Simmel Lectures

Dan Ryan
Spring 2000

Simmel’s Contributions

Although no "school of thought" was ever established on the basis of his work, Simmel articulated many concepts that have come to be mainstays of sociological theory. These include [Simmel, 1971 #1451, ix]:

Simmel’s intellectual style was that of a loner. He did not found a journal and did not surround himself with assistants. He was well known for not following academic and intellectual protocol both in his relationships with colleagues and in the structure of his written work. He went his own way, exploring his own problems and insights. "His life," Donald Levine has written, "illustrated a point which he articulated in his essay on the stranger: that the absence of firm social ties promotes intellectual freedom" [Simmel, 1971 #1451, xiii]. Toward the end of his life he wrote "I know that I shall die without intellectual heirs and that is as it should be. My legacy will be like cash, distributed to many heirs, each transforming his part into use according to his nature – a use which will no longer reveal its indebtedness to this heritage" [Simmel, 1971 #1451, xiii].

How is Society Possible?

Kant asked how is nature possible. The stuff of nature, after all, impinges on the senses haphazardly and incoherently. It takes some facility on the part of the observer to assemble these impressions into objects, substances, attributes and relations. The coherence of the world as a unity is supplied by the observer.

Is society just like this? Not exactly. The unity of society does not require an observer. Society, like nature, consists of elements – individuals – each of whom provides what an observer provides for nature, not as an overall observer of the whole of society, but as a participant in manifold relations and mutually determining connections. For Kant, nature requires specific cognitive capacities in the outside observer. For Simmel, the necessary properties for the unity of society to emerge are already a part of the elements of society.

What are the conditions which reside in individuals which combine to produce society? Recall Goffman’s question in this regard: what minimal model of the self is necessary if we are to wind him up and place him among his fellows and have an orderly intercourse like that we know as sociation ensue?

These conditions or attributes or properties Simmel calls "sociological aprioris."

  1. The picture we have of the other is always partial and distorted.
  2. Individuals play roles and individuals transcend roles.
  3. Humans are both individual and social just as nature is both wave and particle.
  4. ("general value of individuality" or "the vocation") Society is a structure composed of unequal elements (18). Society consists of positions. The fact that for each individual there is a place makes possible the sense of being a member of society. Simultaneously, society offers the individual an anonymous place (can be filled by many persons), and each person takes a place on the basis of an inner calling making it intensely personal.

Form and Content

In "The Problem of Sociology" Simmel puts forth his vision of what sociology as a science should be.

"Society exists where a number of individuals enter into interaction," Simmel writes at the start of this chapter. Is society a thing for Simmel or an event? A bit hard to say, but I’d come down on the side of an event but, better said, an enacted structure. The "unity" of society results from the reciprocity of effects – mutual interaction – Wechselwirkung among and between its various parts (23.7ff).

Sociation or unity exists to different degrees. What does he mean? Can you give some examples?

    1. getting together for a walk
    2. founding a family
    3. citizenship
    4. relations "until further notice"
    5. being fellow guests in a hotel
    6. An important distinction for Simmel here is between CONTENT and FORM. He talks about CONTENT being "everything present in individuals" – drives, purposes, inclinations, interests – and says these are not themselves social. What are they then? When do they "become" social for Simmel? "when they transform mere aggregation" into "specific forms of being with and for one another"

      All social phenomena or processes consist of FORM + CONTENT

      DJR: There is something different between a room with four chairs, a room with four cows and a room with four people.

      If we were to describe what we might call the "strong Simmelian" perspective about sociology, what would it be? That the only thing that can be a special science of society is the study of social forms.

      What is Simmel’s "test" for whether something ought to be the subject of a society of science? (25.9-26.2) Show that the form can be observed in quite dissimilar contents and that the contents can be realized in dissimilar forms. Cf. geometric forms and logical forms and their respective contents.

      On p. 27.6 Simmel writes of a "hypostatization of a mere abstraction" right after saying that there is no such thing as society. Explain.

      Is Simmel advocating a "geometry of society"? How do the ideas on p. 28 support or refute such an approach?

      List some of the forms that Simmel mentions in this short section:

    7. formation of parties
    8. imitation
    9. competition
    10. formation of classes and circles
    11. secondary subdivisions
    12. superordination and subordination
    13. growth and role of hierarchies
    14. bearing of common hostility to the inner solidarity of a group
    15. joining for common tasks, common feeling, common ways of thinking
    16. self adornment for others
    17. representation of groups by individuals
    18. significance of the nonpartisan
    19. role of the poor
    20. numerical determinations of group elements
    21. first among equals and the third who laughs
    22. intersection of circles in individuals
    23. significance of the secret for groups
    24. the stranger

Don’t worry about whether any given instance matches the form exactly. That’s not the point (30.3)

Methodological challenge. Consider his medieval guild master example. He draws the form out, but points out that this is not an automatic process. Whereas mathematician can assume forms, sociologist cannot: "isolation of truly pure sociation out of the complex total phenomenon cannot be forced by logical means." (31.8)

DJR: cf. Husserl’s problem describing the phenomenological reduction

On pp. 32-4 we get a working out of what is the psychological and what is the sociological. For our purposes the important thing is to appreciate the fact that Simmel allows that there are interesting psychological processes going on, but that the purely sociological questions are those listed on the top of p. 34. A clear understanding of the last two pages probably means you understand this article.

Conflict

The Stranger

The Web of Group Affiliations

The Significance of Number in Social Life

The Secret and the Secret Society