Gregor Fitzi - The Challenge of Modernity: Simmel’s Sociological Theory

Practicing Art/Science

Experiments in an Emerging Field

Edited by Philippe Sormani, Guelfo Carbone & Priska Gisler

The Great Transformation

History for a Techno-Human Future

Judith Bessant

Occupying London

Post-Crash Resistance and the Limits of Possibility

Sam Burgum

Populism and the Crisis of Democracy

Volume 1: Concepts and Theory

Edited by Gregor Fitzi, Jrgen Mackert and Bryan S. Turner

Populism and the Crisis of Democracy

Volume 2: Politics, Social Movements and Extremism

Edited by Gregor Fitzi, Jrgen Mackert and Bryan S. Turner

Populism and the Crisis of Democracy

Volume 3: Migration, Gender and Religion

Edited by Gregor Fitzi, Jrgen Mackert and Bryan S. Turner

The Challenge of Modernity

Simmels Sociological Theory

Gregor Fitzi

The World Multiple

Everyday Politics of Knowing and Generating Entangled Worlds

Edited by Keiichi Omura, Grant Jun Otsuki, Shiho Satsuka, Atsuro Morita

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Advances-in-Sociology/book-series/SE0511

The later phase of Simmels scientific work has conventionally been explained as a product of his interest in the intellectual vogue of the philosophy of life, which was a cultural phenomenon during the Belle poque and circulated widely in Paris and as far as Germany (Rickert 1920). Simmel was interested in Schopenhauers and Nietzsches philosophy of life. In 1907, he wrote a monograph about their philosophical conceptions (GSG 10: 167408), and he played a decisive role in the introduction of Bergsons philosophy in Germany by organising an authorised translation of his works (Fitzi 2002: 195 ff.). Simmels final book, The View of Life (Lebensanschauung) (GSG 16: 209425; Simmel 2015), was a contribution to the epistemological paradigm of the philosophy of life. However, it was also designed as a critique of the mono-dimensional orientation of life philosophy that derives all existence from the idea of the eternal flow of the stream of consciousness (Fitzi 2002: 265 ff.). Hence, Simmels philosophy of life presented itself as an alternative to Bergsons conception of dure as being the common denominator between consciousness and the natural world and instead taking as a starting point the historical fact that modernity and modern consciousness could only be explained as solid liquidity, i.e. as a dialectic between the liquefaction and reification of social structures as well as of the personality of the social actors (Fitzi 2016).

From the perspective of sociological theory, however, Simmels late reflection has a broader meaning. His sociology of culture provided several case studies about the different a priori of sociation orienting social action in the various domains of culture that characterise modern societies. Specific attitudes to life and the world came to the fore that can potentially shape the entirety of the contents of experience from a particular viewpoint, for instance creating an economic, political, religious, artistic or erotic world. Yet, the domains of culture also evidenced a strong tendency to autonomisation by developing an innate logic, by flowing into reification and imposing their rules on the creativity of social action. This twofold assessment was a stocktaking of the structural tendencies of modern societies which Simmel resumed within the theory of the conflict between objective and subjective culture (GSG 5: 560582). In direct contrast, however, the theory of the sociological a priori, i.e. of the conditions permitting the coordination of social structure and social action in everyday social life, showed that only by