No More Learning

On the other hand, what characterizes a confederation as such is its unity as a war-making power. While in all other respects each state may keep its independence, in this it is not permitted when a relationship of confederation is actually supposed to exist, so that what is identified as a virtually complete confederation is that it would form an absolute unity in its--essentially yet open or latent warlike--rela- tionship to other states, while its members would possess complete independence in their relationship to one another.
In view of the incomparable benefits of a united organization for the purpose of conflict, one would believe every party would thereby have to have the most extreme interest in having the opposing party lack this unity. 24 Nevertheless, there are several cases of the contrary: the form of centralization into which the situation of conflict forces the party outgrows the party itself and provokes it to mostly prefer seeing even the opponent over against itself in this form. In the struggles of recent decades between workers and employers, this extended to a most unlikely place. The Royal Commission on Labour in England judged in 1894 that the fixed organization of workers would be favorable for the employers in an industry, and likewise that of the employers for the workers. Admittedly the result of that would then be that an out- break strike could become greatly extended and of long duration, but for both parties this would still always be more advantageous and less costly than the many local deals, work stoppages, and minor conflicts that do not cease in the absence of a strict organization of the par- ties. In the same way a war between modern states, destructive and costly as it may be, is still always better on balance than the incessant small conflicts and frictions in periods in which the governments were less strongly centralized. In Germany too the workers had recognized that one strict and effective organization of employers precisely for the fighting out of conflicts of interest is for all intents and purposes in the interest of the workers themselves. Since only that kind of an organization can present representatives with whom one is able to negotiate with full confidence, only when faced with that is the work force of the industry in question certain that the result arrived at is not immediately called into question by those employers not present. The disadvantage that a party suffers on account of the unified organization
24 Compare the earlier comments about divide et impera.
? 282 chapter four
? of the opponent--because it is also an advantage for itself--is more than offset here by the fact that with both parties so constituted the conflict itself can be one of more focus, more visibility, securing a lasting and truly general peace--whereas one certainly more often wins individual victories against a diffuse mass of foes, but arrives with great difficulty at decisive actions actually fitting the ratio of strengths. This case is thus so deeply instructive regarding the fundamental connection between the form of unity and the conflict behavior of the group because it allows the practicality of this connection to triumph over even the immediate disadvantage for the respective opponent. It reveals that centripetalism that places the objective outcome of conflict on the surest and shortest path as the objectively ideal form of the constitution for conflict; this teleology, as it were, more-or-less transcending the parties, lets each individual party do its own arithmetic and thereby be able to fashion the apparent contradiction of turning each advantage of the opponent into an advantage of its own.
It makes an essential difference for the sociological meaning of a formation whether a group as a whole enters into an antagonistic rela- tionship with an externally situated power, and thus the tightening of its bonds and increase in its unity occurs in consciousness and action; or every element of a larger grouping has its enemy, and, because this is the same one for all, now more than ever a federation of all comes about--whether formerly they had in general nothing to do with each other or whether at least for the moment new formations develop among them. It must still be emphasized for the first case that conflict or war can on the one hand get a group past various discrepancies and individual deviations within it; on the other hand, however, it can often bring to the relationships within it a clarity and decisiveness achieved in no other way. This is to be observed especially in groupings that are smaller and have not yet attained the objectification of a modern state. If a political party that unites multiple interests sees itself forced into a very definite and one-sided situation of conflict, this is a straightforward opportunity for secessions; in such moments all that is left is to forget about the internal opposing interests or to expressly clarify them by expelling certain members. Should a family contain individuals with strong but latent differences, the moment danger or attack forces them into the greatest possible closeness will be just the one that secures its unity in the long run or destroys it permanently, the moment at which it is decided absolutely accurately how great a cooperation of such per- sonalities is possible. When a school class plans a prank on the teacher
conflict 283
? or a brawl with another class, it takes care certainly on the one hand to silence all kinds of inner enmities, but on the other hand, however, it always causes certain students to break off from the rest, not only out of material motives but rather because they do not want to join in on such peremptory attacks with them and the others with whom they readily cooperate in other respects within the framework of the class. In short, the condition of peace for a group permits antagonistic elements within it to live among themselves in an unsettled situation because each one can go one's own way and can avoid confrontations. The condition of strife, however, pulls the elements so firmly together and places them under an impulse of such unification that they have to get along with each other or completely repel each other; for that reason too an external war is sometimes the final means for a state shot through with internal hostilities to overcome them; sometimes, however, precisely that allows the whole to disintegrate definitively.
For that reason groups who find themselves in some kind of state of war are not tolerant; they can tolerate individual deviance from the unity of the principle of cohesion only up to a critically limited extent. The method for this is occasionally an apparent tolerance exercised in order to be able to exclude with all the more resoluteness those not definitively falling into line. The Catholic Church found itself actually forever in a double state of war: against the entire complex of various teachings that together comprise heresy, and against the life interests and powers alongside it that lay claim in some way to a realm of power independent of it. The cohesive form of unity that it needed in this situation was thereby won by it nevertheless treating dissidents as long as possible as still belonging to it; from the moment, however, when this was no longer possible, it repudiated them with an incomparable energy. For that kind of formation a certain flexibility of its form is of the utmost importance,25 not in order to produce a conversion and reconciliation with the antagonistic powers but rather precisely to set itself in opposition to them with extreme severity, yet without somehow suffering the loss of useful elements. The flexibility is not an extension beyond its own boundary; rather that closes off the flexible body no less unequivocally than it marks the boundary of a rigid one. This malleability characterizes, e. g. , the monastic orders, through which the
25 On the flexibility of social forms in general, compare the end of the chapter on self-preservation.
? 284 chapter four
? mystical or fanatical impulses, surfacing in all religions, could here live out their absolutely arranged life style innocently in one church, while exactly the same thing in Protestantism, with its sporadically much greater dogmatic intolerance, often led to secessions from and splin- terings of its unity. Sociological patterns of action that are specific to the female gender appear to go back to the same motive. Among the most diverse elements of which all the relationships between men and women consist, there is found also a typical animosity emergent from the two sources--that women, as the physically weaker, are always in danger of economic and personal exploitation and absence of rights,26 and that they, as the objects of the sensual desire of men, must maintain a defensive posture against them. So seldom then does this struggle, flowing through the inner and personal history of human gender, lead to a direct cooperation of women against men, that there is instead a transpersonal form that serves as a means of protection against both of these dangers and in which therefore the female gender is interested, so to say, in corpore: custom--whose sociological nature, characterized above, is to be drawn upon once again for its current implications. The strong personality knows to protect itself individually against attacks or, if needed, simply needs legal protection; the weak would be lost, in spite of the latter, if the individuals with superior power did not them- selves somehow abstain from the exploitation of this superiority. This occurs in part through morality; but since morality has no executive apart from the conscience of the individual, it functions uncertainly enough that it needs to be supplemented by custom; admittedly this does not have the precision and certainty of the legal norm, but in any case it is guaranteed by an instinctive aversion to and by some perceptibly unpleasant consequences of its violation. Now custom is the real protection of the weak who would be no match in a fight of unfettered forces. Its character is thus essentially that of prohibition, of restriction; it effects a certain equality between the weak and the strong that goes so far in its constraint on the merely natural relationship of the two that it even favors the weak--as chivalry demonstrates, for example. In the chronic struggle between men and women those that are the stronger and the aggressor are compelled into the protection
26 I speak here of the relationship as it has existed for the greater part of known history, and leave aside whether that will henceforth become or has already become partially invalid through the modern development of rights and strengths of women.
