See book here.

How Is Society Possible?

Kant on Nature:

• Nature is the representation of nature: the way the mind organizes sense perceptions.
• The different sense perceptions cannot separately compose nature. They must be combined in the mind.

Comparing nature and society

“In the Kantian view (which we follow here), the unity of nature emerges in the observing subject exclusively; it is produced exclusively by him in the sense materials, and on the basis of sense materials, which are in themselves heterogeneous. By contrast, the unity of society needs no observer. It is directly realized by its own elements because these elements are themselves conscious and synthesizing units” (Simmel 2011, 7).

It is isn’t clear how this works. Are not individuals component and observer? Perhaps the point is just that the elements of society are sentient beings.

S goes on to note an individual may do an additional ‘synthesis’ of externally observable society, but that “society . . . is the objective unit which needs no outside observer. . . .” (Simmel 2011, 7–8). Individuals are not conscious that they are forming society.

S identifies two topics for discussing society: the ‘imperfect’ (my term) psychological processes or observations of others, and the “ideational, logical presuppositions for the perfect society” (Simmel 2011, 9).¹

S presents several ‘sociological a prioris’ summarized as follows:

1. Individuals’ perceptions of others are necessarily generalizations of individuality
2. Everyone is partly in society and out of society
3. Society is composed of unequal elements

I summarize each topic in turn below.

Generalization

Individual observations of another individual are generalizations:

• We cannot represent an individuality to ourselves other than our own²
• Variations in intellectual capacity, but it’s more than that
• ‘Core of individuality’ that cannot be recreated by others

“All relations among men are determined by the varying degrees of this incompleteness.”

“We conceive of each man—and this is a fact which has a specific effect upon our practical behavior toward him—as being the human type which is suggested by his individuality. We think of him in terms not only of his singularity but also in terms of a general category. This category, of course, does not fully cover him, nor does he fully cover it. It is this peculiarly incomplete coincidence which distinguishes the relation between a human category and a human singularity from the relation which usually exists between a general concept and the particular instance it covers. In order to know a man, we see him not in terms of his pure individuality, but carried, lifted up or lowered, by the general type under which we classify him. Even when this transformation from the singular to the typical is so imperceptible that we cannot recognize it immediately; even when all the ordinary characterological concepts such as ‘moral’ or ‘immoral,’ ‘free’ or ‘unfree,’ ‘lordly’ or ‘slavish,’ and so on, clearly appear inadequate, we privately persist in labeling a man according to an unverbalized type, a type which does not coincide with his pure, individual being” (Simmel 2011, 10).

Beings stand inside and outside of society at the same time

Here is where distinctiveness seems to come in.

Individuals vary in how much they allow ‘non-social’ elements alongside their social content. A continuum ranging from (no difference between social and non-social lives) and (lives separated). Social beings move along this continuum. Withholding non-social elements from social interaction has an effect through psychological processes on an individual’s social structure, and the elements withheld themselves have an effect on social structure (Simmel 2011, 14).³

“A society is, therefore, a structure which consists of beings who stand inside and outside of it at the same time. This fact forms the basis for one of the most important sociological phenomena, namely, that between a society and its component individuals a relation may exist as if between two parties. In fact, to the degree that it is more open or more latent, this relation, perhaps, always does exist. Society shows possibly the most conscious, certainly the most general, elaboration of a fundamental form of general life. This is that the individual can never stay within a unit which he does not at the same time stay outside of, that he is not incorporated into any order without also confronting it. This form is revealed in the most transcendent and general as well as in the most singular and accidental contexts. The religious man feels himself fully seized by the divine, as if he were merely a pulse-beat of its life. His own substance is given over unreservedly, if not in a mystical, undifferentiated fusion, to that of the absolute. But in spite of this, in order to give this fusion any significance whatsoever, he must preserve some sort of self-existence, some sort of personal counter, a differentiated ego, for whom the absorption in this divine all-being is a never ending task. It is a process that neither would be possible metaphysically, nor could be felt religiously, if it did not start from the existence of the individual: to be one with God is conditioned in its very significance by being other than God” (Simmel 2011, 14–15).

“The individual is contained in sociation and, at the same time, finds himself confronted by it. He is both a link in the oganism of sociation and an autonomous organic whole; he exists both for society and for himself. The essence and deepest significance of the specific sociological a priori which is founded on this phenomenon is this: The ‘within’ and the ‘without’ between individual and society are not two unrelated definitions but define together the fully homogenous position of man as a social animal. His existence, if we analyze its contents, is not only partly social and partly individual, but also belongs to the fundamental, decisive, and irreducible category of a unity which we cannot designate other than as the synthesis or simultaneity of two logically contradictory characterizations of man—the characterization which is based on his function as a member, as a product and content of society; and the opposing characterization which is based on his functions as an autonomous being, and which views his life from its own center and for its own sake.” (Simmel 2011, 17).

Society composed of unequal elements.

Admittedly, I was fatigued by this section. S seems to suggest that there is an ideal position for every member of society. But this again isn’t a normative statement. Not sure what to make of this part.

References