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."
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?
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:
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