? conflict 285
? of custom, so they are assigned--assigned by their own interest--to be its guardians. For that reason they themselves are of course also occupied most strictly with the observance of the whole complex of custom codes, as well as where it is not at all immediately a matter of masculine harms: all norms of customs exist together in a dense interrelationship; the violation of each one weakens the principle and thereby every other one. For this reason women tend out of necessity to stick together; here an actual unity corresponds to the peculiar ideals with which men generalize about them when they speak of 'women' as such, and which certainly has the character of a partisan-like opposition. This solidarity which they have apart from men and which is already expressed by Freidank:27 "The man bears his dishonor alone--But when a woman falls--They all come under reproach"--this gender- like solidarity has in its interest in custom a real vehicle as its shared means of conflict. And therefore finally repeated here is the sociological form now under consideration. As a rule women know, concerning one woman, only the complete inclusion or the complete exclusion from the realm of custom. There exists among them the tendency, as far as possible, not to admit a breach in custom by a woman, to interpret it as insignificant except where scandal mongering and other individual motives are working against it. If this, however, is no longer possible, they pass a judgment of exclusion from 'good society,' unable to be appealed and unconditionally harsh; if the breach of custom must be acknowledged, the guilty one is radically eliminated from that unity that is held together by the shared interest in custom. So one knows that women make the same damning judgment of Gretchen as they do the Lady of the Camellias, Stella as well as Messalina,28 without making an adjustment for those standing between the inside and the outside of custom by way of a concession to distinctions of degree. The defensive position of women does not allow for the wall of custom to be reduced at even just one point; the party of women knows no compromise in principle, but only dogmatic acceptance of an individual into the ideal totality of 'decent women' or just as dogmatic expulsion from it--an
27 Freidank was a 13th-century poet who became known for his aphorisms-ed.
28 Two references seem to be the successive wives, Gretchen and Stella, in Lilian
Gask's The Fairies and the Christmas Child; Gretchen made her husband jealous by giv- ing hospitality to an old man who turned out to be an elf, and Stella was a wealthy but scolding wife. Alexandre Dumas favored a courtesan, to whom he referred as his "camellia lady. " Messalina, the third wife of the Roman Emperor Claudius, had a poor reputation because of her intrigues and multiple affairs--ed.
? 286 chapter four
? alternative whose purely moral justification is in no way beyond all doubt and is conceivable only in terms of the demand for an indivis- ible unity that the party, united against an opponent, must provide its elements. For this same reason a reduction of its membership even for political parties can be advantageous, as soon as this purifies them of the elements inclined to negotiations and compromises. For this to be advisable, two conditions must usually be jointly met: an acute state of conflict, secondly, that the conflicting group is relatively small; the type is the minority party and to be sure especially when it is not limited to the defensive. English parliamentary history has proven this numer- ous times; when, for example, the Whig party in 1793 had a complete meltdown, it functioned to strengthen it, when in turn a defection of all those members still in any way compromising and lukewarm occurred. The few very resolute personalities remaining behind could only then operate a consistent and radical politics. The majority group need not consist of such pro-and-con decisiveness. Waffling and provisional hangers-on are less dangerous for it because a large area can tolerate such phenomena at the periphery without it affecting its center; but with groups of narrower circumference where the periphery stands very near to the center, any kind of uncertainty of an element immediately threatens the core and thereby the cohesiveness of the whole; because of the narrow range between the elements, what is lacking is the elasticity of the group that is here the condition of tolerance.
For this reason, groups and minorities who live among conflict and persecution often reject cooperation and acquiescence from the other side because the solidarity of their opposition, without which they cannot continue to fight, is thereby blurred. For example, this emerged more than once in the confessional disputes in England. Immediately under James II, as well as under William and Mary, the nonconformists and independents, Baptists, Quakers occasionally experienced from the government a cooperation to which they were not completely in agree- ment. Thus the more flexible and irresolute elements among them were accorded a temptation and possibility to take half-way measures or at least to soften their hostility. Any flexibility from the other side, which is however only partial, threatens the uniformity in the opposition of all members and thus that cohesive uniformity of which a fighting minor- ity with an uncompromising alternative must consist. For this reason the unity of groups is so often generally lost when they no longer have an enemy. One can emphasize this with Protestantism from a variety of angles. Simply because 'protest' would have been essential for it, it
conflict 287
? would thus lose its energy or its inner uniformity as soon as the oppo- nent against whom it protests is out of the range of fire; indeed, this is so to such a degree that Protestantism in this case would duplicate the conflict with the enemy even in itself and would break up into a free and an orthodox party; just as in North America's party history the complete withdrawal of one of the two great parties repeatedly had the immediate consequence that the other would dissolve into subgroups with their own partisan differences. It is not necessarily even advanta- geous for the unity of Protestantism that it does not have any actual heretics. The conscious solidarity of the Catholic Church, in contrast, has been decisively strengthened by the reality of heresy and by the combative attitude towards it. The many various elements of the Church have always gotten their orientation, as it were, by the irreconcilabil- ity of the opposition against heresy and, in spite of some discordant interests, can become conscious of her unity. Consequently complete victory over its foe is not always, in a sociological sense, a fortunate event for a group, because the energy that guarantees its cohesiveness thereby declines, and the disintegrative forces that are always at work gain ground. The collapse of the Roman-Latin Federation in the fifth century BCE has been accounted for by the fact that the common foe was then overcome. Perhaps its basis--protection from one side, devo- tion by the other--had already for some time no longer been entirely natural; but this emerged now just where no common opponent any longer sustained the whole over its internal contradictions. Indeed, it may just be really politically shrewd inside some groups to look for an enemy so that the unity of the elements would remain consciously and effectively its vital interest.
The last mentioned example allows a transition to the broadening of this integrating significance of conflict: that by it is not only an existing unity in itself more energetically concentrated, and all elements that could blur the sharpness of its boundaries against the enemy are radi- cally excluded--but also that it generally unifies persons and groups who otherwise have nothing to do with one another. The energy with which conflict operates in this direction explicitly comes to that argu- ably most decidedly when the link between the conflict situation and unification is strong enough for it to become also already meaningful in the opposite direction. Psychological associations generally show their strength in their also being effective in an inverse way; when, for example, a certain personality is introduced under the idea of the hero, the link between both images is then proven to be firmest if the idea of
288 chapter four
? the hero cannot be thought at all without the image of that personality appearing. As alliance for purposes of conflict is an event experienced countless times, sometimes the mere bonding of elements, even where it is concluded with no kind of aggressive or generally conflict-like purposes, appears to other powers as a threatening and hostile act. The despotism of the modern state points above all to medieval thinking on unification, so that ultimately every association, as such, between cities, estates, knights, or any elements of the state for that matter were regarded by the government as a rebellion, as a struggle against it in latent form. Charlemagne prohibited guilds as sworn allegiances and permitted them without oath exclusively for charitable purposes. The point of the prohibition lies in the sworn commitment itself with purposes that are permitted because state-threatening purposes could be easily tied to them. Thus the Moravian land ordinance of 1628 dictates: "Thus to enter into or to erect foedera or alliances, to whatever end and against whomever it may be intended, pertains to nobody other than the king. " That the dominating authority, nevertheless, sometimes even favors or establishes associations proves nothing on the contrary but that everything is supposed to be conducted for this cohesiveness, and certainly not only in the most obvious case of counteracting the association of an existing party of opposition but in the more interesting case of diverting the drive for association in a harmless direction. After the Romans had dissolved all the political associations of the Greeks, Hadrian created an association of all Greeks (? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? )29 with ideal purposes: games, commemorations, preservation of an ideal, an entirely nonpolitical Panhellenism.
