Form and Dialectic in Georg Simmel's Sociology

A New Interpretation

H. Schermer, D. Jary

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349446490, 9781137276018
• eBook ISBN: 9781137276025
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This book shows that a dialectical conceptual model underpins Georg Simmel's writings. The book provides key examples of social forms – including fashion, the secret and money – as exemplifications of this method. The volume concludes with a reassessment of Simmel's relevance today.

Part I

Simmel’s Method and the Historical Context of His Work

1

Interaction, Form and the Dialectical Approach – Simmel’s Analytical Conceptual Framework

Simmel repeatedly states that the language of sociology has links and commonalities with everyday language. But in contrast with common sense, sociology is oriented towards ‘cancelling’ the synthesis represented in particular a social phenomenon, such as ‘fashion’ or ‘the secret’, taking it apart, and seeking answers as to how and why it takes its general form. In sociological analysis the aim is to identify the recurring general forms that shape the varying content of social life. Once achieved, sociological insights may feed back into common sense.

This chapter sets out the overall parameters within which Simmel’s sociological and philosophical thinking operates, including the key concepts, the epistemological assumptions, and what can be seen as Simmel’s ‘manifesto’ statements on the nature of sociology and both historical and sociological ‘interpretation’. It concludes with our formulation of Simmel’s underlying ‘abstract conceptual general model and method’.

Key concepts in Simmel’s sociology and the dialectical approach

Far from all commentators have assented to the proposition that a dialectical method should be seen as central to Simmel’s approach. Only relatively recently has such a viewpoint gathered support and become the focus of a deepening attention to the manner in which Simmel’s dialectical approach proceeds. The following key concepts are involved.

Wechselwirkung: We have already identified the concept of Wechselwirkung (‘reciprocal effect’) as underpinning Simmel’s dialectical thinking. As well as viewing social realities as the outcome of ‘reciprocal effects’, the world as a whole is seen as a realm of Wechselwirkung, a realm of interactions, which includes viewing knowledge in relational terms so that anything is viewed as ultimately related to everything else. This general position is referred to by Vandenberghe as ‘ontological relationism’.

Sociation: In relation to sociology, Wechselwirkung is operational in the specific sense of ‘social interaction’ or ‘sociation’. It should be noted here that the term Vergesellschaftung, which Abel (1929) translates literally as ‘societalisation’, is translated by others as ‘sociation’ (see Wolff, 1950). Our own usage of the term ‘sociation’ is for more fleeting Wechselwirkung as well as more formally structured and persistent Vergesellschaftung, reflecting Simmel’s own often relatively loose use, and leaving the context to indicate the usage. Related terms such as ‘association’ will also be used.

Society: Contrary to some impressions, the terms ‘society’ and ‘structure’ are not absent from Simmel’s armoury of concepts, but when used, as elsewhere in his sociology, they are employed ‘relationally’: ‘Society is ultimately merely the name for a number individuals, connected by interaction’ (Simmel, 1950). As Latour (2005) points out, the etymological root of the term ‘social’ – the Latin socius – refers to association. The more specific, focused meaning – reference to a thing-like ‘society’ – comes later. Whilst Simmel does use the term ‘society’ in the latter sense, his predominant emphasis is on association (see Frisby and Sayer, 1986; Pyyhtinen, 2010). The term is a summing-up concept (Summierungsbegriff ) made up of all of the threads of association between individuals.

As already seen, Simmel undoubtedly does portray ‘culture’ and ‘structures’ as operating as if they existed independently and over and above individuals. As Poggi (1993: 105) notes, Simmel repeatedly refers to an ‘ongoing social process’ of sociation that ‘incessantly produces and reproduces social structures’. Elsewhere, Simmel refers to ‘all the forms of association by which the sum of individuals is made in into “society” ’ as a ‘higher unity’ in terms that suggest a degree of ‘autonomy’ and ‘emergence’. This connects him with the broader dialectical tradition in German social thought where the potential for ‘estrangement’ and ‘alienation’ to occur is a major concern. Thus it is apparent that Simmel is far removed from ‘methodological individualism’. As Frisby (1981: 43–4) notes, he is concerned ‘with sociation of the most diverse levels and types’ and the analysis of the ‘forces, forms and development of sociation’.

