards cosmopolitan feelings and opinions than the one-dimensional natures to whom the universally human is represented only in that limited form because they are unable to put themselves in the shoes of other personalities and thus penetrate the experience of what is common to all. For that reason, as noted, the practical consequences of a development of a higher universality do not always appear chronologically, but give rise to the stimulus, also frequently interactively, that helps call forth the consciousness of the common ground of society. Thus, e. g. , one's soli- darity with the class of trades workers is evoked by the apprenticeship; if the work is cheapened and deteriorated by an excessive employment of apprentices, the checking of this malady in any given trade would only force the apprentices to flood another one, then only a common
398 chapter six
? action can help--a consequence, that is of course possible only through the multiplicity of trades, but the unity of all of them over their specific differences must be brought into consciousness.
Finally I will identify alongside the types of worker and business person a third as an example for the solution of an, as it were, more abstract group, whose universally conceptual qualities were until now firmly merged with the particular conditions of their elements, while these elements now identify the intersection of the newly arisen circle with relationships that it left behind as a yet more singular one. I mean the sociological evolution that the concept of 'woman' has undergone recently and that exhibits a number of otherwise not readily observable formal complications. 19 Something highly characteristic persisted in the social situation of the individual woman; quite specifically, of course, the most universal, where she is placed with all other women under one of the broadest concepts: that she is a woman and thereby fulfills the functions of her own gender; exactly this circumstance deprived her of the real formation of solidarity, of practical solidarity with other women, precisely because it bound her within the confines of the house, commanded devotion entirely to a single person, thwarted outreach beyond the given circle of relationship by marriage, family, conviviality, and if need be, by charity and religion. The parallelism among women in their being and acting has a content so constituted that it hinders the social exploitation of similarity because it means the total preoccupation of each inside one's own circle, excluding precisely the other women similarly situated. Her universal qualification as a woman is thereby a priori determined to be organically established in the interests of the circle of her house, in the most extreme sociologi- cal contrast, say, to the merchant, in whose individual activity, as we saw, the universal form stands out as though by itself in contrast to the particular contents. It appears as though in very primitive ethnological relationships the disassociation of women was negligible and they acted sometimes as a party closed off from the men. Probably in these cases the woman was not yet so completely absorbed by the interests of the household as in more developed epochs; with all the tyrannizing by the man, nevertheless, the simpler and less differentiated circumstances of family and household do not take them so far from the universal, with
19 'Woman' here translates Frau which in German, of course, is 'wife' and 'woman'--ed.
? the intersection of social circles 399
? all the women divided, and they do not melt down into as specialized an obligatory sphere as the more cultivated household represents it.
In that now in the present the latter has been relaxed enough around the 'woman question' to allow a general issue of women as a total- ity to arise and to lead to all sorts of actions, changed circumstances, formations of community--this manifests a very characteristically sociological phenomenon. The isolation of women from one another by enclosing each one of them in an entirely individualized circle of interests rests on fully differentiating women from men. With the training of the mind and activity, with the claim of personality and relationship to the surrounding world, the man appears as a whole in the ongoing processes of our culture as the higher being, and beyond the question of status both genders appear so essentially different that they are destined to be only opposing complements; the feminine existence has its meaning exclusively in that which the man cannot be or desire to do; life's meaning for them hinges thus not on relationship to the same but to the different, and they are all but completely taken up with this. However, most recently now women have fixed their eyes on an equality in all respects and have come to some opportune beginnings: in personal position and economic independence, in mental forma- tion and consciousness of personality, in social freedom and the roles in public life--they place themselves now in direct comparison to men; a party-like difference towards men that emphasizes the solidarity of women's interests with one another is announced in the moment in which the diminishment--as a cause or as an effect of it--of that prin- ciple of being and acting differently, right and interest different from men; in caricatures of the movement--women striving in their whole essence and appearance for complete masculinity--there occurs quite often the most passionate antagonism towards men. This constellation is readily understandable. In the measure of equality of position, of value, of qualities, independence must be developed over against him with whom one until now stood in a relationship of the lower or at best the merely other and therefore relied on for one's being. This one- dimensional freedom, however, obviously allows what that being has in common with others to become more strongly visible and effective, and until now that did not occur on account of the subordinate and complementary relationship. So there exists here an extraordinarily pure case of the formation of a higher, conceptually universal circle, differentiated from the narrower circles that until now relegated every element to a singular relation. One should not get the idea that the