Now the historical cases make particularly obvious for the relation- ship here immediately in question that it can only be a matter of the degree of unification that is in this way achievable. The establishment of the unity of the state stands above all. Essentially France owes the consciousness of its national cohesiveness primarily to the struggle against the English; the Spanish territories were turned into one people by the war with the Moors. The next lower level is marked by federal states and confederations of states according to their coherence and the measure of power of their central power in further various grada- tions. The United States had need of its Civil War, Switzerland of the struggle against Austria, the Netherlands of the rebellion against Spain,
29 Koinon sunedrion ton Hellenon, literally <<common council of the Greeks>>---ed.
? conflict 289
? the Achaean League of the fight against Macedonia; the foundation of the new German Reich had its counterpart. The formation of unified estates belongs in this realm; for them the moment of conflict, latent and open oppositions, is one of such obvious significance that I mention only a negative example. That in Russia no actual aristocracy exists as a closed stratum would have to appear actually to favor the broad and unrestrained development of a bourgeoisie. In reality just the opposite is the case. Had there been, as elsewhere, a powerful aristocracy, it would surely have set itself frequently in opposition to the prince, who in turn in that struggle would have depended on an urban bourgeoisie. Obviously such a situation of conflict then would have interested the princes in developing a unified bourgeois class. The elements of such a one found in this case not even in general anything so conflict-relevant as to join together into a class because no conflict existed between the nobility and the central power in which they would have been able to share in winning some prize by being in league with one side or the other. In all positive cases of this type the indication is that the unity came about certainly through strife and for the same purposes, but exists beyond fighting and no longer allows interrelated interests and unifying energies to merge with warlike purpose. The significance of conflict here is actually only in putting the latently existing relation- ship and unity into effect; even more, it is here the occasion for the internally necessary unifications, as well as their purpose. Inside the collective interest in conflict there is admittedly yet another nuance: whether the unification for the purpose of conflict is meant for attack and defense or only for defense. This last is probably the case for the majority of coalitions of already existing groups, namely wherever it is a matter of very many groups or groups very diverse from one another. The goal of defense is the collectivist minimum because it is for every single group and for every individual the most unavoidable test of the instinct of self-preservation. The more and the more varied are the ele- ments that unite, the narrower apparently is the number of interests in which they concur, and in the most extreme case it reverts to the most primitive instinct: the defense of existence. Over against the fear, for example, on the part of the business community that all English trade unions could at the same time make common resolve, one of their most unconditional supporters sincerely emphasized: even if it came to that, it could be exclusively for the purposes of defense!
From the cases, then, in which the collectivizing effect of strife extends beyond the moment and the immediate purpose, what can happen even
290 chapter four
? with the same minimum mentioned is that their extension devolves further to the cases in which the union occurs really only ad hoc. Here the two types are distinguishable: the cooperative federal union for a single action that, however frequent, especially in actual wars, requires the service of all the energies of the elements; it produces a total unity that, however, after the achievement or failure of their urgent purpose, releases its parts again to their former separate existence, somewhat as with the Greeks after eliminating the Persian danger. With the other type the unity is less complete but also less transitory; it forms a group not so much around a time as around the contents regarding a singular purpose of conflict, which has no effect on the other aspects of the elements. So a Federation of Associated Employers of Labour has existed in England since 1873, founded to counter the influence of the trade unions; also several years later in the United States a federa- tion of employers as such was formed, without regard for the various branches of business, to defy the strike movement of the workers as a whole. The character of both types appears then naturally at its most acute when the elements of the fighting entity are not just indifferent towards one another but hostile, either in other periods or in other relationships; the unifying power of the principle of conflict never mani- fests such strength as when it cuts a temporal or material enclave out of relationships of competition or animosity. The opposition between the other antagonism and the momentary comradeship-in-arms can develop to such an extent under certain circumstances that precisely the absoluteness of their enmity forms for the parties the direct cause of their union. The opposition in the English Parliament has sometimes comes to such a point that the extremists became dissatisfied with the ministerial direction of the government and formed a party with the primary opposition, held together by the common opposition towards the Ministry. So the ultra-Whigs under Pulteney joined with the high Tories against Robert Walpole. It was thus precisely the principle of radicalism, which lives by the hostility toward the Tories, that fused its adherents together with them: were they not so strongly opposed to the Tories, they would not have merged with the Tories in order thereby to bring about the downfall of the Whig minister who was not Whiggish enough for them. This case is so glaring because the common opponent brings together the otherwise enemies based on the perception of both of them that the opponent stands too far on the other side. By the way, though, it is only the purest example of the banal experience that even
conflict 291
? the bitterest enmities do not hinder bonding, as soon as it concerns a common enemy. This is especially the case if each or at least one of the two of the now cooperating parties has very concrete and immedi- ate ends for the achievement of which it needs only the removal of a certain opponent. In France's history from the Huguenots to Richelieu we observe with respect to the internal parties that it is enough that the one appears more hostile towards Spain or England, Savoy or Holland, so that immediately the other joins this external political power, with no concern over its harmony or disharmony with their positive tenden- cies. These parties in France had, however, thoroughly tangible goals in sight, simply freedom from the opposition, and needed only space for them. They were therefore ready to ally themselves with any opponent whatever of this opponent, insofar as this one had the same intention, fully indifferent to their relationship otherwise. The more purely negative or destructive an enmity is, the more readily will it bring about an alliance among those who otherwise lack any motive for mutuality.
Finally the lowest step on this scale, the least acute form, is formed by the alliances consisting simply of a shared mentality. One knows that one belongs insofar as one has a similar aversion or a similar prac- tical interest against a third, however without it needing to lead to a common action in conflict. Here also two types are distinguished. The large-scale enterprise, few employers standing over against the masses of workers, has apparently succeeded in actually bringing about not only several effective alliances of the latter to the conflict over working conditions, but also the whole general mindset that all wage workers somehow belong together because they all stand in principle in the same struggle with the employers. At several points this mindset certainly crystallizes into several actions of political party formation or of wage dispute. However, as a whole it cannot become essentially practical; it remains the mindset of an abstract solidarity by way of the common opposition against an abstract foe. If here the feeling of unity is abstract, but ongoing, then in the second case concrete but fleeting; this is the case, e. g. , when personalities of the same high levels of cultivation and sentiment, otherwise foreign to one another, find themselves in a social circle, in a train car, or someplace similar, with persons raw and vulgar in behavior. Without it coming to any kind of commotion, without a word or glance being exchanged, the former feel as a party held together by the common aversion, at least in the ideal sense, against the aggressive boorishness of the others. With its most extremely delicate
292 chapter four
? and sensitive character, with a simultaneous ambiguity, this common mindset seals off the ranks of those for whom fully alien elements are brought together by the commonality of an antagonism.