Form and content and ‘forms of social interaction’

Levine (1965) estimates that, in all, Simmel discuses some 123 ‘forms of social interaction’ (Socialisierrungformen). However, as Weingartner (1960: 22) remarks, ‘In spite of the importance for Simmel of the concepts of form and content, he never devotes so much as part of a chapter to an explicit discussion of these terms.’ As Weingartner continues, it is almost as if Simmel holds a theory of form in which the concepts, especially the concept of content, are ‘taken for granted’. Yet social forms are central to Simmel’s sociology, and the concept of form more generally also has a wider presence within his overall approach.

At the most general level, all representations are forms. What is represented is ‘content’, or more particularly aspects of contents, for ‘pure content’ is ultimately ineffable and cannot be stated apart from form. Used thus, ‘form’ is a portmanteau term, having apart from forms of social interaction, several further manifestations, including ‘disciplinary forms’, ‘cultural forms’ and ‘conceptual schemas’ generally.

For Simmel, a sociology of social forms, which he also described as his ‘pure sociology’,

abstracts from the mere elements of sociation. It isolates inductively and psychologically from the heterogeneity of its contents and purposes, which in themselves are not societal. It thus proceeds like grammar, which isolates the pure forms of language from their contents through which these forms, nevertheless, come to life.

(Simmel, 1978: 22)

Especially when spatial metaphors are involved, the term ‘social geometry’ can also be used, in that the same form can appear in heterogeneous situations. Within any ongoing social process, forms are fused with particular substantive content. A further aspect of forms is that whilst a general form will have variable ‘content’, the same content – specific impulses, hunger, religious desire and so on – can appear in different forms. ‘Fashion’ as a social form is a good example of how many aspects of life can combine to become a vehicle for form and how the objects of fashion can figure in other social forms.

Pure sociability

As well as being focused on the centrality and numbers of social forms, Simmel was also intrigued by the sheer ‘impulse to sociability’, which he saw as shared by all men and women and the basis of all associations by which ‘the solitariness of the individual is resolved’ by ‘togetherness and union with others’. He noticed also that ‘sociability’ (Geselligkeit) as well as an aspect of all human associations can also exist as a ‘pure form’ in its own right. Distilled, as Simmel puts it, from ‘the realities of life as the pure essence of association’, pure ‘sociability’ occurs as a ‘play form’ of association, driven by the mere mutual attraction of others, by ‘cordiality’ and such. For pure sociability to occur, people blend as equals, free from ulterior motive, simply for the pleasure of association, and even this must be tempered if it is to remain free from any content that would ‘disturb’ its purity of form. As such, ‘sociability’ in this pure form is obviously an ‘idealised’ form, and provides a benchmark from which other forms of interaction may be seen as departures.

Three examples of social forms

Box 1.1 presents three examples of social forms (all appearing in Simmel’s Soziologie (1908)). The ‘dyad and triad’ illustrate the ‘quantitative’ determinants of interaction and group formation sometimes foregrounded by Simmel. ‘Conflict’ provides a striking indication of the implications of the often paradoxical operation of the dualities and contradictory dialectical processes within social forms. ‘The stranger’ – referring to social actors whose location and frames of reference are both inside and outside a social grouping – has an ironic aspect given that Simmel’s Jewish ancestry and relative marginality with respect to the academy is sometimes seen as shaping his relatively ‘detached’ analytical stance (as discussed in Chapter 2).

Box 1.1 Three examples of social forms

Dyad and Triad: The peculiar closeness of two in a relationship is most clearly revealed if the dyad is contrasted with the triad. In a twofold relationship there can be no majority. In contrast, in a three-fold relationship a majority is always a possibility. The dyad and triad constitute a general form potential in such more particular sociations as marriage and political alliances.

Conflict: Paradoxically, conflict is also a form of cooperation, as seen in competitive games and war. It is a potent example of how we are everywhere enmeshed in duality, since most social interactions involve a mixture of converging and diverging relations, of attractive and repulsive forces. We unite to fight; conflict at one level can resolve divergent duality at another – the example of unity against the ‘common enemy’. Conflict which resolves divergent duality is an aspect of an evolutionary process. Competition is an indirect form of conflict: it too can have positive as well as negative value.

The stranger: The wanderer who comes today and stays, but retains some of the freedom for coming and going, of being both inside and outside the group. This accounts for the ‘objectivity’ of the stranger, who is not bound by the values and dispositions of a group. It is a form composed of the polarities of remoteness and nearness, indifference and involvement.

The role of polarities/dualities within social forms

It is also in Soziologie that the overall distinction between ‘form and content’ is portrayed as a ‘basic dualism’. As Simmel expresses it, this fundamental dualism, although it entails fluctuating but constantly developing, life processes, nevertheless attains a relatively stable external form in ‘the formal contrast between the essential flux and movement of the subjective psychic life and . . . its forms’ (Simmel, 1950: 385–6).

