No More Learning

The position remained vacant for a while until a certain Schwarz was called to fill it. Georg Simmel is said to have had an offer to teach in the United States that, probably because of World War I, did not materialize. Finally, in 1914, Simmel got a call to the University of Strassburg (now Strasbourg). As much as he may have been delighted to finally become a full professor, the farewell from Berlin must have been painful for him because he had become part of its cultural and scholarly life.
That Simmel now leaves the university where he had worked for thirty years not only means a loss for it, but also for himself. Such a personal, such an irreplaceable style of teaching as Simmel's has its audience, as in a theater, and one knows: the audience does not necessarily follow the stage director whom it holds in high esteem into a new house. (Ludwig 1914:413).
Simmel belonged to those who are not willing to accept artificially created forms of intellectual discipline as rituals. He made full use of the economic independence that he was fortunate to have, in order to remain intellectually independent as well. This is one of the keys towards understanding the admirable creativity and diversity that char- acterized his scholarly work up until his death. When he felt himself to be incurably ill, he asked his doctor: How long do I still have to live? He needed to know because his most important book still had to be finished. The doctor told him the truth and Simmel withdrew and completed Perspective on Life (Lebensanschauung). He confronted death like an ancient philosopher. "I await the Delian ship," he wrote to a friend. On September 26, 1918, he died from cancer of the liver in Strasbourg, where he had been appointed four years before. Death at this point in time was perhaps a blessing because many former Strasbourg professors fell into utter poverty shortly thereafter, when Alsace became French again (Gassen and Landmann 1958:13).
Following the already mentioned published dissertation about Kant, Simmel started his publishing activity in 1882 with an article in the Journal of Ethno-Psychology and Linguistics (Zeitschrift fu? r Vo? lkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft) under the title, "Psychological and Ethnological Studies about Music" (Simmel 1882). These are the rescued fragments of the dissertation that had been declined. The first book that he pub- lished after his dissertation appeared in 1890 under the title of "On Social Differentiation--Sociological and Psychological Studies (Simmel 1890).
introduction to the translation by horst j. helle 17
? The subtitle expressly signals the claim of presenting a contribution to sociology. Parts of chapter 5 of that book have become part of chapter 6 in this one, as Simmel acknowledges in a footnote here at the beginning of chapter 6.
The title of this translation--as of its original--is Sociology (Soziologie). The subtitle reads: Inquiries into the Construction of Social Forms. The Ger- man original is available in 2008 in two versions: a) the sixth edition as published 1983 by Duncker and Humblot in Berlin, the publisher who has the original copyright to much of Simmel's works, and b) volume 11 in the collected works of Georg Simmel (Gesamtausgabe in 24 Ba? nden) available at Suhrkamp publishers in Frankfurt, Main. The Suhrkamp cloth edition is sold out, but the paperback version can be ordered. There is an obvious interest in Simmel today, and this book has become a classic work that is read today as it was a century ago.
References
Becher, Heribert Josef. 1984. Georg Simmel in Strassburg. Sociologia internationalis 22(5):3-17.
Coser, Lewis. 1968. Georg Simmel's Style of Work: A Contribution to the Sociology of the Sociologist. American Journal of Sociology 63:635-41.
Gassen, Kurt, and Michael Landmann. 1958. Buch des Dankes an Georg Simmel: Briefe, Erinnerungen, Bibliographie. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Helle, Horst J. 2001. Georg Simmel: Introduction to his Theory and Method/Einfu? hrung in seine Theorie und Methode. Mu? nchen and Wien: R. Oldenbourg Verlag.
Ka? sler, Dirk. 1985. Hans Simmel--Zwei Briefe. Lebenslauf an Earle Eubank, 1938. Rekonstruktion einer Biographie aufgrund von Gespra? chen mit Arnold Simmel. In Dirk Ka? sler (ed. ) Soziologische Abenteuer. Earle Eubank besucht europa? ische Soziologen im Sommer 1934. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 182-89. [ET: Sociological Adventures: Earle Eubank's Visits with European Sociologists. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transac- tion, 1991]
Ludwig, Emil. 1914: Simmel auf dem Katheder. Die Schaubu? hne, 10(1):411-13.
Mead, George H. 1901: Book review: Philosophie des Geldes by Georg Simmel. Journal
of Political Economy 9:616-19.
Schnabel, P. -E. 1976. Georg Simmel. In Dirk Ka? sler (ed. ) Klassiker des soziologischen
Denkens. Mu? nchen: C. H. Beck, I, 267-311.
Simmel, Georg. 1881. Das Wesen der Materie nach Kants physischer Monadologie. Inaugural-
Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwu? rde von der Philosophischen Fakulta? t der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universita? t zu Berlin genehmigt und Freitag, den 25. Februar 1881 o? ffentlich verteidigt. Berlin.
