A philosophical study of two German thinkers and the moral and intellectual tensions between them
What the Work Is
Schopenhauer und Nietzsche is a book by the German sociologist, philosopher, and critic Georg Simmel, first published in Leipzig by Duncker & Humblot in 1907. It is a work of philosophical exposition and comparison, devoted to the thought of two major German philosophers: Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. Simmel, a founding figure of sociology whose neo-Kantian approach helped establish sociological antipositivism, wrote widely across philosophy, ethics, and cultural criticism, and this book belongs to that broader body of philosophical writing.
What the Book Is About
The book takes as its subject the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and examines them in relation to one another. Rather than treating either thinker in isolation, Simmel’s study is organised around the comparison and contrast between the two, treating them as representing distinct and in important ways opposed responses to fundamental questions of life, value, and morality. The work belongs to Simmel’s engagement with ethics and the philosophy of culture, and it addresses the two philosophers as thinkers whose ideas bear directly on how modern life and its moral problems are to be understood.
Key Ideas and Themes
The central concern of the book is the relationship between the two philosophers it names. Simmel’s broader intellectual project was occupied with dualisms, conflicts, and contradictions, and with the tensions that arise within social and cultural life; a study pairing Schopenhauer and Nietzsche fits this preoccupation, since the two thinkers are commonly understood to stand for sharply divergent positions — Schopenhauer for a philosophy of resignation and the denial of the will, Nietzsche for an affirmation of life, struggle, and the will to power. Simmel’s comparative treatment sets these positions against each other and explores what each contributes to an understanding of morality and existence.
The book also reflects Simmel’s characteristic interest in the fate of the individual under modern conditions. In his wider work he described the deepest problems of modern life as flowing from the individual’s attempt to preserve independence and individuality against the sovereign powers of society, the weight of historical heritage, and the external culture and technique of life. He identified this same fundamental motive — the resistance of the individual to being levelled and swallowed up in the social-technological mechanism — as at work across a range of nineteenth-century currents, and he explicitly named Nietzsche among those who saw the relentless struggle of the individual as the precondition for full development. A study of Nietzsche, and of Nietzsche set beside Schopenhauer, thus connects to Simmel’s sustained concern with individuality, self-development, and the pressures that modern society places upon the person.
Because Simmel approached cultural and philosophical phenomena through the interplay of opposing tendencies, the pairing of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche offered him a natural subject: two bodies of thought that can be read as a confrontation between negation and affirmation, between withdrawal from life and its intensification. The book accordingly belongs among Simmel’s writings on ethics and the philosophy of culture, alongside his treatments of moral science and the philosophy of history.
Significance and Influence
Schopenhauer und Nietzsche is counted among Simmel’s major monographic works, appearing in the chronological list of his principal books between Die Religion (1906) and Soziologie (1908). It stands as one of the works through which Simmel engaged directly with the philosophical tradition and with the moral and cultural questions raised by two of its most consequential modern figures.
Simmel studied philosophy and history at the Humboldt University of Berlin beginning in 1876, and received his doctorate in 1881 for a thesis on Kantian philosophy of matter titled “Das Wesen der Materie nach Kants Physischer Monadologie” (“The Nature of Matter According to Kant’s Physical Monadology”). In 1885 he became a privatdozent at the University of Berlin, lecturing officially in philosophy but also in ethics, logic, pessimism, art, psychology and sociology. His lectures were popular both inside the university and among the intellectual elite of Berlin.
An Academic Outsider
Although his applications for vacant chairs at German universities were supported by Max Weber, Simmel remained an academic outsider. He had a hard time gaining acceptance in the academic community despite the support of well-known associates such as Max Weber, Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George and Edmund Husserl — partly because of anti-Semitism, but also simply because his articles were written for a general audience rather than for academic sociologists, which led to dismissive judgements from other professionals. With the support of an inheritance from his guardian, however, he was able to pursue his scholarly interests for many years without needing a salaried position.