Where the synthesizing power of a common opponent is not a ques- tion of the quantity of points of interest but of the duration and the intensity of the alliance, it works especially well if, instead of the actual fight, there is the ongoing threat from a foe. From the beginning of the Achaean league, about 270 BCE, the emphasis was placed on Achaia being surrounded by enemies who had, however, everything else to do at the moment but attack it; and such a period of danger, which would always threaten but be forever put off, would have been especially suit- able to strengthen the feeling of unity. This is a case of the unique type: a certain distance between the elements to be united on the one hand and the point and interest that unites them on the other hand being an especially favorable constellation for the binding, especially where it is a matter of an extensive circle. This applies to religious relations: in contrast to the tribal and national deities, the universal God of Christianity stands an infinite distance from the believers; fully absent from God are the peculiar characteristics relative to the individual; for this reason, God can then assemble even the most heterogeneous peoples and personalities into one incomparable religious community. Even further: clothing always characterizes certain social strata as belonging together; and it now often seems to fulfill this social function best when it comes from the outside. To clothe oneself as one does in Paris signifies a narrow and exclusive society of a certain social level in other lands; certainly the prophet Zephaniah speaks of the behavior of wearing foreign clothing as such. 30 The very many meanings that the symbol 'distance' covers have varying psychological associations; almost always, e. g. , a substantive idea that is presented as somehow 'removed' seems to function more impersonally. The individual reaction that results from close proximity and contact is thereby less intense, carries a less immediately subjective character, and can therefore be the same for a greater number of individuals. As the general concept that is supposed to encompass a number of individual beings is all the more abstract, i. e. , moves all the farther away from each individual one of them, and
30 Simmel seems to be alluding to Zephaniah 1. 8: "And on the day of the Lord's sacrifice--I will punish the officials and the king's sons and all who array themselves in foreign attire" (RSV translation)--Ed.
? conflict 293
? the more there are differences among them, so then a social point of unity, having a greater distance from the allying elements--and certainly in the spatial as well as in the figurative sense--appears specifically to exercise integrating and encompassing functions. Such a unification by a danger that, however, has more of a chronic than acute character, a struggle not settled but always latent, will be most effective where an ongoing unity of elements of somehow differing aspirations is in ques- tion. So it happened with the Achaean League, which I cited above; as Montesquieu comments: while calm and trust would generate glory and security for the monarchy, a republic would find it necessary to fear someone. 31 Obviously emotion is here the basis for the purported constellation: the monarchy as such certainly looks after the cohesion of potentially antagonistic elements; where these, however, have no one over them who coerces them into unity, but they possess relative sovereignty, then they will readily break apart if one of all the respec- tive dangers does not force them together--a danger that can hold up obviously not as a one-time conflict as such but only as an ongoing threat and guarantee an enduring structure.
While this is more a question of degree, the essential connection of the collectivity with hostility still needs perhaps supplementation as fol- lows. Conflictual undertakings are much more inclined than peaceable ones, from the time of their formation, to call upon as large a number as possible of members for collaboration, who, otherwise separated from one another, would not have begun the undertaking on their own initiative. With peaceable actions one tends as a whole to limit oneself to those also otherwise close associates; but for 'allies'--in itself an indif- ferent concept which has indeed received a warlike flavor in linguistic usage--often enough one takes elements with whom one has hardly anything in common, indeed, would not care to. It happens, first, that war, and not only the political one, often presents an emergency in which one cannot be choosy about the acquisition of additional helpers; second, that the objective of the action lies outside the field or other immediate peripheries of interest of one's allies, and they can thus, after a completed conflict, return again to their former distance; third, that gain through conflict does tend indeed to be a dangerous but at best a
31 Montesquieu's reference to the Greek confederacy that Simmel has in mind is probably that in the opening paragraphs of Book IX, Charles Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (New York: Hafner, 1949)--Ed.
? 294 chapter four
? particularly rapid and intensive one, and therefore exercises on certain temperaments a formal attraction, which peaceful undertakings must bring about only by their specific content; fourth, that the conflict ren- ders the truly personal unimportant among those fighting and thereby even allows the alliance of elements otherwise quite heterogeneous. Thereupon follows finally the motive, that hostilities themselves readily excite one another.
Certainly inside one and the same group, when it comes to a feud against another, all possible latent or half forgotten animosities among its individuals break out towards those in the other. And thus the war between two groups tends to arouse in a third every ill will and resentment towards one of them that would not have led to an outbreak but, now that another has paved the way, provoke the alignment with their action. It is entirely in this sense that, especially in earlier times, the unifying relationships of peoples were in general only those of war, while other relationships, such as commerce, hospitality, and intermarriage, still involved only a relationship among individuals that would make the agreement between the groups of people possible but would not on its own set them into motion.
When a historical development occurs in a continuous rhythmical change in periodical pairs, one achieving its own meaning equally and simply in relationship with the other and in antithesis to the develop- ment--then the unified picture that we form from such a process sel- dom repeats its objective harmony and the persisting plane on which its elements alternate with one another. Rather we almost unavoidably give the change in the development a kind of teleological accent, so that the one period is viewed always as the starting-point, objectively primary, from which the other develops, while the transition again from the latter to the former appears as a retrogression. The world process, e. g. , is then to be an eternal change of qualitative regularity of combined quantities of matter and of differentiated dispersion of the very same, and we would like to be convinced that one always emerges from the other, and then again the other from the one; however, as our categorical concepts function at this time, we hold, however, the condition of undifferentiation to be the first, i. e. , our need to explain strongly requires contrarily that multiplicity derive from the uniform, although it would be objectively perhaps more correct to accept neither as the first but rather as one eternal rhythm in which we stop at no calculated stages; rather, they have to always originate from an earlier, opposing one. It is similar with the principles of rest and movement. They alternate endlessly with one another just as much as in the sev-
conflict 295
? eral series of existence; but one tends to sense the state of rest as the original or even as the definitive, that which would need no derivation, so to speak. Thus while we examine two periods together, either the one always seems to be the explanatory one or the one being reduced to, and only in this rank-ordering do we believe we have grasped the meaning of their alternation: we are not satisfied with their mere alternation, as the phenomenon reveals it, and no element therein authorized as the primary and none as the secondary. Humanity is simply too much a differentiating, evaluating, and purposeful being for it not to subdivide the unbroken flow of alternating periods by such emphases, and would interpret them according to the form, as it were, of master and servant, or preparation and fulfillment, or intermediate states and definitive ones. And so it is with conflict and peace. In the after-one-another as well as in the next-to-one-another of societal life they inextricably intermingle in such a way that in every state of peace the conditions for the future fight are building, in every fight those for the future peace; should one trace backwards the succession of social developments under these categories, one is unable to stop anywhere; in the historical reality both states point continuously to the other. Nevertheless, we sense an inner difference of its phases in this succession: conflict appears as the temporary, whose purpose lies in peace and its contents. While the rhythm of these elements, objectively considered, proceeds fully equally on one plane, our valuation constructs from it, as it were, iambic verses, with war as thesis and peace as arsis. Thus in the oldest constitution of Rome the king must ask the citizenry their consent first if he wants to begin a war; but this consent is not required--it being presupposed as obvious--if it is a matter of concluding peace. This already suggests that the transition from conflict to peace will offer a more essential problem than the reverse. The latter requires actually no particular consideration; because the situations inside peace, from which the open conflict emerges, are themselves already conflict in dif- fuse, unnoticed, or latent form. Since, if, e. g. , the economic flourishing of the North American southern states before the Civil War, which they had by virtue of the slave economy in advance of the northern states, was also the reason for the war, it stands at rest in this way as long as no additional antagonism arises from it, but there exist only immanent conditions of one and the other realm, generally beyond the specific question of war and peace. In the moment, however, in which the inclination leading towards war approached it, this inclina- tion itself was simply already an accumulation of antagonisms: hateful
296 chapter four
? attitudes, newspaper polemics, frictions between private persons and, on the verge of war, mutually moralistic suspicions in realms outside the central point of contention. The end of peace thus is not marked by a unique sociological situation, but antagonism develops directly from all kinds of material relationships inside of peace, albeit not uniformly in its clearest or strongest form. Quite otherwise though in the reverse: peace does not likewise accumulate on strife; the conclusion of strife is a specific undertaking that belongs neither in the one nor in the other category, just as a bridge is something different from either of the banks that it connects. The sociology of conflict thus needs, at least as an appendix, an analysis of forms in which a conflict is ended and which present several specific patterns of interaction observed under no other circumstances.