----. 1882. Psychologische und ethnologische Studien u? ber Musik (Studies in psychol- ogy and cultural anthropology of music). Zeitschrift fu? r Vo? lkerpsychologie und Sprachwis- senschaft 13:261-305.
----. 1890. U? ber sociale Differenzierung--Sociologische und psychologische Unter- suchungen. Leipzig: Dunker & Humblot.
----. 1893. Moral Deficiencies as Determining Intellectual Functions. Short Excerpt from Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft. International Journal of Ethics 3:490-507.
18 introduction to the translation by horst j. helle
? ----. 1894. Das Problem der Soziologie. Jahrbuch fu? r Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volk- swirtschaft im Deutschen Reich 18:272-77, 1301-07.
----. 1895. The Problem of Sociology. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 6(3):412-23.
----. 1907. Philosophie des Geldes. 2nd edition (1st edition 1900). Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. [ET: The Philosophy of Money, 3rd enlarged edition, ed. David Frisby, tr. Tom Bottomore and David Frisby. London and New York: Routledge, 2004]
----. 1908. Soziologie. Untersuchungen u? ber die Formen der Vergesellschaftung (Sociology. Inquiries into the forms of socialization). Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot.
----. 1931. Soziologische Vorlesungen von Georg Simmel--Gehalten an der Universita? t Berlin im Wintersemester 1899 (Nachschrift von Robert E. Park). Chicago: Society for Social Research, University of Chicago 1931, 1, 1, 53 pages.
----. 1950. The Sociology of Georg Simmel, tr. , ed. Kurt H. Wolff. New York: Free Press. ----. 1955. Conflict--The Web of Group-Affiliations, tr. Kurt H. Wolff--tr. Reinhard
Bendix. Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press.
----1983a [1892]. Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft. (Introduction to Moral Science).
Vol. I. Aalen: Scientia.
----. 1983b [1892]. Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft. (Introduction to Moral Science).
Vol. II Aalen: Scientia.
----. 1989. Gesammelte Schriften zur Religionssoziologie. Berlin: Dunker & Humblot. ----. 1997. Essays on Religion, ed. , tr. Horst J. Helle and Ludwig Nieder. New Haven
and London: Yale University Press.
Tenbruck Friedrich. 1958. Georg Simmel 1858-1918. Ko? lner Zeitschrift fu? r Soziologie und
Sozialpsychologie 10:587-614.
Thomas, William I. 1923. The Unadjusted Girl--with cases and standpoint for behavior analysis.
Boston: Little Brown & Company.
CHAPTER ONE
THE PROBLEM OF SOCIOLOGY
If it is correct that human knowledge developed from practical necessity and that knowing how to keep safe is a weapon in the struggle for exis- tence against nature and in the competition of people with each other, it is no longer tied up with this origin. From being a mere means to a goal of action it has become an ultimate goal in itself. Yet knowledge, even under the self-governing form of science, has not broken off the relationship with practical interests altogether, even though it no longer appears entirely as an outcome of the latter but as interactions of the two, each with its own autonomous claims. Because scientific knowledge offers, in technology, not only the realization of extrinsic purposes but is also directed to the theoretical need for insight into the practical purposes, sometimes new directions of thought turn up that nevertheless touch upon problematics and forms of intellectuality, out of interests in a new sensitivity and desire only for their purely abstract character. So these are the claims that the science of sociology is concerned to raise: the theoretical pursuit and reflection on the practical power that the masses have acquired in the nineteenth century against the interests of individuals. However, the import and concern that the lower classes have caused the higher is scarcely conveyed in the concept, "society. " It is still true that the social distance between the classes does not allow their members to be seen as individuals but as a unified mass, and that this distance does not leave the two bound together in any other fun- damental way than that together they comprise "a society. " While the significance of classes lies not in their ostensive separate importance but in their comprising a "society," theoretical consciousness--as a result of the practical balance of power--at once took up as true the idea that every individual phenomenon is mainly determined through immea- surably immense influences from its social environment. And this idea obtained, so to speak, a retrospective power: next to the present society the past appeared as the substance that shaped individual existence, like waves in the sea. Here ground was gained in that the specific forms of these forces alone shaping individuals became explainable to them. This line of thought lent support to modern relativism, the tendency
20 chapter one
?
to dissolve the distinct and essential into interworkings; the individual became only the location where social threads link, the personality only the particular way in which this occurs. Since we have been brought to the conscious awareness that every human act takes place inside society and nothing can evade its influence, so everything that was not the science of external nature must be the science of society. It appears as the all encompassing domain in which ethics as well as cultural his- tory, political economy as well as religious studies, aesthetics as well as demography, politics as well as ethnology are gathered together because the objects of these sciences take form in the compass of society. So the science of humanity would be the science of society. Contributing to this picture of sociology as the science of everything human was that it was a new science and consequently going into every possible problem not otherwise firmly fixed--just as a newly developing field typically becomes the El Dorado of homeless and itinerant beings; the inevitably vague and indefensible boundaries at the beginning grant everyone the right to accommodations. On closer inspection, throwing together all these former areas of study produces nothing new. It means only that the historical, psychological, and normative sciences are thrown into a large pot and the label 'sociology' tacked on. With that, only a new name would have been obtained, while everything that it treats is already fixed in its contents and relations, or produced inside the former domains of research. The fact that human thought and action occur in and are shaped by society makes sociology no more the all encompassing science of it than one can make chemistry, botany and astronomy the contents of psychology, because their topics are in the end only in human consciousness and subject to its requirements.