Method and Approach
Simmel discussed social and cultural phenomena in terms of “forms” and “contents” with a transient relationship, wherein form becomes content, and vice versa depending on context. In this sense he was a forerunner to structuralist styles of reasoning in the social sciences and heralded relational sociology. His sociology was concerned with relationships — especially interaction — and was thus known as a methodological relationalist, an approach based on the idea that interactions exist between everything. His dialectical approach was multicausal and multidirectional: it focuses on social relations; integrates facts and value, rejecting the idea that there are absolute dividing lines between social phenomena; looks not only at the present, but also at the past and future; and is deeply concerned with both conflicts and contradictions. Overall, Simmel would be mostly interested in dualisms, conflicts, and contradictions in whatever realm of the social world he worked on.
The Four Levels of Concern
There are four basic levels of concern in Simmel’s work: the psychological workings of social life; the sociological workings of interpersonal relationships; the structure of and changes in the zeitgeist (the social and cultural “spirit”) of his time, for which he would also adopt the principle of emergentism, the idea that higher levels of conscious properties emerge from lower ones; and the nature and inevitable fate of humanity.
Forms of Association
The furthest Simmel brought his work to a micro-level analysis was in dealing with forms and interactions that take place with different types of people — forms such as subordination, superordination, exchange, conflict and sociability. He focused on these forms of association while paying little attention to individual consciousness, and believed in the creative consciousness found in diverse forms of interaction, observing both the ability of actors to create social structures and the disastrous effects such structures had on the creativity of individuals. He also believed that social and cultural structures come to have a life of their own.
Sociability
Simmel refers to “all the forms of association by which a mere sum of separate individuals are made into a ‘society’,” whereby society is defined as a “higher unity,” composed of individuals. He was particularly fascinated by humanity’s “impulse to sociability,” whereby “the solitariness of the individuals is resolved into togetherness,” referring to this unity as “the free-playing, interacting interdependence of individuals.” He defines sociability as “the play-form of association” driven by “amicability, breeding, cordiality and attractiveness of all kinds.” For this free association to occur, “the personalities must not emphasize themselves too individually … with too much abandon and aggressiveness”; rather, “this world of sociability … a democracy of equals” is to be without friction so long as people blend together in the spirit of pleasure and bring “about among themselves a pure interaction free of any disturbing material accent.” Simmel describes idealised interactions in expressing that “the vitality of real individuals, in their sensitivities and attractions, in the fullness of their impulses and convictions…is but a symbol of life, as it shows itself in the flow of a lightly amusing play,” adding that “a symbolic play, in whose aesthetic charm all the finest and most highly sublimated dynamics of social existence and its riches are gathered.”
Social Geometry
In a dyad (a two-person group), a person is able to retain their individuality, as there is no fear that another may shift the balance of the group. In contrast, triads (three-person groups) risk the potential of one member becoming subordinate to the other two, thus threatening their individuality; furthermore, were a triad to lose a member, it would become a dyad. As a group increases in size, it becomes more isolated and segmented, whereby the individual also becomes further separated from each member. Simmel’s view on group size was somewhat ambiguous: on one hand, he believed that the individual benefits most when a group gets bigger and exerting control on the individual becomes harder; on the other hand, with a large group there is a possibility of the individual’s becoming distant and impersonal, so that in an effort to cope with the larger group they must become a part of a smaller group such as the family. The value of something is determined by the distance from its actor.
The Metropolis and Mental Life
One of Simmel’s most notable essays is “The Metropolis and Mental Life” (“Die Großstädte und das Geistesleben”) from 1903, originally given as one of a series of lectures on all aspects of city life by experts in various fields, ranging from science and religion to art, conducted alongside the Dresden cities exhibition of 1903. Simmel was originally asked to lecture on the role of intellectual (or scholarly) life in the big city, but he effectively reversed the topic in order to analyze the effects of the big city on the mind of the individual; as a result, when the lectures were published as essays in a book, the series editor himself had to supply an essay on the original topic to fill the gap. The essay was not well received during Simmel’s lifetime, and the organisers of the exhibition overemphasised its negative comments about city life, though Simmel also pointed out positive transformations. During the 1920s it influenced the thought of Robert E. Park and other American sociologists at the University of Chicago who collectively became known as the “Chicago School”; it gained wider circulation in the 1950s when it was translated into English and published as part of Kurt Wolff’s edited collection, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, and it now appears regularly on the reading lists of courses in urban studies and architectural history. The notion of the blasé is actually not the central or final point of the essay, but is part of a description of a sequence of states in an irreversible transformation of the mind; Simmel does not quite say that the big city has an overall negative effect on the mind or the self, even as he suggests that it undergoes permanent changes, and it is perhaps this ambiguity that gave the essay a lasting place in the discourse on the metropolis.