There is probably no soul who would entirely deny the formal allure of conflict and that of peace, and since each of the two exists to some extent in every moment, the excitement of the newness of change between the two grows. It is only the rhythm of this alteration which is sought by the individual nature, which part of it is experienced as an arsis and which as a thesis, whether it evokes it on its own initiative or expects it from the developments of fate--only this distinguishes its individuality. The first motive of the end of strife, the need for peace, is therefore something much more substantive than the mere fatigue with the struggle; it is that rhythm that allows us now to long for peace, as well as for an entirely real situation that in no way means only the absence of conflict. Only, one must not understand the rhythm entirely mechanically. Admittedly it has been said that intimate relationships, such as love and friendship, required occasional differences in order to be reminded of the contrast with the estrangement endured before their great happiness; or in order to interrupt the closeness of the relationship, which simply has something obsessive, encompassing for the individual, by a departure that renders its oppressiveness imperceptible. It will not be the deepest relationships that require such a cycle; it will more likely be peculiar of rougher natures that demand bluntly stimulating differences and whose life moments favor the change into contrasts: it is the type of the rabble brawling one moment and amicable the next, that requires discord for the preservation of the relationship. The very deep and refined relationship will manage without an antagonistic interval and find its stimulating contrasts in the surrounding world, in the dissonances and animosities in the rest of existence that deliver
conflict 297
? sufficient background for the consciousness of its respite. However, to differentiate on the one hand the exhaustion of the powers that can place the requirement of peace unequivocally next to the ongoing desire to fight, on the other hand the diversion of interest from the strife by a greater interest in another object, belongs to the indirect motives for the desire for peace. The interest in another object produces various moral hypocrisies and self-deceptions: one pretends or believes to be burying the hatchet out of ideal interests in peace while in reality only having lost interest in the object of conflict and preferring to free up one's powers for other matters.
While the end of conflict in deeply grounded relationships comes about through their indivertible undercurrent coming to the surface again and smoothing out the counter-movements within it, entirely new nuances arise where the abolition of the object of dispute ends the antagonism. Every conflict that is not of an absolutely impersonal kind makes use of the available powers of the individual; it functions as a point of crystallization around which they are organized to a greater or lesser degree--internally repeating the form of core and auxiliary troops--and thereby provides the entire complex of the personality, once in conflict, its own peculiar structure. If the conflict ends in one of the usual ways--through victory and defeat, through reconciliation, through compromise--this mental structure is reconstructed back into that of the peaceful condition; the central point gives the engaged ener- gies its transformation from an excited state into a calm one. Instead of this organic, albeit endlessly multiply developing process of inner cessation of the conflictual movement, however, a wholly irrational and turbulent one often comes about if the object of conflict suddenly falls away, so that the whole activity is suspended, so to speak, in a void; this happens especially since our feelings are more conservative than our intellect, and thus their stimulation in no way ceases at the moment that the mind recognizes that their cause is no longer valid. Confusion and damage occur everywhere when mental activities that originated on account of a specific matter are suddenly deprived of it, so that they can no longer develop and find completion in a natural manner but sustain themselves groundlessly or grasp for a meaningless substitute object. So if chance or a higher power makes off with its goal while the dispute is in progress--a rivalry whose contested object decides for a third, a dispute over plunder that is in the meantime stolen by another, theoretical controversies whose problem a superior
298 chapter four
? mind suddenly solves so that both of the competing claims prove to be wrong--there is thus often still an empty continuation of conflict, an unfruitful mutual recrimination, a resurgence of earlier, long-buried dif- ferences; this is the lingering reverberation of conflict activity that must under these circumstances have its fling in some kind of quite senseless and tumultuous style before coming to rest. Most notably, this occurs perhaps in those cases where the object of dispute is recognized by both parties as illusory, not worth the fight. Here shame over the error often allows the conflict to continue for yet a long time, with a rootless and tiresome expenditure of energy, but with all the more bitterness towards the opponent who drives us to this Don Quixotism.
The simplest and most radical type of turning conflict into peace is victory--a quite unique phenomenon of life for which there are certainly countless individual forms and degrees--which, however, possesses a similarity with no other identified phenomenon that can otherwise occur among human beings. Out of the many varieties of victory that give the subsequent peace a particular quality, I mention only that which is brought about not exclusively through the overpowering of one party but at least partially by the acquiescence of the other. This surrender, declaring oneself defeated or submitting patiently to the victory of the other without having already exhausted all powers for resistance and possibilities, is not always a simple phenomenon. It can function as a certain ascetic tendency, the desire for self-abasement and self-sacrifice, not strong enough to surrender without a fight beforehand but emerging as soon as the mindset of the defeated begins to seize the soul, or even finding its most sublime allure for the antithesis of the still animated conflict mentality. Pressing one to the same conclusion, moreover, is the feeling that it is nobler to submit than to cling to the very last to the unlikely chance of a turnaround. To drop this chance and, at the price of one's own defeat, avoiding it in its complete unavoidability being demonstrated right up to the last--this has something of the great and noble style of human beings who are certain not only of their strength but also their weakness without having to be perceptibly assured of it again every time. Finally, in this voluntary act of self-declared defeat lies another final proof of the power of the subject who is at least capable of this last act; indeed, it has thereby actually given something to the victor. For this reason it is sometimes observed in personal conflicts that the submission of the one party before the other has yet actually achieved its goal by its own power, is experienced from this as a kind
conflict 299
? of affront--as though it were actually the weaker party to whom one submitted on some basis other than that it was necessary. 32
Ending a conflict through compromise stands in complete contrast to doing so through a victory. It is one of the most characteristic clas- sificatory kinds of conflicts whether they are by their nature amenable to a compromise or not. This is in no way only a matter of whether what is at stake forms an indivisible unity or whether it can be shared among the parties. With regard to certain objects, compromise through sharing is out of the question: between rivals for the favor of a woman, between prospective buyers for one and the same indivisible item for sale, also conflicts whose motives are hatred and revenge. Nevertheless conflicts over indivisible objects are still open to compromise when they are justifiable; so the actual prize of conflict can in fact fall only to the one, who, however, compensates the other for compliance with something else of value. Whether goods are fungible in this manner naturally does not depend on some objective equivalence between them but on the inclination of the parties to end the antagonism through concession and compensation. This chance ranges between the cases of pure stubbornness, on the one hand, in which the most rational and generous compensation, for which the party would otherwise gladly give up the contested object, is rejected only for the reason that it is offered precisely by the opponent--and the other, in which the party from the beginning seems attracted by the uniqueness of the contest prize, but then relinquishes it willingly to the other, compensated by an object whose ability to substitute for that remains often fully mysterious to any third party.