To be sure a misunderstood but in itself very significant fact underlies that error. The insight that the human being may be defined in all its essence and manifestations as living in interaction with other human beings simply must lead to a new manner of consideration in all the so called cultural sciences. It is no longer possible to explain historical facts in the widest sense of the word, the content of culture, the varieties of knowledge, and the norms of morality in terms of the individual, indi- vidual intellect, and individual interest, or where this does not work, to seize immediately upon metaphysical or magical accounts. With regard to language, for example, one no longer stands before the alternatives that it was invented by an individual genius or given by God; no longer need one split it up, to use religious images, between the invention of the clever priest and direct revelation and so forth. Rather, we now
the problem of sociology 21
? believe that we understand historical phenomena from the interaction and the cooperation of individuals, from the accumulation and sub- limation of countless individual contributions, from the embodiment of social energies in structures that stand and develop outside of the individual. Sociology therefore, in its relationship to the older sciences, is a new method, an aid in research for grappling with phenomena from all those fields in a new way. However, it does not operate essentially differently than induction at present; and induction has penetrated into all possible sciences as a new research principle, acclimatized, as it were, in each one of them, and introducing new solutions to longstanding problems. At the same time, though, sociology is no more a unique or all-embracing science than induction. Insofar as it depends on having to understand humans as social beings and society as the vehicle of historical events, it embraces no object that is not already dealt with in one of the previously existing sciences. Rather it is only a new avenue for all of them, a method of science that, due to its applicability to almost all problems, is not a separate science that stands by itself.
But what could its unique and new object be? What inquiry makes sociology an independent and demarcated science? It is obvious that its discovery as a new science does not depend for its legitimacy on objects unknown till now. Everything that we simply call an object is a complex of determinants and relationships, each of which reveals multiple facets, any of which can become an object of a special sci- ence. Every science is based on an abstraction for comprehending the entirety of something, an entirety we cannot grasp with a science lim- ited to just one aspect of its perspective or one of its concepts. Every science develops through splitting up the totality of things or its matter of inquiry into individual qualities and functions, after which an idea is found that allows the latter to blend in and as they occur allows the selected qualities and functions to be fixed to real things with method- ological coherence. So, for example, the linguistic facts, which are now connected as the material of comparative linguistics, had long existed among scientifically treated phenomena; however, that special science originated with the discovery of the concept under which what were formerly disconnected as separate speech complexes were grouped and subjected to specific laws. Similarly sociology as a specialized science can find its unique object, insofar as it simply draws a new line through facts which are well known as such but for which a concept would not be ready until now. It makes the cluster of facts that fall on that line into a common and cognitively patterned methodological-scientific unit.
22 chapter one
? Over against the most complicated, disorganized, and not scientifically ordered facts of historical society, the concepts of politics, the economy, culture, etc. produce that kind of organized knowledge, whether by linking certain portions of those facts, some more valuable than others, to unique historical developments or by identifying groups of elements that necessarily bring together both the historically unique and the timeless. Now there shall be a sociology as a distinctive science whose job it is to subject the concept of society as such--beyond the superficial collection of facts, to the social-historical results of a new abstraction and ordering, in such a way that certain determinants, formerly noted only in other varied connections, are seen as cohering and therefore as objects of one science.