400 chapter six
? proletarian and the bourgeois women's movements are moving in dia- metrically opposed practical directions. The proletarian woman was given socio-economic freedom by industrial development--however miserable it may be for its individual women. The girl goes into the factory at an age that certainly would still require the more intimate atmosphere of the parental home; the married woman is removed by work outside the house from household duties towards husband and children. Here then the woman is actually freed from the singular bond in which she was entirely determined by the subordination under the man or by activity completely different from him. This social reality remains entirely untouched by the fact that it is undesired and injuri- ous, and that the desire of the proletarian woman is for a limitation of that 'freedom,' for the possibility of being again to a greater degree a familial being, wife and mother. Within the bourgeois stratum the same economic development removed countless housekeeping activities from the home, both mere functions and productive creations, and thereby deprived an enormous number of women the sufficient testing of their powers--while they nevertheless, certainly for the most part, remained harnessed within the boundaries of the home. Their longing, then, is for the freedom of economic or other activity; they feel themselves subjectively detached from the particular sphere of the household, just as the proletarian woman feels that way from the outside. From this difference of strata in which the detachment is complete, there follows the difference of practical desire: the one class of women wants back in the house, the other wants out of the house. However, apart from this, this difference still gives way to equivalences: the woman question with regard marriage law, property law, authority over children, etc. affects both classes equally--so the essentials remain in force that in the one as in the other form the sociological isolation of the woman, the result of her integration into the home, is pressured by modern industrialization toward dissolution. Whether this occurs in the form of too much or in that of too little, in both cases the independence won as well as that striven for shifts the accent to the fact that the woman is simply a woman who shares practical situations and needs with other women. With the dissolution of complete, particular occupation by the household, the universal concept of woman loses its purely abstract character and becomes the leading idea of a membership group that is now already revealed in embryo by purely female support associations, associations for attaining rights for women, female student unions, women's congresses, agitation by women for political and social inter-
the intersection of social circles 401
? ests. Corresponding to the extraordinary closeness of the historically existing ties of the concept, woman, to the specific life contents of the individuals--which is much greater than correspondingly in the case of the worker and the business person--indeed no one today can say what the actual direction and limit of the movement is; but what has been achieved is that very many individual women experience themselves as standing at the intersection of groupings that tie them on the one hand to the persons and contents of their personal lives, on the other to women in general.
Should the differentiation here bring about the construction of the superordinate sphere from that of the more individual, in which it for- merly lay only latent, then it now has, secondly, even more coordinated circles to free from one another. The guild, e. g. , exercised oversight over the whole personality in the sense that the interest of the craft had to regulate the entirety of one's activity. One who became an apprentice under a master became at the same time a member of the master's family etc. ; in brief, the specialized occupation became most firmly the center of all of life, often including the political and affec- tive life. Of the forces that led to the dissolution of these amalgama- tions, that lying in the division of labor is here under consideration. In every human being whose various life contents are guided by a circle of interest, the power of this latter will ceteris paribus be reduced to the same degree as it is reduced in itself in scope. Narrowness of consciousness causes a complex occupation, a multiplicity of concepts accompanying it, even the other unrelated ideas about the world, to be drawn into its insular spell. 20 Substantive relationships between the narrowness of consciousness and these elements need not exist at all; through the necessity, in an occupation not narrowed by the division of labor, to exchange ideas relatively quickly--with the symbolic man- ner of speaking to which one is bound in more complicated problems in thinking--such a measure of psychic energy is consumed that the cultivation of other interests suffers from it, and now those thus weak- ened come all the more likely into associative or other dependence on that central cognitive circle. Just as a person filled with a great passion places even the most remote content, every encounter with superfluous material that runs through one's consciousness, into some kind of
20 'Insular spell': Simmel uses the term Bann, which means both 'excommunication' and 'spell'--ed.