32 This belongs in the category of forms of relationships in which an indulgence is an offence. There are cases enough of politeness that are insults, gifts that humiliate, sympathetic sharing that functions as fresh importunity or increases the suffering of its victim, kindnesses by which the forced gratitude or the relationship established by them is more unpleasant than the deprivation remedied by them. That such sociological constellations are possible goes back to the frequent and deep discrepancy that exists between the objectively expressed contents of a situation or behavior, composed as a particular concept on the one hand, and its individual realization on the other, the latter of which it experiences as a mere element of one richly complicated totality of life. This is the formula for distinguishing whether one treats the ailment or the sick person, whether one punishes the offense or the offender, whether the teacher imparts educational material or educates the students. Thus some are objectively a good deed, according to its conceptual contents, while it can be the opposite as an individually experienced reality.
? 300 chapter four
? On the whole, compromise, particularly that brought about by fungibility, belonging for us so very much to the everyday and self-evi- dent life skills, is one of the greatest inventions of humanity. It is the impulse of the naturally human as well as that of the child to reach immediately for every pleasing object, no matter whether it is already in the possession of another. Robbery is--next to the gift--the near- est form of the exchange of possessions, and any such instance of it seldom occurs in primitive relationships without a fight. That this can now be avoided, in that one offers the possessor of the desired object another from one's own possessions and thereby converts the whole exchange finally then into one more trifling, as though one continues or begins the conflict--to realize that is the beginning of all cultivated economy, every higher trafficking of goods. Every exchange for a thing is a compromise--and indeed this is the poverty of things over against the merely psychological, in that their exchange always presupposes a giving away and a renunciation, while love and all the contents of the spirit can be exchanged without those who become richer being paid at the expense of others who become poorer. When it is reported of certain social circumstances that it counts as chivalrous to rob and to combat robbery, but counts exchange and purchase as undignified and base, then the compromising character of exchange functions for the purpose of converting the concession and renunciation into the antipole of all conflict and victory. Every exchange presupposes that valuations and interests have taken on an objective character. Then it is not the merely subjective passion of the desire which only conflict satisfies that is no longer decisive, but the recognized value of the object, acknowledged by both interests, which, materially unchanged, is expressible through various objects. The abandonment of the valued object because one preserves the quantity of value contained in it in another form is in its simplicity truly the wonderful means of settling matters between opposed interests other than through conflict. However, this certainly required a long historical development because it presupposes a psychological solution of the general emotional value from the individual object that is fused with it, an elevation above the self-interest in the immediate desire. The compromise through fungibility--of which exchange is a special case--means the essentially, albeit only very partially, realized possibility of avoiding conflict or putting it off till the very end before the mere power of the subject has decided it.
As a purely subjective proceeding reconciliation stands in contrast to the objective character that the resolution of conflict through compromise
conflict 301
? has. I mean here not the reconciliation that is the consequence of a compromise or some other settlement of the conflict, but the cause of these. Reconcilability is a primary attitude that, quite beyond objective reasons, seeks to end conflict, just as the desire to fight no less sustains it without objective cause. This entirely elementary and irrational ten- dency toward reconciliation is definitely in play in the countless cases where conflict concludes in other than the most merciless consequence of the relations of power. It is something different from weakness or graciousness, social morality or neighborly love. It does not even coincide with peaceableness. For the latter avoids conflict from the beginning or wages it when it is imposed, along with the ongoing undercurrent of the need for peace--whereas reconciliation in its full character often appears immediately after a total commitment to conflict. Most likely its social-psychological nature seems related to forgiveness, which also after all in no way presumes a laxity of reaction, an absence of the power of antagonism, but quite simply flashes up just after the deepest felt injustice and passionate conflict. For that reason there is something irrational in reconciliation as well as in forgiveness, something like a denial of what one was even just a moment ago. This mysterious rhythm of the soul, which lets the processes of this type be conditioned pre- cisely only by those contradicting it, is revealed perhaps most strongly in forgiveness, since it is indeed probably the single emotional process that we readily assume is subject to the will--for otherwise the plea for forgiveness would be senseless. A plea can move us to something only where the will has the power. My sparing the conquered enemy, my renouncing any revenge on my offender can conceivably occur after a request because it depends on my will; that I forgive them, however, i. e. that the feeling of antagonism, hatred, and separation would make space for another feeling--to be able to make the bare decision about that thus hardly seems at one's disposal, just as with feelings in gen- eral. In reality, though, it is otherwise, and there are seldom cases in which we are simply not able even with the best will to forgive. There is in forgiveness, if one seeks to feel it thoroughly down to its ultimate foundation, something rationally not exactly conceptual, and reconcilia- tion has shared in this quality to a certain extent as well, whereby both sociological processes then transform meaningfully into the mysticism of religion; they can do this because they, as sociological, already contain a mystically religious element.
Now the 'reconciled' relationship poses a special problem in its dif- ference from one that was never broken. This is not the relationship
302 chapter four
? touched on earlier, whose more internal rhythm swings in general between discord and reconciliation, but those that have suffered a true break and have accordingly gone together again as on a new basis. Few character traits are as distinguishable for relationships as whether they are increased or reduced in their intensity in that case. At least this is the alternative for all deeper and more sensitive natures; where a relationship, after it has experienced a radical break, comes to life again afterwards in exactly the same manner as if nothing had hap- pened, one can in general presume either a more frivolous or more coarsely grained attitude. The case mentioned as a pair is the least complicated: that an estrangement once it has happened may never be quite overcome, even not through the most earnest will of the parties, is readily understandable; where no remnant of the issue of conflict as such remained, no irreconcilability at all need be existent, but the mere fact that in general a break was once there is decisive. Often playing a part in this outcome in close relationships, which have at some time come to the point of a more extreme estrangement, is this: one has seen that one can in general get on without the other, that life, albeit not very happy, nevertheless simply goes on. This does not merely diminish the value of the relationship, but after the unity is again re-established the individuals are easily reproached by a kind of betrayal and infidelity that is not in any way to be made good and that interweaves into the re-developing relationship a dispiritedness and a mistrust of its individuals towards their own feelings.
Of course, self-deception often occurs here. The surprising relative ease with which one sometimes bears the breakup of a close relation- ship stems from the rage that we still possess from the catastrophe. It stirred up all manner of forces in us, the momentum of which still carries us for a time and keeps us going. But just as the death of a loved one also does not unfold in all its terrible severity in the first hour, since only the further passage of time provides all the situations in which the deceased was normally an element, we now have situa- tions to live through as though with a limb ripped from us and which no initial moment could comprehensively anticipate--thus a valuable relationship does not, so to speak, dissolve in the first moment of a separation in which rather the reasons for its dissolution dominate our consciousness; but we feel the bereavement every single hour, time and again, and so our emotions will often not be set aright for a long time, though in the first moment they seemed to bear it with a certain composure. For this reason the reconciliation of some relationships is
conflict 303
? also to an extent deeper and more passionate when the break existed a longer time. Likewise for the same reason, however, it is in general conceivable that the tempo of the reconciliation, of the 'forgive and forget,' is of greater significance for the further structural development of the relationship, and that those conclusions of strife do not really neutralize it unless the latent energies found some kind of actualization beforehand: only in the more open or at least more conscious situation are they actually imbued with the inclination for reconciliation. Just as one may not learn fast enough, if what is learned is to remain with us, so one may also not forget fast enough, if the forgetting is to develop its sociological significance fully.
