No More Learning

However, with this attempt to obtain the possibility of a new scientific abstraction for social reality, the essential endeavor can simply be to complete this abstraction with some kind of examples and to prove it to be meaningful. If I am permitted, for the sake of methodological clarity, to exaggerate something, it will simply depend on the possibility that the examples are real rather than the actuality that they are. Because their truth is not supposed to--or only in a few cases--prove the truth of a general claim, but even where the expres- sion could allow it to appear so, they are still only for analysis of objects, irrelevant in themselves, and the correct and fruitful kind, as this is done, not the truth about the reality of its object, is that which is here either achieved or missed. In principle the investigation is to have led also to object lessons and deferred their significant reality to the relative factual knowledge of the reader.
2 Charles Fourier, nineteenth century French utopian socialist--ed.
? the quantitative conditioning of the group 55
be rationalized as production would, they often appear to have a chance and unpredictability that allows coverage only for a price that borders the incalculably irrational and inappropriate. A group that avoids this and is set for full systematizing and uninterrupted practicality in its operations will always only be able to be a small one, because it can procure only by a large inclusive one what would be required for the satisfaction of possibilities of life in any higher culture. Further there is a kind of collective church formation whose sociological structure does not allow for large memberships: hence the Waldensian, Men- nonite, and Moravian sects. Wherever the dogma in them forbids oaths, military service, and uniforms; where wholly personal matters belong to the community, such as employment, organization of the day, even marriage; where a special attire distinguishes the faithful from all oth- ers and identifies them as members; where the subjective experience of an immediate relationship to Jesus holds the community together-- from all this it is obvious that an expansion into a large group would rupture the bond that holds the group together, a bond that depends in important respects on its exceptionality and opposition to a larger group. At least in this sociological perspective the claim of these sects to represent the original Christianity is not unwarranted. Since, in exhibiting an undifferentiated unity of dogma and lifestyle, they were possible only in those small communities within larger surrounding ones that served them precisely as an external complement necessary for their vitality, a contrast by which they became conscious of their own uniqueness. Thus the expansion of Christianity to the whole state must have altered its sociological character no less fully than its spiritual contents. What's more, in that an aristocratic corporate entity can have only a relatively small area is contained in its very concept. Neverthe- less, over this patent obviousness, as a result of the position of sover- eignty vis-a`-vis the masses, there appears here, albeit in widely fluctuating borders, to be yet an absolute numerical limitation of this type. But beyond this natural fact, a numerical limit, though varying within wide boundaries but still absolute in its way, seems to exist, fol- lowing from governance over the masses. That is, I mean that there is no certain proportion that would allow the ruling aristocracy unlimited growth commensurate with a growing number of subjects; rather there is an absolute limit for it beyond which the aristocratic form of group can no longer be held in place. This limit is determined by partly external, partly psychological circumstances: an aristocratic group that is supposed to function as a totality must still be wholly visible to the
56 chapter two
individual participant; each must still be able to be personally acquainted with each other; blood relationships and relationships by marriage must branch out and be traced throughout the whole corporate entity. If the historical aristocracies, from Sparta to Venice, have the tendency to shrink to the smallest possible number, this is then not simply an ego- istical aversion to participating in governance but the instinctual sense that the circumstances of life of an aristocracy can be fulfilled with a not only relatively but with an absolutely small number of its members. The unlimited right of the first born, which is the essence of aristocracy, comprises the means for limiting expansion; only under its presumption was the ancient Theban law possible that would not permit the num- ber of country estates to increase, just as the Corinthian law that the number of families would have to always remain the same. It is for that reason thoroughly characteristic that Plato once, when speaking of the ruling ? ? ? ? ? ? [few], identifies them also directly as the ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? [not the many]. When an aristocratic corporate entity leaves room for the appearance of democratic-centrifugal tendencies, which tend to appear in the transition to very large communities, it develops into as deadly an opposition to their life principle, as it did for the nobility of the undivided Poland. In the more fortunate case any such contradic- tion dissolves through alterations into a unified democratic social form. For example, the ancient independent German farm community with its completely personal equality of members was thoroughly aristocratic and thus became in its continuation in the urban communities the original source of democracy. If this numerical density is to be avoided, there is simply nothing left than to draw at some definite point a hard line for growth and to set this quantitative density of formations in opposition to all individuals beyond this level of crowding and perhaps even to those qualified for entry; and often at the first appearance of an aristocratic nature, it is conscious of this inherent resistance to the demand for expansion. Thus the old genteel constitution seems to have been repeatedly turned into a genuine aristocracy because a new population, foreign to the genteel communities, was forced on it, too numerous to be absorbed gradually into the kinship groups. Before this increase of the whole group, the genteel communities, quantitatively limited by their whole nature, could be just maintained only as an aristocracy. Accordingly the Richerzeche Security Guild of Cologne consisted originally of the totality of free citizens; in that the masses, however, were increasing the population, it became an aristocratic society closed off to all intruders. Certainly the tendency of political
the quantitative conditioning of the group 57
aristocracies to get fixated on becoming "not many" leads regularly not to the conservation of the existing membership but decline and extinc- tion. Not only due to physiological causes but small groups closed in on themselves are generally distinguished from larger ones because fortune itself, which often strengthens and renews the larger ones, destroys the small ones. A disastrous war that ruins a small city-state can regenerate a large state. In fact even this is not only because of the immediately obvious external reasons but because the ratio of the power reserves to the actual level of energy is different in both cases. Small and centripetally organized groups tend to call up fully and utilize completely the powers present within them; in large ones, in contrast, there remains not only absolutely but also relatively much more in latent reserve. The demand of the whole is not made on every member continuously and completely, but it can allow a lot of energy to remain socially unexploited, which can then be drawn on and actu- alized in an emergency. Therefore, where such dangers that require a quantum of unused social energy are excluded by the circumstances, even measures of numerical diminution, which still exceed the inbreed- ing, can be thoroughly practical. In the mountains of Tibet polyandry prevails, and indeed, as even the missionaries recognize, to the benefit of society. The soil there is so barren that a rapid growth of the population would result in the greatest distress; to avoid this, however, polyandry is an advantageous method. When we hear that families among the Bushmen must even divide up from time to time because of the sterility of the soil, the measure that shrinks the family to a size compatible with the possibilities of nutrition appears precisely in the interest of its unity and its most highly noted foundational social sig- nificance. The dangers of quantitative shrinkage for its inner structure are here guarded against by the external life conditions of the group and their consequences.
Where the small group involves personalities to a large extent in its unity--especially in political groups--it exerts pressure precisely on account of its unity towards a hardness of position vis-a`-vis persons, objective roles, and other groups; the large one, with its multiplicity and diversity of individuals, requires or tolerates it much less. The history of the Greek and Italian cities, as well as that of the Swiss cantons, shows that small communities situated very near to one another, where they are not moving towards federation, tend to live more in open or latent enmity for one another. Warfare and the conventions of war are often more bitter and particularly ruthless between them than between large
58 chapter two
states. It is precisely that lack of agencies, reserves, less established and transitional individuals that hampers modification and adjustment for them and thus confronts them more frequently, through their external situations as well as on the basis of their fundamental sociological con- figuration, with the issue of existence or non-existence.