This perspective comes to light by way of an analysis of the concept of society that one can describe as differentiating between the form and content of society, while emphasizing that this is really only an analogy for purposes of making a contrast between distinct neighbor- ing elements. This distinction will have to be understood in its unique meaning without prejudging the specific meaning of this preliminary label. I start, then, with the broadest image of society to avoid the fight over definitions: That is, a society exists where several individuals enter into interaction. This interaction always originates from specific impulses within or for the sake of specific purposes. Erotic, religious, or purely social impulses, purposes of defense from attack, the play of commerce, the need for assistance from instruction, and countless other purposes bring it about that human beings enter into fellowship--cor- relating their affairs with one another in activity for one another, with one another, against one another, activity that both affects them and feels the effects of them. These interactions indicate precisely that the individuals bearing these motivating drives and purposes become a unity, indeed a 'society. ' Then unity in an empirical sense is nothing other than the interaction of elements; an organic body is a unity because its organs are in a closer interchange of their energies than with any outside entity. A state is one, because the corresponding relationship of mutual interworkings exists among its citizens; indeed we could not call the world one if every part did not somehow influence every other, if anywhere the always actively mediating reciprocity of interworkings were severed. That unity or social interaction can have very different degrees, depending on the kind and closeness of the interaction--from the casual meeting, to a walk to visit the family, from all 'terminated' associations to membership in a state, from the transient society of hotel
the problem of sociology 23
? guests to the intimate bond of a medieval guild. I am describing now everything that exists in individuals, the immediate concrete locus of every historical reality--such as impulse, interest, purpose, predisposi- tion, psychological state, and incitement in such a way as to say that on account of them people affect one another and are in turn affected. I call them the content, the stuff, so to speak, of social interaction. In and of itself this stuff, of which life is full, the motives that drive it, are not quite social. Neither hunger nor love, neither work nor religiosity, neither technology nor the functions and products of intelligence yet mean social interaction in the simple and pure sense given to the term; rather they only shape it, in that they structure the isolated individuals in proximity into definite forms of association and mutuality that belong under the general idea of interaction. Social interaction is also the process, materialized in countless separate forms, in which individuals for these reasons--sentient or ideal, momentary or lasting, conscious or unconscious, causally driven or propelled teleologically--come together as a unity in which these interests are realized.
In every existing social phenomenon, content and social form con- struct a united reality; a social form can no more exist disconnected from content as can a spatial form exist without some material, the form of which it is. Rather, these are in reality inseparable elements of each social being and process: an interest, goal, motive, and a form or kind of interaction among individuals, through which or in which a Gestalt of the content attains social reality.
Now what 'society,' in every currently valid sense of the word, plainly makes into society, are manifestly the above-mentioned kinds of interac- tion. Some number of people would not be a society, simply on account of each harboring some factually determined or individually motivating life content; but if the vitality of this content attains the form of mutual influence, when one person affects another--directly or through an intervening third party--only then has the purely spatial proximity or even temporal succession of people become a society. Should there thus be a science, whose object is society and nothing else, it would inquire only into these interworkings, these kinds and forms of social interac- tion. Thus anything else that is also found under 'society,' anything realized through it and in its context, is not society as such. It would only be some content that accompanies this form or which this form of coexistence engenders along with that structure we call 'society' in the wider and usual sense. That both of these, inseparable in reality, are separated in scientific abstraction, that the forms of interchange
24 chapter one
? or social interaction, conceptually stripped of the contents by which exclusively they become social, are combined and subordinated to a methodologically standardized scientific perspective--this seems to me the singular and complete possibility for justifying a specific science of society as such. With this the facts that we point to as the socio-his- torical reality would first be actually sketched out at the level of the purely social.
Now such abstractions alone might manage to make a science out of the complexity as well as unity of reality, indeed may even be demanded by the internal requirements of cognition. Some legitimation for it must lie in the structure of objectivity itself, because only in some functional connection to factuality can there be protection against unfruitful ques- tions, against haphazard scientific conceptualization. It is an error for a nai? ve naturalism to allow mere data to comprise analytical or synthetic formations through which they become the content of science, so that there are analyses it actually has more or less conformed to those for- mations (something like a portrait fundamentally altering the natural human appearance and therefore having a greater chance than another for an entirely alien image); whereof then the better or worse warrant for those scientific problems and methods can be gauged. So now the rule that will apply an analysis by forms and contents to socio-historical phenomena and bring those phenomena to a synthesis rests upon two stipulations that can only be verified factually: It must be found on the one hand that the same form of social interaction occurs with wholly different contents for altogether different ends, and conversely that the same substantive interest is clothed in wholly different forms of social interaction as its vehicle or types of fulfillment--just as the same geo- metrical forms are found in different materials and the same material takes on different spatial forms, or just like the corresponding fit between the forms of logic and the contents of cognition.
Both, however, are undeniable as fact. We therefore find in social groups, with the most varied purposes and significance conceivable, the same formal patterns of behavior among individuals. Domination and subordination, competition, imitation, division of labor, factional- ism, representation, the reciprocal nature of inclusion and exclusion, and countless others are found in a political organization as well as a religious community, in a conspiratorial band as well as a business, in an art school as well as a family. As multiple as are the interests for which these social interactions come about, the forms by which they are achieved can still be the same. And conversely, substantively similar
the problem of sociology 25
? interests can exhibit very differently formed social interactions, e. g. eco- nomic interests are realized as much through competition as through the systematic organization of manufacturers, as readily through agreements against other economic classes as through agreements with them. The contents of religious life, with invariably identical contents, require at one time a free form of community and at another time a centralized one. The interests on which the relationships between the sexes is based are satisfied in a hardly comprehensible multiplicity of family forms. Pedagogical interests lead now to a liberal, now to a despotic relational form between the teacher and the single student, now to more collec- tivistic ones between the former and the entire population of students. Just as there can be identical forms in which are found the most diverse contents, so can the matter persist while the association of individu- als sustaining it moves inside a diversity of forms. Thus while in their reality facts make matter and form an indissoluble unity of social life, they still lend a legitimation to sociological problems that require the identification, systematic organization, psychological grounding, and historical development of pure forms of social interaction.