That, in contrast, the measure of intensity of the reconciled rela- tionship exceeds that of the unbroken has various causes. Mainly a background is thereby created, from which all values and survivals of the union stand out more consciously and clearly. To this is brought the discretion with which one deals with every reference to past events, a new sensitivity, indeed, a new unexpressed togetherness in the rela- tionship. For in all respects the common avoidance of an all-too-sensi- tive point can mean likewise a great intimacy and self-understanding, as well as the lack of inhibition that transforms every object of the individuals' inner lives into an object of affirming togetherness; and finally: the intensity of the desire to protect the revived relationship before every shadow comes not only from the suffering experienced in the rupture, but above all from the consciousness that a second break might no longer be able to be healed in the manner the first was. For, in countless cases and at least among sensitive people, this would turn the whole relationship into a caricature. It can presumably, even in the most deeply grounded relationship, come to a tragic break and to a reconciliation; but this then belongs to the events that can occur only once and whose repetition robs them of all worth and seriousness. Because once the first repetition has occurred, then nothing speaks against a second and third, which would trivialize all the emotional shocks of the process and reduce it to a frivolous game. Perhaps this feeling that another rupture would be the definitive one--a feeling to which there is hardly an analogy with the first one--is for finer natures the strongest bond by which the reconciled relationship is distinguished from one that was never broken.
Precisely because of the deeper significance that the degree of recon- ciliation after the strife, on a par with the suffering inflicted on the one or the other side, has for the development of the relationship between
304 chapter four
? the persons, its negative extreme, irreconcilability, plays a part in this significance. It can also be, as can reconcilability, a formal attitude of the soul that indeed requires an external situation for its actualization but then comes in entirely spontaneously and not only as a consequence of different, intervening emotions. Both tendencies belong to the polar foundational elements whose blending constitutes all relationships between people. One hears it said occasionally, "Whoever could not forget, could also not forgive," that is to say, not fully reconcile. This would mean evidently the most terrible irreconcilability, for it makes the reconciliation dependent on the disappearance from consciousness of every cause for its opposite; as with all processes based on forgetting, it would also be in constant danger of being recalled. If the whole argument is to make sense, then, it runs in the opposite direction: where the reconcilability exists as a primary fact, it will be the reason that the discord and the suffering that the other caused one no longer arises in consciousness. Accordingly the actual irreconcilability also in no way consists in the consciousness now not being able to get over the past conflicts; this is in fact just a consequence. Irreconcilability means that through the conflict the soul has suffered a modification of its being that is no longer to be undone, comparable not so much to a wound that cannot be healed as to a limb that has been lost. This is the most tragic irreconcilability: neither an anger nor a reservation or secret defiance needs to remain in the soul and lay a definite barrier between the one and the other; it is simply that through the brawl of the conflict something in the soul has been killed that is not to be brought to life again, not even through characteristically passionate effort for it; here lies a point at which the powerlessness of the will over against the actual being of a human is glaringly obvious--in the strongest psychological contrast to the previously discussed type of for- giveness. While this is the form of irreconcilability of highly integrated and not just easily agitated natures, there exists one other, internally strongly differentiated: the image and the after-effect of the conflict and everything pertaining to it that one had thrown at the other remain in existence in consciousness and cannot be gotten over. However, around this though there now grows the undiminished love and devotion in which those memories and resignations function not as shortcomings but, like organic components, are fitted into the picture of the other, whom we love, as it were, inclusive of this liability in the balance of our whole relationship to that person--just as we nevertheless love a person even with all that person's faults, which we wish away perhaps,
conflict 305
? but cannot think away. The bitterness of the conflict, the points whereby the personality of the other has disappointed that bring an ongoing renunciation or an ever renewed irritation into the relationship--all this is unforgotten and actually unreconciled. However it is, as it were, localized, as a factor taken up into the whole relationship under whose central intensity it is not necessary to suffer.
It goes without saying that both of these phenomena of irreconcil- ability, which are obviously differentiated from what is usually called that, nevertheless include the whole scale even of the latter: the one allows the consequence of the conflict, fully released from its individual contents, to sink right into the center of the soul; it reshapes the per- sonality, in so far as it pertains to the other, at its deepest level. On the other hand, the psychological legacy of the discord is, as it were, isolated in the other, remaining a single element that can be taken up into the picture of the other, then to be embraced along with the whole personality. Between that worst and this lightest case of irreconcilability obviously there lies the whole manifold of degrees to which irreconcil- ability places peace even in the shadows of conflict.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE SECRET AND THE SECRET SOCIETY
All relationships of human beings obviously rest on their knowing something about one another. People in business know that their com- petitors want to buy as cheaply as possible and sell as high as possible; teachers know that they can expect a certain quality and quantity of educational content from the students; within any social class indi- viduals know roughly what level of education they have to presuppose on the part of one another--and obviously without such knowledge the actions between person and person touched on here would not be able to occur at all. In all relationships of a personally differenti- ated kind--as one can say with readily evident reservations--there develops an intensity and coloring to the degree to which every part reveals itself to the other through word and deed. How much error and mere prejudice may be hidden in all this knowledge is uncertain. Just as we gain, however, over against our perception of the external nature, alongside its deceptions and deficiencies, enough truth as is required for life and progress of our kind, so each knows the other with whom one has anything to do, in large part or as a whole cor- rectly enough that communication and relationship are possible. That one knows with whom one has something to do is the first condition for having something to do with someone at all; the usual reciprocal mental image in some long ongoing conversation or in the encounter on the same social level is, appearing so very much as an empty form, an apt symbol of that mutual knowledge that is an a priori of any rela- tionship. This is frequently concealed from consciousness because for an extraordinarily large number of relationships we need only know the rather typical tendencies and qualities mutually available, which, in their necessity, are usually only noticed when they are lacking at some point. It would merit a specialized investigation, which type and degree of mutual knowledge is required for the various relationships among people; how general psychological presuppositions, with which each approaches any other, interweave with the specific experiences about the individual before us; how in some realms mutual knowledge need not or is not permitted to be the same for both parties; how existing
308 chapter five
? relationships are determined in their development only by the increas- ing knowledge about the other on the part of both or just one; finally, contrariwise: how our objectively psychological image of the other is influenced by the real relationships of praxis and of disposition. The latter is by no means meant in the sense of misrepresentation. But in a fully legitimate way the theoretical idea of a particular individual is a different one, according to the standpoint from which it is grasped and which is given by the whole relationship of the knowing to the known. Because one can never know another absolutely--which would mean the knowledge of every individual thought and every attitude--because one forms for oneself in fact a personal unity of the other from the fragments in which the other is solely available to us, then the latter depends on that part of the other that our standpoint vis-a`-vis the other allows us to see. These differences, however, originate in no way only through such a reality as the quantity of knowledge. No psychological knowledge is a poor imitation of its object, but each is, just as those of the external character, dependent on the forms that the knowing mind brings with it and by which it appropriates the data. These forms, however, are highly individually differentiated where it is a matter of the knowledge of an individual about an individual; they do not lend themselves to scientific generalization and supra-subjective strength of conviction that is attainable regarding external nature and only typical mental processes. When A has a different idea of M than B possesses, then this need not in the least signify incompleteness or delusion, but as A is simply situated in relation to M according to A's essence and the general circumstances, this image of M is truth for A, likewise as for B with a substantially different one. It is by no means an issue of the objectively correct knowledge of M beyond both of them, by which they would be legitimated according to the degree of their agreement with it. The ideal of truth rather, which indeed the image of M in the conceptualization by A always only approaches asymptotically, is also as ideal different from that by B; it contains, as an integrating, shaping pre-condition, the mental characteristic of A and the particular rela- tionship in which A and M fall into with one another through their characters and their destinies. Every relationship between persons has a picture of the one arising in the other, and this operates obviously in interaction with the real relationship: while it creates the premises on which one's idea of the other serves as a catalyst for one thing or another and possesses a truth legitimized for this case, the real interac- tion of the individuals is based, on the other hand, on the image that
the secret and the secret society 309
? they acquire from one another. There is here one of the deeply based cycles of mental life, in which one element presupposes a second, now this one but now that one. While in narrower realms this is a fallacy that invalidates the whole, it is more generally and fundamentally the unavoidable expression of the unity to which both of the elements attend, and which cannot be expressed in our thought forms other than by the construction of the first on the second and simultaneously of the second on the first. Thus our relationships develop on the basis of a simultaneous knowledge of one another, and this knowledge on the basis of the actual relationships, both meshing together indissolubly and, through its alternation within the sociological interaction, dem- onstrating this as one point at which the being and the concept make their mysterious unity empirically evident.