Next to such traits of small groups, I highlight with the same unavoid- ably arbitrary selection from countless cases the following sociological characterization of large groups. I assume that these, compared to the smaller, seem to manifest a smaller measure of radicalism and rigidity of opinion. This requires, however, a qualification. As soon as great masses are set into motion--politically, socially, or religiously--they display a thoughtless radicalism, a triumph of extremist parties over moderate ones. Underlying this, first of all, is that large masses can be satisfied and governed only by simple ideas: what is common to many must also be accessible to the lowest, most primitive mind among them, and even higher and more sophisticated personalities will never in great numbers concur in the complicated and highly developed, but rather in the relatively simple, commonly human images and impulses. Now, however, given that the realities, in which the ideas of the mass are sup- posed to become practical, are continually very diversely articulated and composed from a great number of highly divergent elements--simple ideas can function only quite one-sidedly, thoughtlessly, and radically. This will still come to a climax in which the behavior of an actually converging crowd is in question. Here the ebb and flow of countless suggestions produce an extraordinarily strong nervous excitement that often carries the individuals along unconsciously; every impulse swells up avalanche-like, and allows the crowd to become the prey of the ever most passionate personality in it. Thus it was declared that an essential means for tempering democracy was to have the votes of the Roman people be taken according to set groups--tributim et centuriatim descriptis ordinibus, classibus, aetatibus etc. 3--while the Greek democracies would vote as units under the immediate spell of orators. This fusion of masses into an emotion in which all individuality and reservations of personalities are suspended is of course so thoroughly radical in content, far from every negotiation and deliberation, that it would lead to noisy impracticability and destruction if it did not end up for the most part in inner weariness and set-backs, the consequences of that one-sided
3 Latin: by tribe and by hundreds according to rank, class, age, etc. --ed.
? the quantitative conditioning of the group 59
exaggeration. For all that, it still happens that the masses--in the sense in question here--have little to lose, yet believe on the contrary to be able to win everything; this is the situation in which most of the restraints on radicalism tend to fall away. Also groups forget more frequently than the individual that their power simply has limits; and indeed they overlook this more easily in the mass in which the mem- bers are unknown to one another, as is typical for a larger multitude assembling by chance.
Beyond that radicalism, which is encountered through its purely emo- tional character indeed directly in large cooperating groups, it simply remains to be observed that small parties are generally more radical than large ones--of course within the limits that the ideas the party stands for allow. The radicalism referred to here is plainly a sociological one, i. e. it is borne by the unrestricted surrender of the individual to the cur- rent of the group, because of the sharp boundary vis-a`-vis neighboring structures necessary for group self-preservation, because of the impos- sibility in the extremely narrow limits to establish a pluralism of widely projecting aspirations and ideas; the actual contents of radicalism are in good measure independent of the multitude. It has been observed that the conservative-reactionary elements in contemporary Germany are compelled just by their numerical strength to contain the ruthlessness of their efforts; they are made up of so very many and different social strata that they can pursue none of their movement's aims straight to the end without always stirring up a scandal among a portion of their following. Likewise the Social Democratic Party has been forced by its quantitative growth to temper its qualitative radicalism, grant some latitude to dogmatic deviations, to grant their inconsistency, if not explicitly, albeit with an act of compromise here and there. The unconditional cohesiveness of the elements, on which the potential for radicalism is sociologically based, is less able to survive the greater the diversity of individual elements that the numerical increase brings in. Thus professional workers' alliances, whose goal is the improvement of the details of working conditions, know very well that with grow- ing coverage they lose in inner cohesion. Here, though, the numerical expansion on the other hand has the enormous significance that every additional member frees the coalition from a competitor who might undercut and thereby threaten them in their existence. There occurs, of course, obviously quite specific life conditions for a group that forms inside of a larger one under the idea, also achieving its meaning pri- marily through it, of uniting all the elements in itself that fall under
60 chapter two
its presumptions. In such cases there is a tendency to have the cachet: whoever is not for me is against me. And the personality outside the group, to whom the demand of this, as it were, ideal is directed, inflicts one very real injury on it through the mere indifference of those not on board; be it, as in the case of the labor coalitions, through competi- tion, be it through the documentation for outsiders of the limits of the group's power, be it, in that it accomplishes anything only with inclu- sion of all relevant elements, as with many industrial cartels. When the question of the integrity of a group thus arises (certainly not applicable to all), the question is whether all the elements, to which its principle extends, are also really contained in it--because the consequences of this integrity of them who have its size must still be carefully differentiated. Certainly it will be greater when it is whole than when it is incomplete. However, it is not this size as a quantity, but the first problem deriving from it, whether it thereby fully delineates a border that can become so important for the group that, as in the case of the labor coalitions, the disadvantages to cohesion and unity simply resulting from growth stand directly in antagonistic and countervailing relationship to the advantages of increasing wholeness.
In general one can to some essential extent explain the structures that are so characteristic of the large group, in that it creates with them a substitute for personal and immediate solidarity that is inherent in the small group. It is a matter of authorities who for that purpose manage and facilitate the interplay among the elements and thus function as an independent carrier of social unity, because this establishes itself no longer as a matter of relationship from person to person. To this end offices and agents emerge, regulations and symbols of group life, organizations and general social conceptions. This book treats the form- ing and functioning of these in so many passages that here only their relevance with respect to quantity is to be emphasized: they all develop substantially pure and mature only in large groups as the abstract form of group relationships that can no longer exist tangibly at a given expanse: their suitability, reflected in thousands of social qualities, rests ultimately on quantitative preconditions. The character of the supra- personal and objective, with which such embodiments of the powers of the group confront the individual, arise directly from the multiplicity of the more-or-less effective individual elements. Then the individual is paralyzed by them on account of their multiplicity, and the universal ascends to such a distance from one that it appears as something existing entirely of itself, something not needing individuals, indeed often enough
the quantitative conditioning of the group 61
something antagonistic to the individual--somewhat like the concept that recapitulates the collective in singular and separate manifestations, the higher it stands over each one of them, the more it realizes in itself; so that even the universal concepts that rule the largest circle of individuals--the abstractions with which metaphysics reckons--attain a separate life whose norms and developments are alien or inimical to those of the tangible individual. The large group thus achieves its unity--as it develops itself in its organs and in its law, in its political concepts and in its ideals--only at the price of a great distance of all these structures from individuals, their views and their needs, which find immediate effectiveness and consideration in the social life of a small group. From this relationship there emerges the frequent difficulties of organizations in which a tier of smaller assemblages is contained in a larger one: in that the circumstances are accurately seen only close-up and treated with interest and care; that on the other hand only from the distance that the central office has, a correct and orderly relationship of all the particulars to one another is to be established--a discrepancy that continually shows up, for example, in the policy toward poverty, in the trade union, in the educational administration. The person-to- person relationships that comprise the life principle of the small group do not survive the distance and coldness of the objective abstract norms without which the large group cannot exist. 4
The structural difference that the mere differences in group size produce will be clearer still in the role of certain more prominent and effective individuals. It applies namely not only to the obvious reality
4 A typical difficulty of human relations presents itself here. We are continually led by our theoretical as well as by our practical attitudes in relation to all possible circles to stand inside them and likewise outside them. For example, those who speak against smoking, on the one hand, must themselves smoke; on the other hand, they are simply not permitted to do so--because they themselves do not smoke, they lack the knowledge of its attraction which they condemn; if they smoke, however, one will not judge it legitimate that they repudiate themselves. For one to give an opinion about women "in the plural," will require the experience of close relations with them, just as being free and distant from them is needed to change the emotional judgment. Only when we become well acquainted with, stand within, be on a par with, do we have knowledge and understanding; only when distance breaks off the immediate contact in every sense do we have the objectivity and perspective that are just as necessary for judgment. This dualism of near and far, which is necessary for the uniformly proper action, belongs to some extent to the basic forms of our life and its problematic. That one and the same matter can be dealt with properly on the one hand only within a narrow formation, on the other hand only within a large one, is a formal sociological contradiction that constitutes a special case of those that are universally human.
