Abstract
In the preceding chapters, it has been shown that Simmel’s principle of reciprocity, which is applied by sociologists on the horizontal level of interaction, also functions in the vertical direction as well. According to the program of genetic phenomenology, reciprocity works bottom up and top down within a single culture. In this chapter, it will be shown that reciprocity applies to the relations between different cultures that are closely related. Europe and America provide the most succinct example of this process. Here, too, the qualitative view makes clear that sexual life is the basic level of human culture, underlying other levels of vita activa such as working or marketing.
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References
Simmel, “Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur,” Das Individuelle Gesetz (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1968), 118.
Ernst Cassirer, “Die Philosophie der Griechen,” in Max Dessoir, Die Geschichte der Philosophie (Wiesbaden: Fourier, 1927), 88.
Ibid.
See Simmel’s letter to Husserl in Buch des Dankes an Georg Simmel, 85.
Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, trans. Quentin Lauer (London: Harper Torchbooks, 1965).
Ibid., 156.
Ibid., 157.
Ibid., 158.
See Simmel’s letters to Hermann Keyserling in Das Individuelle Gesetz: “One could be supra-national to a degree, that, if an American world-culture is emerging … there is no reason for complaint. Why should Europe have the primacy of culture forever?” (245).
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. J. Strachey (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1961), 75.
Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn (New York: Grove Press, 1961), 217.
Ingo Zamperoni, Fremdes Land Amerika (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 2016); Ingo Zamperoni, Anderland (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 2018).
Abraham Cahan, Yekl and The Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories (New York: Dover Publications, 1970).
Donald N. Levine, Ellwood B. Carter, Eleanor Miller Gorman, “Simmel’s Influence on American Sociology,” American Journal of Sociology Vol. 81, No. 4 (1976).
Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Modern Societies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992).
See Kurt H. Wolff, The Sociology of Georg Simmel (Illinois: The Free Press, 1950).
See “Simmelian Tie,” Wikipedia, last modified January 26, 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simmelian_tie
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See McKinnon, “Elective Affinities of the Protestant Ethic: Weber and the Chemistry of Capitalism,” Sociological Theory 28 (1), 108–126.
Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms, 67. See Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, 105.
See Simmel about the analogy between money and intellectuality, both of which are elements of objective culture, and about an all-out trade war between the major economies and allies: “The intensity of modern economic conflicts in which no mercy is shown is only an apparent counter-instance of such features of the money economy since these conflicts are unleashed by direct interest in money itself. For it is not only that they take place in an objective sphere in which the importance of the person lies not only in his character but also in his embodiment of a particular objective economic potential, and where the deadly antagonistic competitor of today is the cartel ally of tomorrow. Rather, what is of primary importance is that the rules established within one sphere may be totally different from those considered valid outside that sphere but which are none the less influenced by them” (The Philosophy of Money, 470).
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Fellmann, F. (2021). Forms of Culturalization. In: Rethinking Georg Simmel's Social Philosophy. SpringerBriefs in Sociology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57351-5_3
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