‘Separate but interdependent’ is a phrase that conveys the internal dialectical relation within each of the more specific polarities/dualities crucial to the operation of Simmel’s method. As illustrated in Box 1.1, it is by means of the identification of the polarities or dualities operational within each social form that Simmel builds his account of each.

Terminological variations

There are potentially confusing variations in Simmelian terminology from his using as synonyms or near synonyms for ‘form’ such terms as ‘configuration’ and ‘constellation’ (which, however, sometimes have a purpose in highlighting wider structural features of a form). References are also found to ‘social types’ (e.g. the ‘stranger’). But ‘types’ are also social forms. Also, when Simmel refers to social ‘institutions’ such as the family, the state, political parties, churches and so on, these too must be seen as social forms. He also sometimes refers to ‘individual lives’ as forms, the justification for this being that life is experienced as a ‘continuous life’ (Weingartner, 1960: 37), the basis of our own enduring individual sense of identity. As already noted, Simmel’s full range of conceptualisations of social and cultural phenomena also includes ‘cultural forms’ (e.g. artistic or architectural styles) and ‘disciplinary forms’ (which are significant, and sometimes a source of trouble in his methodological discussions, as discussed later). However, in all of these instances the method is the same: the dialectical operation of dualities in the explication of forms.

‘Objective and subjective culture’ and the ‘tragedy of culture’

Alongside a focus on individual social forms, a recurring concern of Simmel, as already seen in the ‘Introduction’, is with the dialectal relation of the individual and society, and the conflicts between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective culture’. The terms ‘subject’ and ‘object’ often figure in Simmel’s account, both as nouns and adjectives. As a noun, ‘subject’ refers, as usual in German social thought, to the thinking and acting person (rather than to the standard noun or noun phrase of the subjectpredicate couple). Thus, in adjectival use, the subjective spirit, in striving for self-development, is also oriented to an external objective task.

‘Objective culture’ and ‘subjective culture’ are central terms in Simmel’s analysis of contemporary metropolitan society and what he presents as the ‘tragedy of culture’ as the outcome of the dialectic of subjective and objective culture. In the Hegelian conception of ‘objective spirit’, this spirit dwells in objects, a spirit that the individual can potentially actualise and translate into ‘truth’ (Poggi, 1993: 110–12). This overall collective product of past and present activities that impacts upon us as individuals is what Simmel terms ‘objective culture’. This includes the created objects of ‘material culture’, say the manufactured masts of a ship, at one extreme, and on the other, what Simmel calls, ‘cultural values’, such as art, law, religion and morality. Both assume a degree of independence from their creators, as ‘objective culture’, and may possess an impetus of their own.

Simmel’s overall conception of culture draws on the prevailing German distinction between Kultur and Zivilisation, where the latter is often seen as the enemy of the former. Whereas Zivilisation is associated with economic and technological change and the ratio-utilitarian mentalities associated with this, culture refers to the cultivation (Bildung) and the creative output of the well-rounded individual. Noting that Simmel (1901) distinguishes qualitative from quantitative (utilitarian) individuality, Efraim Podoksik (2010) argues that he also distinguishes between two types of qualitative individuality. Whilst one of these emphasises separateness, the second (e.g. as in the lives of luminaries, such as Goethe) involves a dialectical synthesis of uniqueness and universality. It is in these ways that culture is always a synthesis of subjective and objective spirit. It is from the dialectical interdependence of subject and object, and through this from the duality of culture and the cultivated state of the soul that culture gains its unity and its own creativity, but also its more problematic implications. Objective culture has its own contents and its own logic, independent of people’s purposes. The dynamic and evolutionary aspect of culture, as Simmel repeatedly emphasises, resides in the pendular interaction between subjective and objective culture. Even for religion there are certain laws of construction that unfold their necessity. The ‘tragedy of culture’ is that subjective culture is threatened by being overwhelmed and crushed or swamped by objective culture. What makes the cultural process specific is the objectification of the subject and the subjectivation of something of the objective – the transformation of the ‘soul’ or ‘subject’ into a thing (Vergegeständlichung). The vibrant limitless developing life of the creative soul is confronted by its immoveable product: this is...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures, Tables and Boxes
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: Simmel’s Method and the Historical Context of His Work
• Part II: Exemplifications
• Part III: Further Aspects and Implications of Simmel’s Method
• Part IV: The Contemporary Simmel
• Notes
• Bibliographies and a Note on Translations
• Index