This problem directly contradicts the method that the previous indi- vidual social sciences had created because their division of labor was determined entirely by the diversity of contents. Political economy, the typology of church organizations, the history of educational systems, ethics, politics, theories of sexual life etc. have divided up the field of social phenomena among themselves, so that a sociology--that wanted to comprehend, with its construct of form and content, the totality of these phenomena--could result in nothing other than a combination of those areas of study. As long as the lines we draw through historical reality to separate it into distinct fields of research join only those points that highlight content interests, no area is conceded to a particular sociology. Rather a line is needed that cuts through everything previ- ously drawn and constitutes as a specific field the pure facts of social interaction, according to their multiple configurations and detaching them from their connection with various contents. In that way it will have become specialized science in the same sense that epistemology became one--with all the obvious differences of methods and results--in that it abstracted categories or functions of cognition from the mul- tiple perceptions of individual things. Sociology belongs to that type of science whose special character is not that its object clusters with others under a broader concept (in the manner of classical and Ger- man philology, or optics and acoustics), but rather places a whole field
26 chapter one
? of objects under a particular perspective. Not its object but its way of looking, especially by carrying out its abstraction, distinguishes it from the customary historical-social sciences.
The idea of society, for purposes of scientific treatment, covers two strictly differentiated meanings. It is first the complex of interacting individuals, the socially formed human matter, as that constitutes the entire historical reality. Then, however, 'society' is also the sum of indi- vidual forms of relationship by which individuals are able to become a society in the first sense. So one might at first call a distinctly formed material a 'sphere,' but the pure Gestalt or form in a mathematical sense enables such mere material to become a sphere in a first sense. When one speaks of social sciences according to that earlier meaning, their object is everything that occurs in and with society. Social science in a second sense has forces, relationships, and forms as its subject matter, through which people socialize, things that, viewed separately, constitute 'society' in the strict sense--which obviously is not altered by circumstance, so that the content of social interaction, the specific modifications of its substantive purpose and interest, is distinguished often or always from its particular form. Here the objection would be wholly false that all these forms--hierarchies, corporations, competi- tions, forms of marriage, friendships, social customs, rule by one, and rule by many--would only be constellation-like incidents in existing societies: were a society not already present, the prerequisites and the opportunity for allowing such forms to come about would be lacking. The suggestion thus arises that in every society known to us a great number of such associations are at work--i. e. , forms of social inter- action. If then one form ceases to exist, 'society' would still be there so that certainly it can appear in every particular one; the form would arise in a society already preparing or producing such a phenomenon. However, were one to remove all of them, no society would remain. Not until such interrelations are generated on account of certain motives and interests does society emerge. So then it remains that the concern of social science in the widest sense is the history and laws of such a developing comprehensive picture. Because this is broken up among the individual social sciences, left to sociology is the specific task of considering the abstracted forms that do not so much generate social interaction but rather are social interaction. Society in a sense that sociology can use is, then, either the overall abstract concept for these forms, the genus of which they are species, or the actual momentary summation of the same. Further, it follows from this idea that a given
the problem of sociology 27
? quantity of individuals can be a society in greater or lesser degrees. With every new awakening of emergent formations, every construction of factions, every coalescence in a mutual work or shared feeling and thought, every sharper division of serving and ruling, every shared meal time, and every adorning oneself for others, even the same group becomes more 'society' than it was before. There is simply never a society of the type that forms on the basis of any single associative paradigm because there is no such thing as interaction per se. There are only specific types, with whose emergence society simply is, and which are neither the cause nor consequence of it; rather they them- selves are it instantly. Only the boundless profusion and diversity that are operative at every moment have given the general concept society an apparently independent historical reality. Perhaps the reason for the characteristic vagueness and uncertainty that adhere to the concept and former treatments of general sociology lies in this hypostasizing of a pure abstraction--just as the concept of life did not progress well so long as science regarded it as a unitary phenomenon of actual reality. Only inasmuch as the discrete processes inside organisms, whose sum- mation or interweaving life is, were analyzed, only inasmuch as it was recognized that life exists only in these specific activities and between organs and cells, did the life sciences acquire a firm foundation.
