In his article "Great Cities and the Life of the Spirit" (1903), also translated as "Metropolis and Mental Life", Simmel describes the changes that occurred with the emergence of the new European nations and the advent of modernity. Seeing the transition from rural life to urban life, seeing the transition from traditional societies to modern forms of life, he wants to understand these changes in the WAY in which men interact and the effects on their daily lives. . That is to say, the text is an implementation of his way of seeing the social world; concentrating on Berlin – when it was just becoming the great city of today – he observes and describes the different phenomena that were taking place in the new urban life marked by the modern era.
Simmel observes the transformation of life and the way in which the individual begins to interact and be, to finish by describing the dynamics that occur in the opposition between the individual and society. The categories of Form and Life (Content), are the ultimate categories of the conception of the world, thus, Simmel is the self-awareness of modern life when thinking about the life and form of modernity.
He will then begin this writing by saying that the life and form that began to take shape in Berlin between 1817-1902 revealed that the deepest problems of modern life arise from the struggle between the individual and society. The first seeking to preserve its autonomy, peculiarity and freedom; and the second as historical heritage, external culture, seeking to homogenize it, universalize it and strip it of all its peculiarity. What he would call the "tragedy of -culture" will show that the objective spirit imposes its total subjugation on the subjective spirit. It is a deepening in the sociological analysis of the relationship between the individual and society through the question: How does consciousness (personality-Individual) accommodate itself to the demands of society?
Modern life in cities and the lifestyle of the urbanite is not rebuilt by the development of the monetary exchange economy, nor by a political or technical revolution, but by the <<agglomeration of people and things>> generated by a increase of Nervous Life, because of the increase of consciousness through understanding, which is the best way to react to the uninterrupted exchange of internal and external impressions. Simmel will argue that in the modern metropolis, what we could call the sociological basis, is defined by the intensification of nervous stimuli, which explains the deep Intellectual character of urban life and generates a contrast between this way of life and the rural one. in terms of sensory input. The agglomeration of people and things generates indolence, a feeling of Blassée, which is nothing more than an adaptive phenomenon of these conditions; it is a refusal to react, because the increase in nervous life generates an inability to react to new stimuli that the urbanite constantly faces. Now, this attitude is also the quintessential Urban type, since it is the urbanite's attitude of reserve to preserve his subjectivity. To be more clear, it is both an effect and a condition of urban life. Man is a being of differences, his consciousness is constituted by the difference (Hegel) between the image or apprehension of the moment and that of the past; life in the city produces countless of these moments that we cannot pre-conceive reality itself, but as a flow of changing impressions. This generates an opposition with the sensory and spiritual flow of life in the countryside. This difference between urban life and rural life is shown by the intellectual character of the former and the sentimental character of the latter. Rural life appeals to the most unconscious of psychic life, to sensitivity, to a lower stratum compared to the transparent conscious of urban life that appeals to the understanding that as a superior faculty, belongs to our inner faculties, that of better adaptation. The urban man, says Simmel, develops a defense capacity that is eminently rational, since he acts with Reason and not with his heart; he leaves aside the sensitivity that has kept him in a constant state of alert, to preserve himself (Reserve) in indifferent Rationality. In this way, with the growth of the mental life in modern urban life, man reacts with the intellect, which is not so excited, as the sensibility, by the growth of impressions. Then an instrumental rationality appears, which is an adaptation to preserve the subjective psychic life against the empires of the social totality, of the supra-individual and the violence of the big city. The city is the authentic environment of the Blassée attitude, since the psyche only finds in this feeling, in this attitude, its only way of adapting to the forms and contents of metropolitan life. It is the preservation of individuality, of the peculiarity of the individual by devaluing the objective world. But this same thing leads to the personality itself to feel in its own flesh, the same devaluation.
But there is another important factor that Simmel points out is closely related not only to the Blassée attitude, but also to the intellectualized character of modern city life: The Monetary Economy. The big city has been, since ancient times, the seat of the monetary economy, which allows the best exchange between the agglomeration of people and things that a barter economy of Rural life. To the monetary economy and the intellectualized attitude, objectivity in the treatment of men and things is common. The strictly rational man is indifferent to qualitative peculiarity, the extremely individual; concreteness is indifferent to the identity of the universal of how much. The Non-Identical provides inexhaustible relationships that the understanding, the rationalization of logical thought does not tolerate, much less the value of exchange. The principle of money does not ask for the concrete, but for the universal; it does not look for what is qualitatively peculiar, but what is identical to everything; the exchange value that levels everyone in property identity, ask for how much does it cost? This elevation in modern urban life reveals that there is a supremacy of the means over the ends. Modern life transforms all components into media; nothing immediate exists, there are no longer face-to-face relationships, because everything is structured by media. And it is money that has become the medium par excellence, dominating the metropolis and with it modern life.
To the man of the multitude, a self-preservation is necessary, a reserve of his subjectivity, which reflects the indifference of commodity production and its calculating accuracy. It is not surprising that the text considered most important in the work of Georg Simmel is "The Philosophy of Money" (). Money then becomes the fiercest common denominator of all experience. Rationalized relations calculate the treatment of man as the treatment with numbers. The relationships of people in the city acquires the most ruthless objectivity, there is no longer a real face to face between the producer and the consumer, it is produced for strangers; the basis of relationships is selfish calculating economic understanding, which has no deviation in relationship. Consistent with what has been observed, Simmel assures that the intellectual character of modern life is closely related to the intellectual character of the monetary economy, in such a way that it is not known who originated whom, since the way of life of the urbanite is the more fertile for this reciprocity. But the monetary economy also maintains a reciprocity with the urbanite's own attitude. Things lose their qualitative diversity for an eye that sees everything grey. The physiological origin of this attitude is another factor that arises from the monetary economy; the experience of the subject, mediated at all times by the rationality of money, makes it result in an insensitivity to the diversity of objects, which does not mean that the contrasts are not perceived, but only superficially, since in the differentiation of the cases – and the cases themselves – there can be no preference over an object, since, since there is equivalence of all chaos in the same form – money, the qualitative peculiarity is emptied for all cases. Observe then, that what Simmel shows is that the Blassée attitude is, on the contrary, a social dissociator, the strongest cohesive of modern urban life, being a faithful reflection of the internalized monetary economy.
