Introduction

Abstract

Our epitaph for Georg Simmel’s tombstone — there might not have been one had he lived to a ripe old age — would be (with apologies to J.W. von Goethe):

UNWISSEND OB WAS ER WEBTE, AUCH ER IST SO EIN WEBER GEWESEN

(‘Unaware of what he was weaving, he too was such a weaver’)

No weaver knows what he is weaving. The complete accomplishment contains accents, relations, and values, purely in accord with the matter-of-fact reality, and indifferent towards the originator having or not having known that this would be the success of his labours.

(Simmel, Weibliche Kultur, 1911: 269)

It is only with strong modifications that the saying is valid: that you learn to know a person by his works; sometimes we are more than our work, sometimes our work is more that we are, sometimes both stand as if alien, opposite each other, or only overlap with random segments.

(ibid.: 317)

[Simmel’s] method is to select some bounded, finite phenomenon from the world of flux; to examine the multiplicity of elements which compose it; and to ascertain the cause of their coherence by disclosing its form. Secondarily, he investigates the origins of this form and its structural implications.

(Levine, Georg Simmel: On Individuality and Social Forms, 1971: xxxi)