It is first necessary to find out in society what 'society' actually is, just as geometry determines in spatial things what spatiality actually is. Sociology, as the science of human social existence, which can still be the object of scientific study in countless other respects, thus stands in relation to the specialized disciplines as geometry stands in relation to the physical-chemical sciences of matter. Geometry considers the form through which matter becomes empirical bodies at all--form, which of course exists as such only in the abstract, just as do the forms of social interaction. Both geometry and sociology leave to other disciplines the study of the contents that are present in their forms; even the study of the totality of phenomena, whose pure form are their concern, is left to the others. It is hardly necessary to mention that this analogy with geometry does not apply more broadly than its purpose here of attempting to clarify the fundamental problems of sociology. Above all geometry has the advantage of finding in its field extremely simple pat- terns to which complicated figures can be reduced; hence it constructs the whole range of possible formations from a relatively few postulates. In contrast, even a mere approximate reduction into simple elements is not to be expected for the forms of social interaction in the foreseeable
28 chapter one
? future. The result is that sociological forms, even if tolerably accurate, are valid for only a relatively small range of phenomena. Thus if one says, for example, that domination and subordination are a formation found in almost every human social interaction, little is gained by this general acknowledgement. It is necessary, rather, to focus inquiry on the individual types of superior-subordinate relations, on the specific forms of their realization, which now, with some certainty, lose their accuracy at the periphery of their validity.
These alternatives are proposed for any science: either it is to lead to the discovery of timelessly valid laws or to the representation and conceptualization of time-specific historically real developments. In any case, though, one does not exclude the countless cases in empirical scientific undertakings that stand between these two types; so the prob- lematic identified here of a necessity to decide between them is not dealt with at the outset. The object abstracted out from reality allows these empirical manifestations to be observed on the one hand in the law-like regularities that, located entirely within the factual structure of elements, apply irrespective of their temporal-spatial realization; they are effective precisely in that they enable historical developments to operate one time or a thousand. On the other hand, however, those same forms of social interaction can be observed, with their now and then occurrences as well as with their historical development in definite groups in mind. In the latter instances their identification would basically be historical narrative for its own sake, and in the former instances induction material for the discovery of timeless law-like regularities. We learn about competition, for example, from countless instances telling us about it in very differ- ent domains--politics, political economy, history of religions, art. It is now a matter of establishing from these facts what competition as a pure form of human relationships means, under what circumstances it arises, how it develops, what modifications it undergoes with differ- ent kinds of objects of competition, by what concurrent formal and material regulations of a society it is inspired or reduced, how compe- tition between individuals differs from that between groups--in short, what it is as a form of interaction among humankind that can absorb all possible contents, but by the uniformity of its appearance, despite great differences in content, shows that it belongs to a well-ordered and abstractly justified field following its own laws. The uniform is lifted from the complex manifestations like a cross-section; the dissimilar in them--here, that is, the substantive interests--is set in their competitive opposition. It is also suitable to deal with all the great relationships and
the problem of sociology 29
? interactions that form societies: factionalism; imitation; the formation of classes, circles, and secondary divisions; the embodiment of social interaction in separate structures of a factual, personal, and ideational kind; the growth and role of hierarchy; delegated representation; and the importance of a common opponent for the inner cohesion of a group. Then such chief problems are joined to the same specific form of groups manifesting on the one hand features peculiar to the form and on the other hand complicated features--these, for example: the meaning of the "impartial," the "poor" as organic members of societies, the numerical determination of group processes, the primus inter pares, and the tertius gaudens. To mention even more complex processes: the intersection of various circles in individual personalities; the distinct importance of the "secret" in the formation of circles; the modification of group characteristics, incorporating detached individuals, whether through locally coalescing factors or factors not attributable to them; and countless others.
I leave open, as indicated above, the question of whether absolutely identical forms with diverse contents appear. The near similarity that they manifest under multitudinous material--likewise with the contrary--suffices to regard this as possible in principle. That it is not entirely realized simply shows the difference of the historical-mental event, with its never fully rationalizable fluctuations and complexities, from the capacity of geometry to free its concept of compliant shapes with absolute clarity from their realization in matter. One also keeps in mind that this uniformity in the nature of interaction, with the arbitrary distinction between human and material things, is first of all only a means to carry out and legitimate for all individual phenomena the scientific distinction between form and content. Methodologically, this would be required even if the actual constellations do not lend them- selves to that inductive practice that allows the same to be crystallized out of the difference, in the same way as the geometrical abstraction of the spatial form of a body is also justified, even if this body were to be formed this way in the world only one time. That there is a dif- ficulty in practice here is obvious. There is, for example, the fact that towards the end of the Middle Ages certain craft masters, because of the expansion of business networks for the supply of materials, were pressed to abandon journeymen and to use new means to attract customers, all of which was inconsistent with the old craft principles whereby each master was supposed to receive the same 'nutrition' as the others, and for that reason sought to place themselves outside earlier
30 chapter one
? narrow associations. Concerning the pure sociological form abstracted from a specific content, it is important to consider that the widening of the circle to which an individual's action binds him goes hand in hand with a stronger accentuation of personal distinctiveness, greater freedom, and the mutual differentiation of individuals. But as far as I can tell, there is no sure effective method to extract this sociological meaning from that complex content-determined fact. Which sheer socio- logical configuration, which particular interrelationship of individuals is included in the historical event when abstracting from individuals with all their interests and impulses and from the conditions of purely factual behavior--well, it is possible to interpret the historical facts in a variety of ways, and one can refer to the historical facts that occupy the reality of definite sociological forms only in their material totality, and devoid of the means, by hook or crook render teachable its break- down from the material and form-sociological point of view. This is the case with the proof of a geometrical theorem by the unavoidably haphazard and crudely sketched figure. The mathematician, however, can still recognize that the concept of the ideal geometrical figure is known and effective and is viewed now wholly internally as essentially the meaning of the chalk or ink lines. However in sociology the com- parable assumption should not be made; we cannot logically force a solution for the problem of what, out of the whole complex phenom- enon, is pure interaction.