? 62 chapter two
that a given number of such individuals in a large group has a different meaning than in a small one; but their effectiveness changes with the quantitative change in the groups whether their own quantity rises or falls in exact proportion with that of the group. When a millionaire lives in a city of 10,000 inhabitants in economic intermediate position, that person's role in the life of the city and the overall physiognomy that the city gains through this citizen has a completely different meaning than each one of fifty millionaires, as the case may be, for a city of 500,000 inhabitants--although the numerical relation between the millionaire and the millionaire's fellow citizens, which however solely determined that meaning, remained unchanged. If there are four members in a party of twenty persons in a parliament critical of the party program or secessionist, their role in the trends and proceedings of the party will be a different one than if the party is fifty people strong and has ten rebels in its midst: in general, despite the identically remaining proportion, its significance of those ten will be greater in the larger party. Finally, it has been emphasized that a military tyranny, ceteris paribus, would be all the more durable the greater its domain, because if the army includes about one percent of the population, a population of ten mil- lion is more readily held in check with an army of 100,000 than a city of 100,000 with 100 soldiers or a village of 100 with one of its own. The peculiarity here is that the absolute number of the whole group and that of its influential members make the relations within the group noticeably different, even though their numerical proportion remains the same. Those arbitrarily augmented examples show that the relation- ship of sociological elements depends not only on the relative but also the absolute numerical quantity of these elements. Once such elements are described as a party within a group, the relationship of this party to the whole is then not only shifted when it rises or falls numerically while the latter remains constant, but also, when this change affects the whole and the part in fully the same measure; thereby the sociological meaning of the largeness or smallness of the whole group itself vis-a`-vis the numerical relations of the elements is shown, where at first glance the meaning of the numbers for the inner relationships of the group alone appear to bind.
The difference in form in the group-related activity of individuals, which is determined by the size of the group, extends beyond its mere factual existence to the category of norm, that which should be done, perhaps most clearly as the difference between custom and law. It
the quantitative conditioning of the group 63
seems as though, among the Aryan peoples, the primary bonds of indi- viduals to a supra-individual order of life might start from an entirely universal instinct or concept that the rules, the proper, the obligatory would generally represent; it is perhaps the dharma of the Hindus, the ? ? ? ? ? [law] of the Greeks, the fas [divine will] of the Latins that reveal this undifferentiated "general normativity. " The particular rules in the fields of religion, morality, convention and law are branches that still remain undivorced from it; it is their original unity, before subsequent abstraction. Contrary to the opinion now that morality, custom, and law developed, as it is were, as counterparts from that seed condition, it seems to me rather that they still live on in that which we call custom, and these represent the undifferentiated condition that releases from itself the form of law and of morality in various directions. Morality is pertinent for us here only in so far as it results in the conduct of the individual toward other individuals or toward the whole, thus having the same kind of content as custom and law. Only that the second subject, by whose opposition the behavioral form of morality develops in the individual, is situated in itself; with the same division by which the 'I' speaks to itself, 'I am'--while it places itself over against itself, as a knowing subject, over against itself as a known object--it also says to itself, 'I should. ' The relationship of two subjects that emerges as imperative repeats itself by virtue of the fundamental capacity of our psyche to confront itself and to view and treat itself as an other inside the individual soul itself; meanwhile I leave it open whether this is a transfer of the empirically previously ongoing inter-individual relation- ship to the elements of the individual soul or originates more purely from its spontaneity. Now on the other hand once the normative forms have taken on definite contents, then these get free of their original sociological carriers and ascend to an inner and independent necessity that must be identified as ideal; these contents--ways of acting or states of the subject--are now valuable in and for themselves, they ought, and their being social in nature or somehow having social significance now no longer determines their imperative tone, which flows rather from their objective-ideal meaning and value. But neither that personal Gestalt of the moral nor this development of the three normativizations towards the aspect of objective and supra-social meaning prevents their contents from being considered here as social adaptations and the three forms as guarantees for their being realized by the individual. There are actually forms of the internal and external relation of the individual
64 chapter two
to a social group; because the identical content of this relation has assumed now one and now the other of these motivations or forma- tions: what at one time or in one place was custom has been elsewhere or later state law or was left to personal morality; what was upheld by the force of law became merely good custom; what was entrusted to the conscience of the individual was often enough later enforced by the state, etc. The extremities of this spectrum are law and morality, between which custom, from which both developed, stands virtually in the middle. Law has its differentiated organs in the legislative and the executive powers by which it can, first, define its focal content quite precisely and, second, enforce it externally; but it is thereby functionally limited to the completely indispensable preconditions of group life; what the general public of individuals can demand absolutely is only that that they must demand absolutely. On the other hand the unrestricted morality of the individual possesses no statute other than that given over to it autonomously from within, and no executive other than the conscience; thus its purview admittedly embraces in principle all activity, but in practice apparently has specific, random and fluctuating boundaries according to the context in every individual case. 5
5 That law and morality alike arise from, as it were, one turn in social development is reflected in the teleological significance of both, mutually referencing each other more than a first appearance betrays. When the narrow behavior of the individual, which includes a life everywhere regulated by custom, loses ground to the legal norm, which is much more remote from all individuals--then the freedom attained thereby is not permitted, in the interest of society, to be left up to the self: the legal imperatives are supplemented by moral imperatives, and plug the gaps in the normative rule of life produced by the discontinuation of general regulation by custom. In contrast to cus- tom, the normative regulation through both of them is relocated simultaneously much higher over the individual and much deeper into the self. Whatever the personal and metaphysical values both the conscience and autonomous morality may represent--their social ones, which alone are in question here, lie in their immense prophylactic func- tion. Law and custom grasp onto the external and material reality of voluntary action, functioning thus purely preventively through fear; to render this motive unnecessary, mostly they just need additional absorption--albeit not always--into personal morality. However this lies at the root of action; it molds the innermost being of the subject until the correct deed is discharged by the self entirely from the self without requiring the support of those relatively external forces. But society has no interest in the purely moral perfection of the subject; it is only important to it, is only bred by it, insofar as it provides a conceivably broad guarantee of socially useful behavior now on the part of the subject. In individual morality, society itself creates an organ that is actually not only more effective than law and custom but in addition spares the expenses and formalities of those institutions; as is the tendency of society then, in order to provide its necessities as cheaply as possible, to nurture the 'good conscience,' whereby the individual rewards oneself for good behavior that would otherwise probably have to be guaranteed somehow by law or custom.
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Now it is through custom that a circle secures for itself the proper behavior of its members when the force of law is inadmissible and individual morality unreliable. As today custom functions as a supple- ment to both of these orders, so was it at one time the sole rule for life when those differentiated forms of normativeness did not at all yet exist or only embryonically. The sociological location of custom is indicated thusly: it lies between the largest circle, each member of which is subordinate as an individual to law, and absolute individuality, which is the sole bearer of free morality. Thus it belongs to the smaller circles--the middle structures between them. Almost every custom is a status- or class-custom; its manners of expression in external behavior, in fashion, and in honor always govern only a subsection of the largest circle, which is shared with law, and have there again different content in neighboring sections. 6 To violations of beneficial customs only those of the smaller circle who are thereby somehow affected or are witnesses to them react, whereas a violation of the legal order calls for a reaction of the whole. Since custom has for its executive authority only public opinion and certain directly consequential reactions of individuals to it, it is out of the question that a large circle as such would govern it. The know-how requiring no design--that which commercial custom as such would offer or require compared to that of the aristocracy, that of a religious circle compared to that of a literary one, etc. --suggests that, for guaranteeing the same content of custom made up from specific conditions that a smaller circle required, neither the coercion of state law nor entirely dependable autonomous moral impulses are available. What is common to these and the primitive groups with which our social history begins is nothing other than being numerically incon- sequential. The forms of life that at that time sufficed entirely for the solidarity of the circle withdrew upon its enlargement to its subsections. Because now these contain those possibilities of personal relationship that approximate equality of levels of membership, those common interests, and ideals, one can leave to them the social regulation of one of the more precarious and elastic types of normative regulation, such as custom. With an increasing number of elements and thus their inevitable increase of independence, these conditions cease to exist for the circle. The characteristic binding power of custom becomes too
6 Compare here the discussion of the sociological form of honor in the chapter on the self-preservation of the group and the intersection of circles.