The Philosophy of Money
In The Philosophy of Money, Simmel views money as a component of life which helped people understand the totality of life. He believed people created value by making objects, then separating themselves from that object and then trying to overcome that distance; things which were too close were not considered valuable, and things which were too far for people to get were also not considered valuable. Considered in determining value was the scarcity, time, sacrifice, and difficulties involved in getting the object. For Simmel, city life led to a division of labor and increased financialisation; as financial transactions increase, some emphasis shifts to what the individual can do, instead of who the individual is, and financial matters in addition to emotions are in play.
“The Stranger”
Simmel’s concept of distance comes into play where he identifies a stranger as a person that is far away and close at the same time. The Stranger is close to us insofar as we feel between him and ourselves common features of a national, social, occupational, or generally human nature; he is far from us insofar as these common features extend beyond him or us, and connect us only because they connect a great many people. A stranger is far enough away that he is unknown but close enough that it is possible to get to know him, and in a society there must be a stranger: if everyone is known, then there is no person able to bring something new to everybody. The stranger bears a certain objectivity that makes him a valuable member to the individual and society; people let down their inhibitions around him and confess openly without any fear, because there is a belief that the Stranger is not connected to anyone significant and therefore does not pose a threat to the confessor’s life. More generally, because of their peculiar position in the group, strangers often carry out special tasks that the other members of the group are either incapable or unwilling to carry out — for example, especially in pre-modern societies, most strangers made a living from trade, which was often viewed as an unpleasant activity by “native” members of those societies, and in some societies they were also employed as arbitrators and judges, because they were expected to treat rival factions in society with an impartial attitude. Objectivity may also be defined as freedom: the objective individual is bound by no commitments which could prejudice his perception, understanding, and evaluation of the given. On one hand the stranger’s opinion does not really matter because of his lack of connection to society, but on the other the stranger’s opinion does matter, because of his lack of connection to society; he holds a certain objectivity that allows him to be unbiased and decide freely without fear, simply able to see, think, and decide without being influenced by the opinion of others.
On Secrecy
According to Simmel, in small groups secrets are less needed because everyone seems to be more similar, while in larger groups secrets are needed as a result of their heterogeneity. In secret societies, groups are held together by the need to maintain the secret, a condition that also causes tension because the society relies on its sense of secrecy and exclusion. For Simmel, secrecy also exists in relationships as intimate as marriage: in revealing all, marriage becomes dull and boring and loses all excitement. He saw a general thread in the importance of secrets and the strategic use of ignorance — to be social beings who are able to cope successfully with their social environment, people need clearly defined realms of unknowns for themselves — and furthermore, sharing a common secret produces a strong “we feeling.” The modern world depends on honesty and therefore a lie can be considered more devastating than it ever has been before. Money allows a level of secrecy that has never been attainable before, because money allows for “invisible” transactions, due to the fact that money is now an integral part of human values and beliefs; it is possible to buy silence.
On Flirtation
In a series of essays published in 1923, Simmel discusses flirtation as a generalized type of social interaction. According to Simmel, “to define flirtation as simply a ‘passion for pleasing’ is to confuse the means to an end with the desire for this end.” The distinctiveness of the flirt lies in the fact that she awakens delight and desire by means of a unique antithesis and synthesis: through the alternation of accommodation and denial. In the behavior of the flirt, the man feels the proximity and interpenetration of the ability and inability to acquire something; this is in essence the “price.” A sidelong glance with the head half-turned is characteristic of flirtation in its most banal guise.
