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Ambiguous Individuality: Georg Simmel on the “Who” and the “What” of the Individual

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Abstract

The essay discusses the philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel’s theorizing about the individual. Whereas it is typically within the context of the modern metropolis and the mature money economy that Simmel’s ideas have been discussed in the secondary literature, I render those ideas in another light by addressing the ontological and existential issues crucial to his conception of the individual. In Simmel, the individual is divided between the “what” and the “who,” between the qualities which make one something individual and one’s non-repeatable and finite existence which makes one someone singular. I argue that whereas the first dimension can be understood sociologically, in terms of social relations, the latter is not accessible to sociology as such, but must be treated philosophically. Therefore, if we wish to address this duality that lies at the heart of individuality, a “philosophical turn” for sociology is called for.

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Notes

  1. The excerpt of the interview I am referring to can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj1BuNmhjAY.

  2. Regina Mahlmann has scrutinized the Simmelian version of the model in her book Homo Duplex. Die Zweiheit des Menschen bei Georg Simmel (1983).

  3. Simmel’s famous notion of the “third” serves as a kind of general characterization and basic schema of his thought (see Freund 1976; Noro 1991). It is Simmel’s style and even part of his “method” to play with paradoxes, dualisms, and ambiguities, only to introduce then a mediating “third” to the antagonism. Sometimes this “third” presents the “excluded third” of logic, other times perhaps the origin of opposites, their midpoint, resulting in unity, or an expression of an encompassing unity between surface level polarizations (cf. Levine 1971, p. xxxv). The “third” may intertwine the opposites by culminating their tension, dissolve apparently monolithic unities into interaction of opposing forces, or establish a common ground or some “underlying coherence” (see e.g., Featherstone 1991, p. 5), but only rarely does it bring a final synthesis between the opposing poles.

  4. For the concepts endogenous and exogenous individuality see Köhnke (1996, pp. 492, 498, 500).

  5. Ungleichheit could also be translated as “inequality,” as with Nietzsche, but Simmel’s use of it does not imply anything of the kind. It refers only to the divergence or dissimilarity of individuals.

  6. For a critical assessment of Simmel’s notion of individual law see Rolf Engert’s Über die Zulänglichkeit des individuellen Gesetzes als Prinzip der Ethik (1917/2002, esp. pp. 48–57).

  7. “Oh Lord, give each a death of his own”.

  8. Let us be reminded, however, that in his last published text, entitled “Life: Experience and Science,” Foucault reflects very explicitly on life itself. In the piece, Foucault (2000) specifies as the radical characteristic of life that it is “that which is capable of error” (p. 476): “Should not the whole theory of the subject be reformulated, seeing that knowledge, rather than opening onto the truth of the world, is deeply rooted in the ‘errors’ of life?” (p. 477.)

  9. As far as Simmel’s work is concerned, David Frisby (1981) has noted that “the absence of a rigid separation between sociology and philosophy would indicate that [Simmel’s] ostensibly ‘philosophical’ works might have great relevance for [his] sociology” (p. 23). Simmel’s philosophy is not “anti-sociology” but rather “more-than-sociology”, as Klaus Lichtblau (1984, p. 254; see also pp. 234–235) has described it.

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  1. Department of Sociology, University of Turku, 20014, Turku, Finland

    Olli Pyyhtinen

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Pyyhtinen, O. Ambiguous Individuality: Georg Simmel on the “Who” and the “What” of the Individual. Hum Stud 31, 279–298 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-008-9096-7

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