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little for the state and too much for the individual, its content however too much for the state and too little for the individual. The former requires greater guarantees, the latter greater freedom, and only in those respects in which every element still belongs to mid-sized circles is it socially ruled by custom.
That the large circle requires and allows for stringent and objec- tive normative regulation, crystallized as law, coincides with greater freedom, flexibility, and individuality on the part of its elements. If, therefore, on the one hand the socially necessary repressions must be fixed more precisely and guarded more rigorously, then this is, on the other hand, more tolerable for individuals because they have a greater latitude for freedom outside of these relentless pressures. So if on the one hand the socially necessary inhibitions must be set more narrowly and guarded more rigorously, still on the other this is more tolerable for individuals since they have so much greater latitude for freedom outside of these highly precise strictures. This is all the clearer the more the law or norm emerging from it is proscription or prohibition. Among the indigenous Brazilians it is generally forbidden to marry one's own sister or the daughter of one's brother. This applies all the more strongly the larger the tribe is, while in smaller more isolated hordes brother and sister often live together. The prohibitive char- acter of the norm--which is more suited to law than to custom--is indicated more in the larger circle since it offers the individual ampler positive compensation than the smaller. In that the expansion of the group favors the transformation of its norms into the form of law, it becomes apparent, on the other hand, that many a unification of small structures into one larger occurred at first or continually only for the sake of legal administration, and their unity stands only in the sign of uniformly enforced law. Thus the county of the New England states was originally only "an aggregation of towns for judicial purposes. " There are obvious exceptions to this connection linking the difference between the social form of custom and that of law to the quantitative difference of the circle. The original folk units of the Germanic tribes, over which the great Frankish, English, and Swedish empires arose, were often able to save their jurisdiction for a long time; frequently these particularly were nationalized relatively late. And, on the other hand, in modern international relations multiple customs that are not yet set in law prevail; inside the individual states some behavior is fixed as law that in the relationships towards the outside, thus inside the largest circle of
the quantitative conditioning of the group 67
all, must be left to the more relaxed form of custom. The solution to the contradiction is simple. The size of the group naturally calls for the legal form only to the degree in which the multiplicity of its elements is integrated into a unity. Where, instead of a definite centralization, only rather loose commonalities allow the circle to be identified as one at all, this identification reveals very obviously its generally relative character. Social unity is an incremental concept, and if a form of regulation is required by a specific quantity of the circle, then it can be the same with a different quantity and a different one with the same quantity, if the degree of unity that it bears and by which it is borne is a different one. The significance of the numerical relationships is thus not at all discernible if a large circle on account of its specific tasks can or must do just as well without the legal form of its norms, as is otherwise possible only to a small one. The very disconnected state structures of early Germanic times simply did not yet possess the cohesion of the elements that is as much the cause as the effect of legal constitutions among contemporary large groups; and certain norms in the pure form of custom are produced in collective relationships between modern states just as in individual ones because here there is lacking the unity over the parties that is the carrier of a legal order, and is replaced in a small as well as in a less formal group by the more direct interactions from element to element; however, custom directly corresponds to them as a form of regulation. Thus even the apparent exceptions confirm the correlation that obtains between custom and law on the one hand and measurements of the group on the other.
Now it is obvious that the concepts, large and small circle, are of extraordinary scientific coarseness, quite vague and obscuring and actually only useful generally for suggesting the dependence of the sociological character of the form of a group on its quantitative cir- cumstances--not, however, for indicating any more exactly the actual proportion that exists between the former and the latter. Nevertheless ascertaining this proportion more exactly is perhaps not ruled out in all cases. To be sure, to insert exact numerical values into the formations and relationships considered up to now would obviously be a completely fanciful venture in the foreseeable progression of our knowledge; but for the moment let us within more modest boundaries indicate character- istics of those social interactions that occur between a limited number of persons and are characterized by this limitation. As transitions from the fully numerical uncertainty to the fully numerical certainty I am
68 chapter two
noting several cases in which the latter in principle already has its own sociological significance, but without a determination of the same hav- ing occurred in the individual.
1. Number functions as the group's principle of classification, i. e. , it will treat similar parts, produced through enumeration, as relative unities. Later I will discuss the particular meanings of the individual numbers for this, and highlight here only the principle. That a whole group, which somehow feels itself as one, generally divides itself, and indeed not only from top to bottom by the criterion of the ruling and the ruled, but even among its coordinated members--that is one of the greatest advances of humanity; it is the anatomical structure by which the higher organic-social processes are established. Now the classification can proceed from ancestry or voluntary associations or the similarity of occupations or grouping by districts; the numerical principle is linked to those; it divides the quantities of existing people or families into a certain number and so acquires quantitatively corresponding subdivi- sions, to each of which the whole relates roughly as their individuals are related to them. Now this principle is surely so schematic that it must in practice be fashioned into something more concrete: the numerically similar subdivisions, somehow closely associated with one another--relatives, friends, neighbors--were comprised of components that are complementary either by being similar or dissimilar. However it is crucial that the numerical similarity constitutes the formative principle of the categorizing--although it is never decisive by itself but only plays a role that varies from the greatest to the smallest. Nomadic tribes, for example, often in the absence of the more stable life pursuits, generally have hardly any other possibility to organize themselves than according to the principle of number; its significance for such a group on the march is still evident today determining the structure of the military. It continues naturally enough that with the dividing up of a conquered land or the colonization of a newly discovered one--where for the time being there is as yet no organization by some objective scale--the principle of incorporating in equally-proportioned shares prevails; for example, the oldest constitution of Iceland is ordered in that way. In a rather pure manner the Cleisthenes reform,7 with this
7 Cleisthenes (6th century B. C. E. Athenian) replaced an oligarchical government with a more democratic division of power, based on equal proportions of inhabitants organized into new "tribes"--ed.
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principle, brought about one of the greatest social-historical revolutions. When he established a council of five hundred members, fifty from each of the ten phyles, each demos received a corresponding number of council seats according to its headcount. 8 The rational idea, to create a representative body from the whole group purely by the principle of number, exceeds the typical "centuria" (about which more is to be said hereafter) as a higher state of development, and for the first time uses the method of purely numerical division to enable governmental entity to function as the symbol of the people.
2.
While so far it is a matter of separate divisions of the same size, number can also be used to distinguish from a total group a unique and indeed leading circle of persons. Thus one often called the guild leader according to its number: in Frankfurt with the wool weavers they were called the Six, with the bakers the Eight; in medieval Barcelona the senate was the One Hundred, etc. It is most peculiar how, in itself least revealing, even the most prominent personalities are identified by number regardless of any other qualification. It seems to me that the presupposition behind this is that by a number such as six is meant not 6 individual elements existing in isolation from one another but a synthesis of them; six is not 1 and 1 and 1 etc. , but a new concept that results from the combination of these elements and is not realized pro rata in each of them for itself. In this book I identify the living functional interaction of elements often as their unity, which would rise above their mere sum and in sociological contrast to it. Here, however, by the identification of a directorship, a committee and so forth with the mere sum is meant in reality that functional combination, and as designation it is then even possible that the number signifies also even a unity from unities. In the case alluded to, the Six are not simply scattered about in a homogeneous group, but they stand for a specific and fixed structure of the group, by which six persons from it are given prominence and forged together into a leading entity. The character- less impersonality of naming with a number is here even exceedingly characteristic; for it indicates more definitely than could any less formal idea, that no individuals are hereby as persons meant, but that it is purely a social structure: the structure of the group requires a certain contingent of itself as leadership. In that purely numerical idea lies the pure objectivity of the formation, which is indifferent toward everything
8 Greek: phyle, tribe; demos, people--ed.
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personal on the part of the members and only requires that one simply be one of the Six. There is perhaps scarcely any more effective expres- sion with which to indicate at one and the same time the elevation of individuals and the complete irrelevance of what they are as persons apart from this function.