? 402 chapter six
? connection to that passion, just as one's whole mental life receives its light and its shadows from it--so a corresponding mental centraliza- tion is effected by every vocation that leaves only a relatively small amount of consciousness for life's other relationships. Herein lies one of the most important internal consequences of the division of labor; it is grounded in the psychological fact, already mentioned, that in a given time, all other things being equal, the more conceptual power is employed, the more frequently the consciousness of one concept must be exchanged for another. This exchange of ideas has the same result as the intensity of a passion does in its case. Therefore, an activity not subject to the division of labor, again all things being equal, becomes a central one sooner than does a specialized one; everything else is drawn into an absorbing place in the course of a person's life, and certainly especially in periods during which the rest of life's relation- ships still lack the variety and change-filled stimulations of the modern era. Furthermore, one-dimensional occupations tend to be of a more mechanical nature and therefore--wherever they by chance do not render mental energy entirely atrophied by the complete absorption of strength and time--allow more space in consciousness for other con- nections, with their value and their independence. This coordinating segregation of interests that were formerly merged into a central one is promoted also by yet another consequence of the division of labor that coheres with the above discussed detachment of the higher social concept from the more particularly determined circles. Associations between central and peripheral concepts and circles of interest, which were constructed merely from psychological and historical causes, are for the most part held substantively necessary for as long a time until experience shows us personalities that exhibit the very same center along with a different periphery or an equivalent periphery along with a different center. If then membership in a vocation would render the rest of life's interests dependent on it, this dependence would have to loosen with the increase of occupational branches because, in spite of their differentiation, many kinds of similarities come to light in all the rest of the interests.
This form of development becomes most important for the inner and outer circumstances of people. A certain element in us is bound to another one that represents a universal character in a particular pattern shared with many others; and the bond takes up this second one originally in the unbroken coherence of its universality as well as its particular type. Now a process of dissolution occurs in this way:
the intersection of social circles 403
? the first element binds somewhere with a third that offers for sure the universal of the second but in an entirely other particularity. This experience can have two rather opposed consequences, depending on how both parts of the second element are blended. Should this be the case in a very close type, the bond of the elements from which we began is altogether severed. This will frequently occur, e. g. , with the connection of the moral life to the religious. For the individual person, one's religion as a rule is the religion; any other is not at all consid- ered. If that person has grounded morality on the particular concepts of this religion and then has the convincing experience that another morality, just as good, just as correct and valuable, is derived for other individuals fully from other religious ideas, then probably only in very rare instances will one conclude: morality is then in general linked to the religious sentiment only by that which is common to all religions. Rather one is more likely to draw the sweeping conclusion: morality actually has nothing to do with religion; one will then acquire from that the autonomy of morality, and not the likewise at least logically justi- fied idea of connecting it to the sustaining universality of religion. It is different, e. g. , where people acquire the feeling of having fulfilled one's duty only from an altruism that is ongoingly bound up for them with a painful conquest of the 'I,' with an ascetic self-mortification. Should one then notice in other people that the same calm and satisfaction of conscience has its source in an easily and freely exercised altruism, in a life obviously serene for others, it is then not so easily concluded that the sought-for inner peace and the feeling, to be something valu- able, would have had nothing at all to do with the dedication to the non-ego, but only that the particularly ascetic development of altruism is not required for it, that this, even in an entirely different form and color, has the same result, even though its universality is still preserved. The aforementioned issue of the detachment of occupational interest from the rest of life's interests by means of the multiplicity of occupa- tions, though only an inclination in the earlier phenomenon, becomes a certain intermediate phenomenon as a primary consequence. That a person has an occupation at all will always be connected to the total- ity of one's life; this entirely formal universal will always function as a center toward which many other points of life's periphery are oriented. However, this remains itself a formal, functional accomplishment of the occupation and is compatible with the increasing loosening of all occupational contents from the truly personal in life.