Abstract
In this chapter, I propose to examine a specific form of self-awareness in which we become aware of our existence in a problematic sense: wistfulness. In thinking about what it means to have a life, one is often haunted by different senses of possibility: of what could or should be, of what might have been, but just as well, of what could never have been. In such latter instances, we become aware of ourselves not in terms of actuality (who I am) or possibility (who I can or could become), but in terms of impossibility, namely, as the impossible selves that nonetheless, in some sense, define and hence belong to us, as attested to in the experience of regret and remorse, not for what we did (or who we have been) but for what was impossible for us to be (or do). Drawing on Georg Simmel’s philosophy of life, I shall explore various senses in which we are responsible for ourselves, of who we have been and could yet be, as well as who it was impossible for us to once have been. In this regard, what Simmel calls the meta-ethical significance of death refers to the responsibility we have for ourselves in terms of what was both possible and impossible for us.
Ich bin. Aber ich habe mich nicht. Darum werden wir erst.
– Ernst Bloch
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Notes
- 1.
For Husserl’s conception of remembrance, see de Warren (2010).
- 2.
For the historical context of the First World War for Simmel’s work, see de Warren (2023).
- 3.
See Simmel (1922)‘s essay “Henri Bergson.”
- 4.
For Simmel’s analysis of different forms of social interaction, see his Soziologie (Simmel, 1999).
- 5.
See Simmel’s (1971) essays “Fashion” and “The Metropolis and Modern Life.”
- 6.
As Simmel himself underlines, Wechselwirkung is the metaphysical principle of this thinking (1993 9).
- 7.
“Life is at once flux without pause and yet something enclosed in its bearers and contents, formed about individualized midpoints, and contrarily it is therefore always a bounded form that continually oversteps its bounds; that is, its essence” (Simmel, 2010, 9).
- 8.
“The present of life consists in that life transcends the present.”
- 9.
As Coyne insightfully states: “the ego is haunted by the residues of life, suggesting that its sense of responsibility is not at all congruent with its sense as a self-identical entity” (2018, 70). For Coyne, “the uniqueness of existential contingency is the real breakthrough achieved in ‘Death and Immortality’”
- 10.
See Pyyhtinen (2012).
- 11.
As Köhnke (1996) argues, the “law of individual” emerged in Simmel’s writings as early as 1900 to form the “normative center” of Simmel’s thinking. For Hasn-Peter Müller (2021), Simmel’s law of the individual represents a Nietzschean “aristocratic individualism.” As he argues: “Thanks to spiritual education and aesthetic experience, aristocratic individualism is able to shape its own path in life and create its own distinctive personal lifestyle. This aristocratic individuality, Simmel has no illusions about that, is reserved only for a minority and probably only for a small elite” (284). For Simmel’s Nietzscheanism and its influence, see Leck (2020).
- 12.
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de Warren, N. (2023). Ghosts of Ourselves: Self-Responsibility in Georg Simmel’s The View of Life. In: Geniusas, S. (eds) Varieties of Self-Awareness. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 121. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39175-0_2
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