The formation of group unity that is revealed in the assembling of members in a greater number is emphasized especially strongly with an ostensive exception. The Senate of Barcelona, which is called the One Hundred, eventually had in reality more members, up to two hundred, without for that reason changing its name. The same phenomenon arises when the number functions not as a principle of emphasis but as a principle of classification. Wherever hereafter the handling of classification of the population consisted of groups of a hundred, this membership of the division was almost nowhere strictly adhered to. This is expressly reported by the ancient Germanic groups of hundred. There the number becomes a direct synonym for the social sector that at first included or was supposed to include such a circle of individuals. This inconspicuous fact shows the enormous importance of numeri- cal determination for the structure of the group. The number even becomes independent of its arithmetical content; it shows only that the relationship of the member to the whole is a numerical one, or the firmly established number stands for this relationship. Only the idea of classification by a hundred elements remains, while the empirical relationships realize this only more or less exactly. When it was said of the Germanic groups of hundred that they would express only an indeterminately large quantity between the individual and the whole cohort--then this indicates precisely the sociologically identified type: the life of the group requires a middle-level entity between the one and the all, a vehicle for certain functions that neither the one nor the other can accomplish, and the structure designated for these tasks is labeled simply according to its numerical determination. The functions do not supply the name because they are multiple and changing; what remains the same is only the bringing together of some part of the totality into a unit. How large this part is at any given time may be uncertain; the enduring numerical designation indicates that the general numerical relationship was felt to be the essential thing. There emerges thereby an occurrence in the social realm whose psychological form also shows up elsewhere. The Russian coin denominations are supposed to be derived from an old system of weights in such a way that every higher denomination contains ten times the one below it. Actually, however,
the quantitative conditioning of the group 71
not only the absolute, but also the relative metal content of the coins changed frequently, whereupon, though, their relative value, once they were brought into the numerical order, remained the same. Whereas the actual values of the metal change relatively, the role that they have to play in exchange is assigned by the constancy of these face-value rela- tions so that their historically first weight-relations permanently provide the name and symbol for these relations. Also the number comes to be the representative of the thing that it enumerates, and then the essence is thereby designated so that it is a matter of a relation between the whole and a part, in that the numerical meaning of the earliest rela- tions covers all later variations. The metal extraction tax in sixteenth century Spain was called the Quinto because it amounted to a fifth of the value; and it would retain this name later, albeit with entirely differ- ent proportions. Thus the word tithe came, already among the ancient Israelites and in variety of ways, to simply mean levy--as the group of hundred came to mean simply a section. That the quantitative rela- tion, which is the essence of the tax as well as the social classification, became psychologically dominant over its particular content proves most conclusively that the original numerical moniker crystalizes into a designation for modifications in the relationship.
3. The numerical determination as organizational form occupies a position inside the development of society. Specifically, quantitative classification emerges historically as a substitute for the principle of the clan. Apparently in many places the groups had at first been composed of kin-affiliated subgroups, each of which formed an entity economically, penally, politically, and in other respects; that this internally very well established organization was replaced by the forging together of ten or a hundred persons directly even into those solidifying capacities--can appear at first as a strange trivialization, a schematic completely devoid of inner life. One would also search in vain among the inherently cohe- sive principles of this group for a justification of that organic root being replaced by this mechanical formulaic principle. Rather the basis for this can only reside in the whole that is made up of such classifications and makes demands that are independent of the life principles of its parts. To the extent that the whole as unity becomes more encompassing and powerful, the parts lose their particular meaning--at least at first and before the highest stages of development; they yield to the whole the meaning that they possessed in and for themselves, and are then the more functional the less any self-sufficient idea lives in each of them and the more they, as parts lacking their own character, receive in return
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a position and importance only from their contribution to the whole. 9 This does not apply to certain of the most complete types of develop- ment: there are social structures, especially of the most formidable size and most complete organization, that can allow the individual element the greatest freedom to live according to its peculiar norms and in its most idiosyncratic forms; on the other hand there are such that attain the strength of the whole only on the condition of their elements hav- ing their own most enhanced and differentiated life. The transition from clan to Hundred, however, seems to indicate that middle stage in which the inner meaningless and characterless nature of the members means progress for the whole; then only so were they easily managed under the given circumstances, directed by simple norms and without that resistance to the central authority that emerges all too easily with any subgroup of a stronger internal solidarity.
Where the composition or action of the group is quantitatively determined--from the ancient group of hundred to the modern rule of the majority--a suppression of individuality is present; it is a point at which the profound internal discrepancy between actual democratic and liberal-individualist social thought very clearly appears. That one produces an "approximate total" from personalities, and goes on like this without any consideration of the distinctiveness of the individuals involved; that one counts the votes and does not weigh them; that institutions, prescriptions and proscriptions, achievements and capaci- ties are from the outset firmly fixed at a particular number--that is either despotic or democratic, but in any case it is a reduction of the actual and total substance of the individual personality to the formal fact that it is simply one; in that it takes a position in an organization only by virtue of a number, one's character as a member of the group has become the complete master over one's distinctive character as an individual. The classification into numerically equal subgroups may thus be continuously modified as roughly and practically as in the groups of hundred of the Germans, the Peruvians, and the Chinese, or purpose- fully and exactly refined as in a modern army--here it always indicates most clearly and most mercilessly the legal form of the group existing for itself, there as a new emergent tendency, still in a position of constant struggle and compromise with others, in full development. The supra- individuality of the grouping, the fully developing independence of its
9 See the introduction to the chapter in this volume on the intersection of circles.
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form vis-a`-vis any reality of individual existence, lives nowhere more absolutely and more emphatically than in the reduction of the principles of organization to purely mathematical relationships; and the extent to which this occurs, as it very often appears in the most varied groups, is at the same time the extent to which the idea of being a group in its most abstract form has absorbed the individuality of its factors.
4. Finally, important sociological consequences are linked to quan- titative determination--although the effective number of elements can be entirely different depending on the circumstances--of a kind that 'society' exemplifies now and again in the modern sense of sociability. How many persons must one invite for it to be a 'society'? 10 Evidently the qualitative relationships between host and guests does not decide the matter; and the invitation of two or three persons who stand in relation to us fully formally and not subjectively still does not bring about 'society'--whereas this does occur if we gather together fifteen close friends. The number always remains decisive, although its size in individual cases naturally depends on the quality and closeness of the relationships among the members. The three circumstances--the relationships of the host to each of the guests by itself, the guests to one another, the way each participant subjectively experiences all these relationships--form the basis on which the number of participants then decides whether a society or a mere being together (of the nature of friendship or matter-of-fact in purpose) exists. There is here thus gener- ated with every numerical modification a very definitely experienced change into an entirely different sociological category--thus little of the extent of this modification is to be grasped with our psychological resources. But at least the qualitative sociological results of the quan- titative cause can be described to some extent.
First of all, 'society' requires a rather specific external set-up. Who- ever invites one or two from a circle of, say, thirty acquaintances desires 'nothing formal. ' But if someone invites all thirty at the same time, there immediately arises entirely new demands for food, drink, attire, etiquette, an extraordinarily increased expenditure for aspects
10 In this numbered section Simmel has numerous instances of 'Gesellschaft' in quotation marks and seems to want to indicate thereby an undetermined number of participants at which a social gathering or occasion takes on a level of objectivity transcending the inter-subjective reality of intimates. Where in this section he puts Gesellschaft in quotation marks, we've translated it 'society'; and where he has used Gesellschaft without quotation marks, we've translated it as 'social gathering' or 'social occasion'--ed.