Here one must accept the odium of speaking of intuitive prac- tice--though well apart from speculative-metaphysical intuition--about a specific angle of vision with which that distinction is realized and by which we can be guided, albeit only by demonstration with examples, until some later time when we will have conceptualized fully expressive and reliably guiding methods. And that raises the difficulty that not only is there no indubitable handle for the implementation of this sociologi- cally foundational idea, but also that even where it functions tolerably well, in many instances the aligning of events under it or under the perception of certainty with regard to contents still often remains arbi- trary. Inasmuch, for example, that the phenomenon of the 'poor' is a sociological type, a result of relational forms within a group, occasioned by general currents and movements, it is necessarily generated when people congregate. Or poverty can be viewed as the material outcome of certain idiosyncratic human characteristics, or exclusively from the viewpoint of substantive economic interests. Opposite opinions about it will be possible. On the whole one can view historical phenomena from
the problem of sociology 31
? three principal perspectives: that of individual beings, who are the real carriers of situations; that of the technical forms of interaction, which are executed certainly only by individual beings but are not considered just from the standpoint of individuals but of their togetherness, their with-one-another and for-one-another; and that of the conceptually definable content of situations and events, in which case one does not inquire about their bearers or their relationships but their purely factual meaning, the economy and technology, art and science, legal norms and products of the emotional life. These three perspectives continuously intertwine with one another. The methodological necessity to keep them apart is always confronted by the difficulty of arranging each one in a track independent of the others, and by the desire for a single view of reality encompassing all standpoints. And however deeply one leads back into the other, grounding and being grounded, it will never be able to get a fix on all cases, and for that reason, in spite of all the methodological clarity and crispness of the principal formulation, the ambiguity is hardly avoidable that the treatment of an individual problem seems to belong now to one, now to the other category and is itself never clearly within one or the other way of treating it. In the end, I hope that the methodology of the sociology proposed here will emerge more definitely and even perhaps more clearly through the exposition of its individual problems than through this abstract outline. It is certainly not altogether uncommon in intel- lectual matters--indeed, in the broadest and deepest problem areas, rather widespread--that anything we must refer to with the unavoid- able metaphor foundation is not as fixed as the superstructure erected upon it. So the practice of science, especially in fields yet undeveloped, will not be able to do without a certain measure of instinctive activity, the motives and norms of which will only later acquire a fully clear awareness and conceptual development. And yet so little is it permitted for scientific practice to ever give itself over to those vague instinctual methods of procedure, intuitively applied only in the single inquiry, that it is still in order to condemn them to unfruitfulness if one should wish to make still early steps into a completely formulated method for treating new problems. 1
1 We are considering in only a rough way the endless complexity of social life that gives rise to ideas and methods for mastering it intellectually. So it would be mega- lomania right now to hope and want to reach for fundamental clarity of questions and certitude of answers. It seems to me worthy to admit this right up front since in
? 32 chapter one
? Within the problem area that is constructed by selecting out the forms of social interaction from the whole manifestation of society, portions of research offered here yet remain that are, so to speak, quantitatively beyond the tasks that are recognized as sociological. That is to say one inquires at first into the back-and-forth influences among individuals, the sum of which produces society's cohesion, so that a progression is revealed at once, indeed a world, as it were, of such forms of relationship that were either not included at all in previous social science or without insight into their primary and vital meaning. On the whole sociology has been limited in fact to social phenomena in which the interactive forces are already crystallized out from their immediate bearers, at least as idea-units. States, manufacturers' associations, clergy, forms of family, economic conditions, military affairs, corporations, brotherhoods, depic- tions of class, and division of industrial labor--these and similar large agencies and systems appear to comprise society and fill in the sphere of its science. It is obvious that the larger, more important, and more dominant a province of social interest with its course of action is, the sooner will an objective expression, an abstract existence beyond the individual and primary process, emerge from immediate inter-individual life-and-work. But now one to two further important points need to be added. In addition to its comprehensive and outwardly important imposing phenomena, visible at a distance, it is made up of innumer- able apparently small forms of relationship and types of interaction among people (negligible in the single case), but which are presented to an inestimable degree by these single cases, and insofar as they are
this way at least a resolute beginning can be made instead of making a claim to a finality, the meaning of which would be doubtful in any case in this sort of venture. So the chapters of this book are thought of as examples with regard to method, as fragments with regard to contents, which I must consider for the science of society. In both respects it seemed in order to choose the most heterogeneous themes possible, mixing the general and specialized. The less the present offering here is rounded off to a systematic coherence, the further will the parts lie from one another around such an apparently all-encompassing circle, in which a future perfection of sociology will unite its isolated and unanchored points. Since I am myself thus emphasizing the wholly fragmentary and incomplete character of this book, I will not defend myself against criticisms of that with a preventative apologia. So if for certain the selection of a single problem and exemplification will appear to fall short of the ideal of an objective thoroughness, this would only show that I have not made the basic ideas understood clearly enough. Such clarity will only be possible after setting out and turning down a very long road, and every systematically concluded completeness would be minimally a self-deception. Integrity can be attained here by someone only in the subjective sense that one shares everything one manages to see.
