Georg Simmel

Question 1

Simmel’s method (3)

Answer 1

A) Impressionistic, fragmented

B) Start with surface phenomena to discover truths about the deeper structure

C) Aim:
Understand how the individual adapts with the external social forces of the metropolis

Question 2

The modern city (6)

Answer 2

A) Sociological entity

B) New phenomena:
Crowds, anonymity, …

C) Basis:
Money economy makes relations rational, calculable

D) New challenges:
Self-preservation of the individual, protection against overstimulation

E) New types of social interaction:
Short and superficial encounters

F) New attitudes:
Indifference, distance, blasé attitude, heightened awareness, calculation
Generate distance necessary for metropolitan mode of life

Question 3

Objective culture (3)

Answer 3

A) Social-technological mechanism

B) Overwhelms the individual:
Objective culture used to be knowable by everyone, now there’s so much it’s impossible to understand it all

C) Result:
Exaggerated subjectivism
i.e. make oneself unique and irreplaceable, authentic

Question 4

Intellectuality and the money economy (3)

Answer 4

A) Make an abstraction from individuality
-> indifference toward individualiity

B) Focus on the general, common quantitative

C) Relations become calculable, mind becomes calculating
Metropolis makes it necessary
E.g. Punctuality, importance of the clock