'How is Society Possible?' by Georg Simmel (American Journal of Sociology, vol. 16, 1910-11) is an essay that pontificates on a topic dear to me. Humans, it says, see the other person not simply as an individual, but as colleague or comrade or fellow partisan, or other epithets chosen for the moment. If so, what made human society possible?
Society exposes an individual into a conflicting situation. One, where one is just a part of a whole, and two, where one is a closed organic whole. Which could lead one to two logically antithetical determinations - being produced by, and contained in, society, and moving around its own center. Hence, society is a structure of unlike elements. Some kind of valuation process, of persons, of performances, of positions, is always present, which essentially is preventing any sort of equality of persons, in composition, in life-contents, and in fortunes. Notwithstanding this, the book says, society becomes "possible" only through the reciprocal determination of the individuals, the significance of the individual and that for the totality of the other individuals.
The book echoes many of my questions, some of which I am trying to address through my books. I wish, the book, rather than dealing with those issues in the abstract, came out with definite reasons and clear answers.
In any case, I felt very happy. Right or wrong, my books, not only address this question, but also come up with a reason, why it should be so!
Society exposes an individual into a conflicting situation. One, where one is just a part of a whole, and two, where one is a closed organic whole. Which could lead one to two logically antithetical determinations - being produced by, and contained in, society, and moving around its own center. Hence, society is a structure of unlike elements. Some kind of valuation process, of persons, of performances, of positions, is always present, which essentially is preventing any sort of equality of persons, in composition, in life-contents, and in fortunes. Notwithstanding this, the book says, society becomes "possible" only through the reciprocal determination of the individuals, the significance of the individual and that for the totality of the other individuals.
The book echoes many of my questions, some of which I am trying to address through my books. I wish, the book, rather than dealing with those issues in the abstract, came out with definite reasons and clear answers.
In any case, I felt very happy. Right or wrong, my books, not only address this question, but also come up with a reason, why it should be so!
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