On Fashion
In Simmel’s eyes, fashion is a form of social relationship that allows those who wish to conform to the demands of a group to do so, and also allows some to be individualistic by deviating from the norm. There are many social roles in fashion, and both objective culture and individual culture can have an influence on people. In the initial stage, everyone adopts what is fashionable, and those that deviate from the fashion inevitably adopt a whole new view of what they consider fashion. Ritzer wrote that Simmel argued that not only does following what is in fashion involve dualities, so does the effort on the part of some people to be out of fashion: unfashionable people view those who follow a fashion as being imitators and themselves as mavericks, but Simmel argued that the latter are simply engaging in an inverse form of imitation — meaning that those who are trying to be different or “unique” are not, because in trying to be different they become a part of a new group that has labeled themselves different or “unique.”
Aesthetics and Cultural History
Simmel’s work on European art history spans the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, including books on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Rembrandt and essays on artists from Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci to Auguste Rodin. He also wrote on art forms and media, aesthetics after Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, and the sociology of art in modern culture. These are important to Simmel’s view of society’s modern forms; he used symbols, metaphors, tropes, and analogies exploring structures of mind and behavior. From 1901 he planned an unrealized volume integrating his philosophy of art, which he told philosopher Heinrich Rickert was a “burning” and “dominant interest.” He asked Kantorowicz to edit his unpublished manuscripts posthumously, and Suhrkamp Verlag issued many unknown texts in a 1989–2014 Gesamtausgabe (collected works).
Works in Periodicals
Among Simmel’s works in periodicals are “Alpenreisen” in Die Zeit, Wiener Wochenschrift für Politik, Vollwirtschaft, Wissenschaft und Kunst (13 June 1895); “Rom, eine ästhetische Analyse” in the same weekly (28 May 1898); “Florenz” in Der Tag (2 March 1906); “Venedig” in Der Kunstwart, Halbmonatsschau über Dichtung, Theater, Musik, bildende und angewandte Kunst (June 1907); and “Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur” [“The Concept and Tragedy of Culture”] in Logos. Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie der Kultur 2 (1911–1912): 1–25.
Later Life
In 1890, Georg married Gertrud Kinel, a philosopher who published under the pseudonym Marie-Luise Enckendorf and under her own name; they lived a sheltered and bourgeois life, their home becoming a venue for cultivated gatherings in the tradition of the salon. They had one son, Hans Eugen Simmel, who became a medical doctor, and their granddaughter was the psychologist Marianne Simmel. Simmel also had a secret affair with his assistant Gertrud Kantorowicz, who bore him a daughter in 1907, but this was hidden until after Simmel’s death. In 1909, Simmel, Ferdinand Tönnies, Max Weber, and others co-founded the German Society for Sociology, and he served as a member of its first executive body. In 1914 he received an ordinary professorship with chair at the then-German University of Strassburg, but did not feel at home there; because World War I broke out, all academic activities and lectures were halted and lecture halls were converted to military hospitals. In 1915 he unsuccessfully applied for a chair at Heidelberg University. In 1917, Simmel stopped reading the newspapers and withdrew to the Black Forest to finish the book The View of Life (Lebensanschauung). Shortly before the end of the war in 1918, he died from liver cancer in Strasbourg.
Early Life and Family
Georg Simmel was born in Berlin, Germany, as the youngest of seven children to an assimilated Jewish family. His father, Eduard Simmel (1810–1874), a prosperous businessman and convert to Roman Catholicism, had founded a confectionery store called “Felix & Sarotti” that would later be taken over by a chocolate manufacturer. His mother Flora Bodstein (1818–1897) came from a Jewish family who had converted to Lutheranism, and Georg himself was baptized as a Protestant when he was a child. His father died in 1874, when Georg was 16, leaving a sizable inheritance; Georg was then adopted by Julius Friedländer, the founder of an international music publishing house known as Peters Verlag, who endowed him with the large fortune that enabled him to become a scholar.
Reputation and Influence
An acquaintance of Max Weber, Simmel wrote on the topic of personal character in a manner reminiscent of the sociological ideal type, though he broadly rejected academic standards, philosophically covering topics such as emotion and romantic love. Both Simmel’s and Weber’s nonpositivist theory informed the eclectic critical theory of the Frankfurt School. He pioneered analyses of individuality and social fragmentation, and in “The Metropolis and Mental Life” he anticipates urban sociology, symbolic interactionism, and social network analysis. Simmel nevertheless continued his intellectual and academic work, as well as taking part in artistic circles.