? the problem of sociology 33
? in motion among the comprehensive and, so to speak, official social forms, they bring about indeed nothing less than society as we know it. Limiting sociology to the official social formations resembles the earlier science of the interior of human bodies, which fixed upon describing the large organs--heart, liver, lung, stomach, etc. , but missed and neglected the uncounted, the not popularly known, or those whose purposes were unknown. Without them, the more obvious organs would never produce a living body. The actually experienced existing life of society cannot be pieced together from the structures of the aforementioned type, those that make up the conventional objects of social science. Without the effects of the countless interworkings in individual small widespread syntheses, to which these inquires should be for the most part devoted, it would be fragmented into a multiplicity of discontinuous systems. What the scientific establishment of such unapparent social forms also makes difficult is that which makes it infinitely important for the deeper understanding of society: that they have generally not yet hardened into fixed supra-individual images; rather society appears to be in a state, as it were, of being born--of course not actually in its primal historically inscrutable beginning but in everything that takes place every day every hour; social interaction among people continuously making connections and breaking them off and making them again, a perpetual flowing and pulsing that unites individuals, even when it does not amount to actual organization. Here it is, so to speak, a mat- ter of the microscopic-molecular processes inside human material that are, however, the actual activity that links together or hypostasizes those macroscopic fixed entities and systems. That humans look at one other and that they are jealous of each other, that they exchange letters or eat lunch together, that beyond all tangible interests they elicit sympathy in one another, that the gratitude of altruistic service consistently has an unbreakable bonding effect, that one asks directions from another, and that they dress and adorn themselves for one another--all the thousands of person-to-person performances, momentary or enduring, conscious or not, fleeting or momentous relationships, from which these examples are selected entirely arbitrarily, continuously tie us together. Such threads are woven at every moment, allowed to fall, are taken up again, substituted for others, and interwoven with others. Here dwell the interworkings among the atoms of society, accessible only to the psychological microscope, the interworkings that sustain the thor- oughgoing tenacity and elasticity, the entire variety and uniformity of this so meaningful and so enigmatic life of society. It is a matter of
34 chapter one
? applying the principle of infinitely many and infinitely small effects, juxtaposed on society, as in the sciences of juxtaposition--of geology, of the tenets of biological evolution, history as effectively proven. The immeasurably small steps produce the coherence of historical unity; likewise the not-so-apparent person-to-person interactions produce the coherence of historical unity. What goes on perpetually in physical and mental contact, in reciprocal excitation of desire and suffering, in conversations and silences, in common and antagonistic interests--that is really what determines the wonderful untearableness of society, the fluctuation of its life, with which its elements constantly achieve, lose, and shift their equilibrium. Perhaps what the advent of microscopic research meant for the science of organic life will be what the advent of this knowledge will achieve for social science. Inquiry till then was limited to the large, separate, distinct bodily organs, the form and functional variety of which were a matter of course; now then life process appeared in relation to its smallest carriers, the cells, and in its identity with the countless and continuous interactions among them. As they attach to or destroy one another, assimilate or chemically influ- ence one another--this finally allows us to understand gradually how body generates its form, maintains it, or changes it. The large organs, in which these fundamental bearers of life and their interactions have combined in visible macroscopic specialized structures and activities, would never have made the network of life comprehensible if those countless activities taking place among the smallest elements, now as it were tied together by the macroscopic, had not revealed themselves as basic and fundamental to life. Wholly apart from any sociological or metaphysical analogy between the realities of society and organisms, it is now a matter here of the analogy of methodological deliberation and its development; of the exposure of the delicate threads, the irreduc- ible relations among human beings, by whose continual performance all these large structures, now objective and possessing an actual his- tory, are founded and borne. These entirely primary processes, which construct society out of the immediate, individual material, are thus, alongside the higher and more complicated activities and structures, to undergo formal examination.