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of sensual attractions and enjoyments. This is a very clear example of how the mere increase in size reduces the intensity of personalities. In a considerably smaller gathering a kind of reciprocal accommodation is possible; the common ground that makes up the contents of their sociability can include such all-embracing or highly suitable portions of their individualities that the gathering takes on the character of intel- lectuality, of differentiated and most highly developed psychic energy. However, the more persons who congregate, the lower the possibility that they will coincide in those more valuable and intimately essential aspects, the more deeply must that point be sought that is common to their motives and interests. 11
To the extent, however, that the number of members provides no place for the more highly personal and intellectual pursuits, one must seek to compensate for the shortage of these charms through an increase in the superficial and sensory. The shear joy of being together has always had a particularly close connection to the number of festively gathered persons and the extravagance; at the end of the middle ages, for example, the extravagance at weddings went so far with the retinue escorting the bridal couples that the authorities sometimes prescribed through their sumptuary laws exactly how many persons the entou- rage would be allowed to have. If food and drink has always been the medium for the association of a wider circle, for which an integrative mood and interest in another direction would be difficult to achieve, so a 'society,' then, purely on account of a quantitative composition that rules out the commonality and social interaction of the subtle and intellectual moods, will have to accentuate all the more strongly and certainly these sensual pleasures common to all.
A further characteristic of 'society' on the basis of its numerical dif- ference, in contrast to the gathering of a few, is found in that a full uniformity of mood cannot in general, as with the latter, be achieved and
11 Consequently the complaint about the banality of interaction in large social gatherings manifests complete sociological misunderstanding. The relatively low level of intensity on which a larger grouping gathers is not in principle remediable. Since all the higher and finer attainments are of a more individual kind and are thus not suited for commonality of content, they can in any case have a socializing effect, should a unity be acquired through a division of labor--which, however, is apparently pos- sible only inside a 'society' of a small size, and at higher quantities would negate its very nature. It is therefore a thoroughly correct sociological instinct when one senses the more notable emergence of personal individuality in a 'society' often as a bit of tactlessness--even one in itself meaningful and enjoyable.
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furthermore should not; rather, on the contrary, in a further contrast, the formation of subgroups is indicated. The life principle of a social gathering of a few personal friends is very much opposed to dividing, say, into two separate moods, indeed even only separate conversations; 'society' is present in that moment, when instead of its necessarily one center, a duality emerges: on the one hand an inclusive but still rather informal centrality that is essentially found only outwardly and physi- cally--which is why social gatherings of the same social level, the larger they are, the more they resemble one another as wholes, just as their personal exchanges are also more diverse; on the other hand the special small centers of shared conversation, mood, interest, which, however, continuously exchange participants. Consequently there is the continual alternating between engaging and breaking off in the large social gather- ing, which will be experienced, depending on the temperament of the subject, one moment as the most unbearable superficiality, the next as an effortless rhythm of high aesthetic charm. This technical sociologi- cal type is demonstrated in a particularly pure example by the ball with the modern style of dance: a momentary relationship always of a couple of actually fanciful closeness develops into an entirely new form through the constant exchange between couples; that physical closeness between each other of complete strangers makes it possible here for all the guests to be one host who, however casual the relationship to this host may be, permits a certain reciprocal assurance and legitimation, there again by way of the impersonal, quasi anonymous character of the relationships that the size of the social gathering and its formalistically bound behavior offers. Obviously these traits of the large social occa- sion, which the ball presents, as it were, by sublimating, perhaps even caricaturing them, are tied to a certain minimum of participants; and one can sometimes make the interesting observation that an intimate group of fewer persons takes on the character of 'society' through the arrival of one single additional person.
In one case, which certainly concerns a far less complicated human matter, the size that produces a particular sociological institutional struc- ture appears to be set somewhat more firmly. The patriarchal family household in the most diverse settings and even under wholly different economic conditions always numbers twenty to thirty people, so that those conditions cannot be the cause or at least not the exclusive cause of the similarity in size. It is rather likely that the internal interactions that constitute the particular structure of the household generate the necessary proportions of narrowness and width for precisely within
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that boundary. The patriarchal family was everywhere characterized by a great intimacy and solidarity, which had its center in the pater familias, the paternalism of which he exercised over the affairs of every individual in the interest of the whole as well as in his own egoistic interest. Hence arose the upper limit: this kind of cohesion and control appears to be able to include no greater quantity of members for the corresponding psychological level of development. On the other hand the lower limit follows from the fact that such a self-reliant group must cultivate for its self-sufficiency and its self-preservation certain collective psychological realities that tend to materialize only above a certain numerical threshold: resoluteness for the offensive and defensive, con- fidence on the part of each one always to find the necessary support and reinforcement, above all: the religious spirit whose elevation and inspiration arises, at first from the mixture of many contributing factors, in mutual elimination of their peculiarly individual character, above the individuals--or: lifts the individuals above themselves. The number mentioned specified perhaps empirically the approximate range over which and under which the group could not go if it would cultivate the character traits of the patriarchal household. It appears as though with growing individualization, beyond this level of civilization, those intimacies were possible only among an ever decreasing number of persons; on the other hand the phenomena relevant to the size of the family required precisely an ever growing circle. The needs that were realized above and below this numerical complement differentiated; one part requires a smaller complement, the other a larger one, so that later on one finds no structure anymore that can suffice for them in the same consistent manner as the patriarchal family had.
Apart from such singular cases, all those questions pertinent to the numerical requirement for a 'society' have a sophistic tone: how many soldiers make up an army, how many participants are necessary for a political party, how many joiners make a crowd. They seem to repeat the classical questions: how many grains of wheat make up a heap? Since, then, one, two, three, four grains do not do it at all, but a thousand certainly, there would have to be a boundary between these numbers at which the addition of a single grain to the previous ones would make a 'heap'; however, should someone make this attempt at continuous counting, it becomes evident that no one is able to identify this boundary. The logical basis of these difficulties lies in there being a numerical series that appears continuously, ceaselessly increasing due to the relative insignificance of each individual element, and that this
the quantitative conditioning of the group 77
at some point is to allow for the application of a qualitatively new idea, abruptly replacing altogether one previously applied. This is obviously a contradictory requirement: the continuous, conceptually, simply cannot justify purely from itself a sudden break and transition. The sociological difficulty, however, has another complication that lies beyond that of the ancient sophists. Because by a 'heap' of grain one understands either an accumulation, and then one is logically justified in calling it that as soon as only one layer simply appears over the spot underneath; or should it thereby be designated simply by an amount, then it is unjustifiably required from a concept such as heap, which by its very nature is rather variable and indeterminate, that it should acquiesce in its application now to entirely determinate unambiguously delimited realities. In the sociological cases, however, characteristically wholly new phenomena appear with an increasing quantity that appear not even proportion- ately at the lower existing quantity: a political party has a qualitatively different significance from a small clique; several curious spectators standing together manifest different characteristics than a 'crowd,' etc. The uncertainty coming from the impossibility of numerically grasping these concepts by the corresponding quantities might be resolved in the following way. That vacillation concerns apparently only certain middling sizes; some lower numbers do not yet reliably comprise the collectivities in question; some rather high ones comprise them entirely without question. Now there are indeed those qualities sociologically signifying a numerically more negligible formation: the gathering that falls short of 'society,' the troop of soldiers that does not yet make up an army, the collaborating miscreants who are not quite a 'gang. ' While these qualities stand in contrast to others arguably characteristic of the large community, the character of the numerically in-between can be interpreted to comprise both, so that each of the two is made rudimentarily perceptible in individual features, now emerging, now disappearing, or becoming latent. Thus while such structures situated in the numerically middle zone also objectively participate partially or alternately in the definitive character of that situated above it or below it, the subjective uncertainty in deciding which of the two they belong to is to be explained. It is thus not that in a formation without sociological qualities suddenly, like the crystal in the mother liquid, a quite definite sociological constellation is supposed to start, without one, though, knowing the distinct moment of this transformation; but rather it is that two different kinds of formations, each consisting of a number of features and variously qualitatively nuanced, converge under
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certain quantitative conditions in a social structure and share the lat- ter between themselves in a variety of ways; so that the question, to which of the two the structure belongs, does not at all suffer from the difficulty of recognizing a continuous series but is instead one posed in an objectively false manner. 12
These convergences then would affect social formations that indeed depend on the number of interacting elements, but without this depen- dence being sufficiently formulated for us to be conscious of them for purposes of drawing their sociological consequences from individual specific quantities. However, this latter is not out of the question if we are satisfied with just adequate elementary forms. If we begin with the lower limit of the quantitative range, mathematically determined sizes appear as unambiguous preconditions for characteristically sociologi- cal structures.