To the man of the multitude, a self-preservation is necessary, a reserve of his subjectivity, which reflects the indifference of commodity production and its calculating accuracy. It is not surprising that the text considered most important in the work of Georg Simmel is "The Philosophy of Money" (). Money then becomes the fiercest common denominator of all experience. Rationalized relations calculate the treatment of man as the treatment with numbers. The relationships of people in the city acquires the most ruthless objectivity, there is no longer a real face to face between the producer and the consumer, it is produced for strangers; the basis of relationships is selfish calculating economic understanding, which has no deviation in relationship. Consistent with what has been observed, Simmel assures that the intellectual character of modern life is closely related to the intellectual character of the monetary economy, in such a way that it is not known who originated whom, since the way of life of the urbanite is the more fertile for this reciprocity. But the monetary economy also maintains a reciprocity with the urbanite's own attitude. Things lose their qualitative diversity for an eye that sees everything grey. The physiological origin of this attitude is another factor that arises from the monetary economy; the experience of the subject, mediated at all times by the rationality of money, makes it result in an insensitivity to the diversity of objects, which does not mean that the contrasts are not perceived, but only superficially, since in the differentiation of the cases – and the cases themselves – there can be no preference over an object, since, since there is equivalence of all chaos in the same form – money, the qualitative peculiarity is emptied for all cases. Observe then, that what Simmel shows is that the Blassée attitude is, on the contrary, a social dissociator, the strongest cohesive of modern urban life, being a faithful reflection of the internalized monetary economy.
Something important must be noted after the above, Simmel is raised that the spatial relationships and the circulation and arrangement of objects in agglomeration, are a condition, on the one hand and representation (symbol) on the other, of the reciprocity relationships of the men. Large cities enable the best exchange, the best commodification of objects - and people - than small towns, therefore, agglomerates them and allows their interchangeability in a transparent way. For this very reason, Simmel will find the Blassée attitude to be the urbanite's lifestyle attitude; the city is the quintessential seat of Blassée attitude. In the city accumulates the greatest number of things and men that stimulates the nervous system to its maximum expression (maximum degrees of excitement), and that same conditioning medium becomes the opposite factor that leads to the attitude of the urbanite. The attitude protects from two very typical dangers of metropolitan life: 1) indifference and 2) extreme susceptibility to mutual suggestions. Simmel expresses that:
“The metropolitan way of life inseparably comprises in a single whole its own extension, the combinations of its elements, the rhythm of its appearance and disappearance, the forms under which it is satisfied, as well as the motives that impart unity to it. in the strictest sense…”
For this reason, what appears directly in the metropolitan outgoing style as a dissociation is one of its purest forms of Socialization. The foregoing leads Simmel to an important observation, not only for the particular analysis he is carrying out, but also for his sociology in general: that the urban way of life goes back to the most primitive forms of social life; goes back to a general trend of social life, one of the few that can weave a general law:
“(…) a relatively small circle that is firmly closed in front of and against other neighboring, strange or, in some way, antagonistic circles. However, this circle is tightly coherent and only allows each member a narrow field for the development of their individual qualities and for the realization of free movements whose responsibility lies with themselves (...)”
The most general mental phenomenon of modern urban life, grants a type of freedom that other conditions without equality in other conditions, although it expresses the previous general law, at the origin of all groups (family, parties, companies, etc). Individual freedom cannot be allowed – complete – much less the development of the internal and external personality. Simmel will say that social development proceeds from two different but corresponding directions: the first, he notices that as the social unit grows, its internal unity is proportionally reflected and rigidity is softened through mutual connections and relations with the environment. Exterior. At the same time (2nd) the individual advances in terms of freedom than in the initial difficult way. Thus, the individual achieves a specific peculiarity, which makes the Division of Labor of the growing collectivity possible and necessary. Consequently, it must be said that the city is the seat par excellence of the highest social division of labor. Urban life transformed the fight against nature for survival, into a fight between men for profit. The city makes it necessary for man to become specialized in an activity that cannot be easily dispossessed by another. In this same way, man also ensures an individuality within the collectivity, but in a negative way. Well, he creates a difficulty in asserting his individuality. This brings us to the crucial point of the sociological a priori of Empirical Social Life - of the non-social in the individual. In this way, the fragmentation of the Self or of the individual shows that man needs to fragment himself in order to belong to a fragmented whole. This phenomenon presents – as Professor Gilberto Aldana affirms in the analysis of Simmel's urban sociology – individualization as objectification. This is due to what Simmel called, as we have already pointed out, Tragedy of Culture.
Simmel characterizes modern life as the preponderance of the objective spirit over the subjective. The life of the modern urbanite is the development of objective culture that transcends personal life. The relationship between individual and society ends with the complete subjugation of the individual against the objective spirit, since it has become a gear of an enormous organization of powers, which take away the possibility of transforming (working-objectifying) something from its full subjectivity; the individual in his modern urban lifestyle has only a purely objective way of life.
No comments:
Post a Comment