Our knowledge of the whole being on which our actions are grounded is marked by characteristic limitations and diversions. That 'only in error is life, in knowledge is death' can in principle not be valid of course because a being enmeshed in ongoing errors would act progressively pointlessly and thus would definitely perish. 1 Nevertheless, in view of our random and deficient adaptations to our life circumstances, there is no doubt that we preserve only so much truth but also so much ignorance and acquire so much error as is useful for our practical action--going from the great, the cognitions transforming the life of humanity that nevertheless fail to materialize or remain disregarded unless the whole cultural situation makes these changes possible and useful, to the 'life story' of the individual, who so often has need of illusion about one's ability, indeed, about one's feelings of superstition with regard to the gods as well as people in order to preserve oneself in one's being and one's potential. 2 In this psychological sense error is coordinated with truth: the usefulness of the outer as well as the inner life ensures that we, from the one as well as from the other, have precisely that which forms the basis of activity necessary for us--naturally only in general and on the whole and with a wide latitude for fluctuation and imper- fect adaptation.
1 The statement 'only in error is life, in knowledge is death' translates nur der Irrtum das Leben, das Wissen der Tod ist, based on Friedrich Schiller's poem "Kassandra," which has the lines: Nur der Irrtum ist das Leben,/Und das Wissen ist der Tod--ed.
2 "Life story" translates Lebenslu? ge, literally 'life lies,' meaning basically a life of deception; it seems to be used here in the sense of the lies that make life bearable, but it could also be translated colloquially as 'life story,' thus making an ironic play on words--ed.
? 310 chapter five
? Now, however, there is inside the sphere of the objects for truth and illusion a certain portion in which both can take on a character that occurs nowhere else: the interior of the person before us, who can either intentionally reveal to us the truth about oneself or deceive us with a lie or concealment about it. No other object can explain itself to us or hide from us in this way as a person can, because no other modifies its behavior through consideration of its becoming known. This modifica- tion does not occur, of course, without exception: frequently the other person is to us basically just like another piece of nature that to our knowledge remains, as it were, silent. As far as expressions of the other are thus possible, and even such that are modified by no thought given to this use of them but are fully unguarded and immediate disclosures--a principal factor in the characterization of the individual through the individual's context becomes important. It has been declared a prob- lem, and the broadest conclusions then drawn from it, that our mental process, which proceeds purely naturally, would, however, in its content as well as always concurrently be in conformity with logical norms; it is in fact most remarkable that a mere event brought forth by natural causes goes on as though it were governed by the ideal laws of logic; for it is no different than as if a tree branch, bound with a telegraph apparatus so that its movements in the wind activate it, gave rise thereby to signals that produce for us an intelligible meaning. In view of this unique problem, which as a whole is not under discussion here, the one thing to be noted though is: our actual psychological processes are logi- cally regulated to a much lesser extent than it seems by its expressions. If one pays close attention to the concepts as they proceed in the course of time continually through our consciousness, then their flickering, their zigzag movements, the confusing whirl of objectively unintegrated images and ideas, their, as it were, merely tentative combinations not at all logically justifiable--all this is extremely remote from any kind of rational pattern; only, we are not frequently conscious of it because our pronounced interests lie in the 'as needed' part of our mental life, for we tend quickly to pass over and ignore its leaps, its irrationalities, and its chaos, in spite of the psychological reality of it all, in prefer- ence for the more-or-less logical or the otherwise valuable. So now all that which we share with another in words or perhaps in some other way, even the most subjective, the most impulsive, the most intimate, is a selection from the actual mental totality whose absolutely accurate disclosure in terms of content and sequence would bring any person--if a paradoxical expression is permitted--into the insane asylum. There
the secret and the secret society 311
? are fragments of our actual inner life, not only with regard to quantity, that we ourselves reveal to the nearest person alone; but these, too, are not a selection that represents that reality, as it were, pro rata, but a viewpoint of judgment, of value, of the relationship to the hearer, of regard for the other's understanding from encounters. We also like to say something that goes beyond the interjection and the minimal communication: we never thereby present directly and faithfully what is actually going on in us right then, but a teleologically directed, excluding, and recomposing conversion of the inner reality. With an instinct that automatically excludes the opposite, we show nobody the purely causally real course of our mental processes, wholly incoherent and irrational from the standpoint of logic, factuality, and meaningfulness, but always only an extract from them stylized by selection and arrangement; and there is no other interaction and no other society at all thinkable than that resting on this teleologically determined ignorance of one for the other. From this self-evident, a priori, as it were, absolute presupposition the relative differences are grasped that we know as sincere self-revela- tion and deceptive self-concealment.
Every lie, even if its object were of a factual nature, is by its inner essence a generation of error outside the lying subject, for it consists in the liar hiding from the other the true conception that is treated. That the one lied to has a false ideal about the matter does not exhaust the specific essence of the lie--it shares that with simple error--but rather what one will accept about the inner opinion of the lying person in a deception. Truthfulness and falsehood then are of the most far- ranging importance for the relationships of people with one another. Sociological structures differ most characteristically by the degree to which falsehood is at work in them. In the first place, falsehood is often more harmless for the existence of the group in very simple relationships than in complex ones. Primitive persons--living in small scale circles, meeting needs through their own production or direct cooperation, limiting intellectual interests to their own experiences or on-going tradi- tions--oversee and control the material of their existence more easily and more completely than people in a higher civilization. The innu- merable errors and superstitions in the life of the primitive person are admittedly destructive enough for that person, but not to the extent that their counterparts would be in advanced epochs because the praxis of one's life is established in the main on those few facts and relationships by which one's narrow face-to-face sphere allows one to acquire a correct point of view directly. With a richer and broader cultural life, on the
312 chapter five
? contrary, life stands on a thousand presuppositions the causes of which the individual cannot at all trace and verify, but which must be taken on faith. In a much wider range of things than one is in the habit of clarifying for oneself our modern existence--from the economy, which is becoming evermore an economy of credit, to scientific enterprise, in which the majority of researchers have to use the unlimited results of others they themselves cannot at all verify--rests on faith in the honesty of others. We erect our most important decisions on a complicated system of representations, most of which presuppose the confidence that we are not deceived. Thus the lie becomes in modern relations something much more devastating, putting the foundation of life into question much more than was the case in the past. If the lie were to appear to us today as so venial a sin as among the Greek gods, the Jewish patriarchs, or the South Sea Islanders, if the extreme sternness of the moral order were not acting as a deterrent of it, the structure of modern life, which is in a much broader than economic sense a 'credit economy,' would be absolutely impossible. This relationship of time is repeated in the distances of other dimensions.