The numerically simplest formations that can still be characterized as social interaction at all seem to arise, of course, between two elements. However, there is, viewed from the outside, an as yet simpler structure that belongs among sociological categories; namely--as paradoxically and actually contradictory as it seems--the isolated individual person.
12 More exactly, however, the situation is probably this. To every definite number of elements, there corresponds, depending on the purpose and meaning of its association, a sociological form, an arranging, cohesiveness, relationship of the parts to the whole, etc. --that with each and every arriving and departing member, a modification, however immeasurably small and imperceptible, is experienced. But since we do not have a specific expression for each of these endlessly many sociological situations, even when for us perceptible in its nature, often nothing else remains but to think of it as made up from two situations--one more, as it were, relevant, the other less. In any event it is thereby not so much a matter of a composite as it is, say, the so-called emotional blend of friendship and love, or hate and contempt, or pleasure and pain. Here there is in most cases an integrative emotional state--which will occupy us later on--for which we have no immediate concept and which we therefore through synthesis and mutual qualification of two others paraphrase more than describe; here as elsewhere the actual unity of being is not available to us, but we must break it up into a duality of elements, neither of which covers it completely, in order to have it emerge from the interweaving of the two. This is, however, only a conceptual analysis possible after the fact that does not trace the actual process of becoming the distinct being of those entities. So where the concepts coined for social units--meeting and society, troop and army, clique and party, pair and gang, personal following and school, assembly and crowd--find no certain application, because the human material for the one seems to be too little and for the other too much, there remains nevertheless as precise a standard sociological formation of as precise a correspondence specifically to the numerical qualification as in those more definitive cases. It is only that the lack of a specific concept for these countless nuances forces us to describe their qualities as a mixture of the forms that correspond to numerically smaller and numerically higher structures.
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As a matter of fact, though, the processes that shape the duality of elements are often simpler than those necessary for the sociological characterization of the singular. For the latter it is a matter principally of two pertinent phenomena: solitariness and freedom. The shear fact that an individual is not at all in any kind of interaction with other individuals is of course not a sociological one, but still it also does not satisfy the full concept of the solitary. This, in fact, so far as it is emphasized and internally meaningful, does not in any way mean simply the absence of any society, but rather its existence somehow imagined and only then negated. Solitude receives its unambiguously positive meaning as a distant effect of society--be it as echoes of past or anticipation of future relationships, be it as yearning or as voluntary seclusion. The solitary person is not thus characterized as though from time immemorial the sole inhabitant of the earth; rather even such a person's situation is determined by social interaction, albeit negatively denoted. All the joy as well as all the bitterness of solitude are indeed only different kinds of reaction to socially experienced influences; it is an interaction from which the one member is actually separate after exercising certain influences and yet lives on and functions yet in the imagination of the other subject. Rather characteristic of this is the well-known psychological fact that the feeling of being alone seldom appears so decidedly and hauntingly in an actual physical isolation as when one is conscious of oneself as alien and disconnected among many physically quite present people--at a social gathering, in the train car, in the crush of the crowded urban street. It is necessarily essentially a matter of the configuration of a group whether it fosters or in general enables such manufactured feelings of loneliness in its midst. Close and intimate communities do not often allow such an, as it were, intercellular vacuum in their structure. As one speaks, however, of a social deficit that is produced in certain amounts according to the social conditions: the antisocial phenomena of the disenfranchised, criminals, prostitutes, suicides--so a given quantity and quality of social life produces a certain number of occasional or chronically lonely existences that the statistics by themselves certainly cannot grasp numerically. In another manner solitude becomes sociologically meaningful as soon as it no longer consists of a relationship occurring in an individual between the individual and a specific group or the group life in general but rather emerges as pause or periodical differentiation inside of one and the same relationship. This becomes important for those relationships that are concerned, based on their foundational concepts, precisely with
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the ongoing negation of solitude, such as, above all, the monogamous marriage. In so far as the finest internal nuances find expression in its constitution, it makes a fundamental difference whether husband and wife have indeed still preserved the joy of solitude for themselves or whether their relationship is never to be interrupted by indulgence in this--be it because their habitual togetherness has deprived them of the attractiveness of it, be it because a lack of inner security of love leads them to fear those kinds of interruptions as betrayals or, worse, as a threat to fidelity. Thus solitude, a phenomenon apparently limited to the individual subject, consisting in the negation of sociality, is nev- ertheless of highly positive sociological significance: not only from the perspective of the subject, in whom it exhibits as conscious perception an entirely given relationship to society, but also through the definitive characteristic that offers up encompassing groups as well as the most intimate relationships, as cause as well as effect, for its occurrence.
Among its many sociological implications, freedom also has an aspect pertinent to this. It too appears at first as the simple negation of social connection, because every connection is a relationship. Free persons simply do not form unities together with others, but are ones for themselves. Now there may be a freedom that exists in this sheer unrelatedness, in the sheer absence of any limitation by other beings: a Christian or Hindu hermit, a solitary settler in a German or Ameri- can forest may enjoy a freedom in the sense that one's existence is filled throughout with other than social contents--likewise perhaps a collectivity, a household, or a political entity that exists completely insulated, without neighbors, and without relationships to other entities. However, for an entity that exists in connection to others, freedom has a much more positive meaning. It is a specific kind of relationship to the environment, a co-relational phenomenon that loses its meaning if there is no counterpart. It has in this regard two extremely important meanings for the deep structure of society.
1. For social people, freedom is neither a self-evident condition given at the outset nor a possession of more-or-less substantial durability acquired for all time. For sure not just because every single hypothetical demand that engages the strength of the individual generally towards a particular course actually has the tendency to proceed without lim- its; almost all relationships--governmental, party, family, friendship, erotic--though voluntary, go overboard and spin their demands, if left to their own resources, out over everybody; emotionally they become often uncannily surrounded by an imaginary sphere from which one
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then must emphatically mark out for oneself a reserve of strengths, commitments, interests. However, it is not only the extensiveness of demands by which the social egoism of any social involvement endan- gers the freedom of its participants but indeed the relentlessness with which the entirely one-sided and narrow demand of already existing bonds likewise emerges. Each one of this sort tends to assert its rights with complete lack of mercy and indifference toward other interests and duties--whether they are compatible with it or fully incompatible--and limits the freedom of the individual by this nature of its manner no less than by its quantitative extent. Over against this form of our relation- ships freedom manifests itself as an ongoing process of liberation, as a struggle not only for the independence of the 'I' but also for the right even to remain in the interdependence each moment with free will--as a struggle that must be renewed after each victory. Detachment as nega- tive social behavior is thus in reality almost never a dormant property but a ceaseless loosening from bonds that continually either actually restrict the being-for-self of the individual or strive to do so in principle; freedom is not a solipsistic existence but a sociological event, not a situ- ation confined to the singularity of the subject but a relationship, albeit definitely viewed from the standpoint of the one subject.
2. Considered functionally as well as substantively, freedom is some- thing completely other than the repudiation of relationships, than the untouchability of the individual spheres by those located nearby. It follows from that very simple idea that a person is not only free but indeed also wants to use that freedom for something. This use, however, is for the most part nothing other than the domination and exploitation of other people. For the social individual (i. e. , one living in permanent interrelationships with others) freedom would in countless instances be entirely without content and purpose if it did not make possible or constitute the extension of one's will to those others. Quite correctly our language identifies certain insults and violations as 'having taken liberties with someone,' and likewise many languages have used their word for freedom in the sense of right or privilege. The purely nega- tive character of freedom as a relationship of the subject to one's self complements a very positive one in two ways: freedom exists for the most part in a process of liberation, it rises above and against a bond, and remains then as a reaction against this meaning, consciousness, and value; and it consists no less of a power relationship to others, of the possibility of acquiring advantage inside of a relationship, of the obligation or subjugation of the other, in which freedom only then
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finds its value and its realization. The inherent meaning of freedom for the subject is thus only as the watershed between both of its social relevancies: that the subject is bound by others and binds others. It shrivels up to nothing, so to speak, thereby revealing the actual mean- ing of freedom, even when visualized as a quality of the individual, as indeed this twofold social relationship.
Since now there are such frequent multi-faceted and indirect connec- tions consisting of determinants such as solitude and freedom, but still though as sociological forms of relationship--nevertheless the methodologi- cally most simple sociological formation simply remains effectively that between two participants. It provides the prototype, the germ, and the material for countless complex cases, although its sociological impor- tance in no way rests only on its expansion and diversification. Rather it is itself indeed a social interaction with which not only many forms of such are generally very purely and characteristically realized, but the reduction to the duality of elements is even the condition under which alone a variety of forms of relation emerge. The typical sociological entity reveals itself then, in that not only does the greatest diversity of individuality and the attendant motives not alter the identity of these formations, but that even these occasionally arise as much between two groups--families, states, associations of different kinds--as between two individual persons.
The specific characterization of a relationship through the duality of participants fully represents everyday experiences: a common share, an undertaking, an agreement, a shared secret binds participants into twos in a way quite different than when only three participate in it. Perhaps this is most characteristic of the secret, wherein the general experience seems to show that this minimum, with which the secret crosses the boundary of the being-for-itself, is at the same time the maximum with which its preservation is reasonably secured. A secret ecclesiastic-political society that was organized in France and Italy at the beginning of the nineteenth century had separate grades, whereby the actual governing secrets were known only to the higher of these grades; permitted to be discussed, however, only between two members each of those high grades. The limit of two is thus felt to be so decisive that, where it can no longer be maintained with respect to knowledge, it is still observed with respect to speech! Now in general the difference between the bond of two and that of more members is thereby set, in that that relationship, as a unity of two individuals, stands to each of the participants as greater-numbered formations stand to it. Much as
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it may appear, say, to a third party as an independent entity above the individual, that is as a rule not the case for its participants, but each sees oneself in relation to the other, and not as one in an overarching collectivity. The social structure rests directly on the one and on the other. The departure of any individual would destroy the whole, so it does not attain the same supra-personal life that one feels as indepen- dent of oneself; whereas already even with a social formation of three a group can yet continue to exist even after the departure of one.
This dependence of the dyad on the pure individuality of the single member lets the idea of its existence be accompanied by that of its end in a way more nearly and perceptibly than is the case with other unions, which all members know can survive their individual departures or deaths. Just as the life of the individual is shaded in some way by the idea of one's death, so is the life of associations. By 'idea' is here understood not only the theoretical, conscious thought but a portion or modification of our being. Death stands before us not as a fate that will at any moment intrude, previously only as an idea or prophecy, as a present fear or hope, without interfering in the reality of this life until it occurs. Rather, that we will die is from the very beginning of life an intrinsic quality; in all of our living reality something is, which later as our death simply finds its last phase or revelation: we are, from our birth on, something that will die. Admittedly we vary in this; not only does it vary in the way that we subjectively imagine this quality and its final effect and react to it, but the way in which this element of our being interweaves with its other elements is of most extreme diversity. And so it is with groups. Every multimember group can be immortal in its idea, and this gives each of its members as such a completely unique sociological feeling, however one wishes to face death personally. 13 That, however, a union of two, certainly not with regard to its life but with regard to its death, depends on each of its elements for its very being--because two are required for its life, not however for its death--the entire inner attitude of the individual must contribute to it, albeit not always consciously and not always equa- bly. For the feeling of bonding, there has to be a tone of peril and of indispensability which makes it on the one hand an actual place of a
13 Compare the more detailed examination of this in the chapter on the self- preservation of the group.
? 84 chapter two
genuine sociological tragedy, on the other hand a sentimentality and mournful problematic.
This tone is generally pervasive where the end of the union is organi- cally grafted into its positive structure. From a northern French city recently there was a report of a strange 'Union of the Broken Dish. ' For years there, some industrialists are supposed to have joined in a meal. Once when a dish fell to the ground and broke, someone remarked by chance that the number of pieces was exactly the same as the number of people present--an omen for them to join together in a union of friendship in which each should owe the others good turns and assis- tance. Each of the gentlemen took a piece of the dish. Whenever one of them dies, his porcelain fragment is delivered back to the chairman, who glues the pieces handed back to him together. The last survivor is then supposed to glue the last piece, and the thusly repaired dish must be quickly buried. With that the 'Union of the Broken Dish' is finally liquidated and vanishes. Undoubtedly, the emotional tone inside this fellowship and in relationship to it would be a completely changed one if new members had been admitted and its life thereby perpetuated indefinitely. Its being designed from the very beginning to die gives it a certain cachet--which dyadic affiliations possess at the outset by virtue of the numerical limitation of their structure.
From the same structural foundation also only relationships of two are actually exposed to the characteristic coloration or decoloration that we identify as triviality. Because only where the claim to an individuality is productive of its appearance or achievement, the feeling of triviality produces its absence. It is still hardly adequately observed how rela- tionships, with fully unchanged content, are colored by the pervading imagination, however frequently or rarely similarly constituted. It is not only erotic relationships that receive through imagination (that there has never yet been such an experience) a special and meaningful timbre quite apart from their otherwise ostensible content and worth. Perhaps since there is hardly any externally objective property whose value--not only its economic value--would not from the infrequency or frequency contribute to the consciousness or unconsciousness of such, so perhaps also no relationship in its inner meaning for its carriers is independent of the factor of its amount of recurrence; this rate of occurrence can also mean thereby the repetitions of the same contents, situations, excitements inside the relationship itself. With the feeling of triviality we associate a certain level of frequency, of consciousness of the repetition of life content, the value of which is contingent directly upon a level
the quantitative conditioning of the group 85
of infrequency. Now it seems as though the life of a supra-individual social entity or the relationship of the individual to it has generally not faced this question, as though here, where the substantive meaning of the relationship transcends the individuality, even its individuality in the sense of the uniqueness or infrequency played no role and its absence thus operated as triviality. For the dyadic relationships of love, of mar- riage, of friendship--or even such higher numbered relationships that produce no higher structure often than the social gathering--the tone of triviality leading to despair or ruin proves the sociological character of the dual formations: to commit to the immediacy of the interaction and to deprive each of the elements of the supra-individual unity facing them, while they simultaneously partake of it.
That the sociological event remains thus within the personal apart- and-dependent existence, without the elements progressing to the formation of an overarching whole--as it exists in principle even with groups of two--is, moreover, the basis of 'intimacy. ' This characteristic of a relationship seems to me to return to the initially individual dis- position: in that the person gladly differentiates oneself from the other, the qualitatively individual is regarded as the core, value, and sine qua non of one's existence--a presumption in no way always justified since for many it is quite typically the contrary, the essence and substantial value of their personality shared with others. Now this repeats itself with aggregations.