BEGINNING
Georg Simmel: Sociological aesthetics
The consideration of human action always takes its renewed appeal of the endless varied mixture of similar, constant return of less fundamental tones and changing abundance of individual variation, that is like no other the whole.
original on a surprisingly small number Motifs can be the trends, developments, attributed differences of human history.
What has been said of poetry: that both poetry as drama in the changing configuration of only a very limited number of external and internal fate outlets existed. -
applies to every sphere of human activity, and the more we look at the areas, the more blended into the number of basic motives, and finally is the most general view of life almost everywhere only in a duality lead, as their struggle, compromise , combination seems to ever new shapes all life.
On such dualism of thought and life directions in which the basic tendencies of human nature would come to its simplest expression tends, every period, due to the immense wealth of its phenomena.
but only in symbols and examples, is that deep conflict of all human life and understand every major historical period seems a different embodiment of this opposition as its basic type and archetype.
Sun appeared at the beginning of Greek philosophy the great contrast between Heraclitus and the Eleatic: for that all was being in perpetual flux, in the multiplicity of infinite contrasts, which react constantly in each other, takes him to the world process, the Eleatic however, it was beyond certificate of the deceitful mind only one static being, encompassing not cleaved, the absolute, undifferentiated unity of things.
That was the basic form which took the major faction of all human being to the Greek thought and was the subject for its entire development.
joined with the Christianity in a different configuration: the antithesis of divine and earthly principle.
all, specifically Christian life, this seemed like the ultimate and absolute opposition of nature directions, to which all differences of will and thought had to be returned, but the pointing itself in no more deeper.
The philosophies of the newer The fundamental period have continued to the contrast between nature and spirit.
The present has finally, for those dualism that runs between the people, even by the individual mind his own furrow, the formula of socialist and found the individualistic tendency. This in turn seems
a final difference of the typical characters of people and institutions expressed, found a water divide, separate from the its directions, and then, but back together smoothly to determine the reality according to the different masses of their participation.
shines through all aspects of life to extend the line that separates this thinking and the most remote areas, the most varied matters reveals the form of character education, which becomes evident in the social policy in the opposition Socialist and individualistic tendencies.
you definitely do not so much the depths of life in purely material interests than the heights of aesthetic ideology.
The essence of aesthetic contemplation and representation for us is that prominent individuals in the type, in the accidental, the law, in the outer and the ephemeral nature and meaning of things.
This reduction to that which is important to her and ever, does not seem to be able to escape phenomenon.
also the lowest, per se Ugliest, can be in a relationship of colors and shapes, of feelings and experiences set, which lends charming significance, in the most indifferent, the us is in its isolated appearance banal or repulsive, we need only a deep and loving enough to sink, This order also to feel as beam and word of the last unit of all things, from their wells and for the beauty and meaning of every philosophy, every religion, every moment of our highest sense of surveys struggle for symbols.
If we think this possibility of aesthetic depth to an end, there is beauty in the values of things no difference.
The belief Pantheism is aesthetic, each point involves the possibility of redemption lights to absolute aesthetic significance, for any sufficiently keen eye for the beauty, the whole point out of the universe.
But this individual has lost the importance it has just as an individual and as distinguished from everything else.
Because this can not keep that one says, which would leave the same everywhere possible aesthetic formation and deepening of the things of context, qualitative difference in their full beauty room, it meant only aesthetic equivalence, not sameness, they raise only the differences the rank in this department on, but not the colors and sounds, the senses and thoughts, the Allegro and Adagio.
This view, which wants to reconcile the aesthetic charms of Allgleichheit and oneness with those of aesthetic individualism does, but its claim is not quite enough.
It is precisely the scale of values, the structure of the important-about the indifference, the organic growth and development that can grow out of your blunt the animate, from the crude, the fine is, the peaks of this series a background, a height and luminosity that is achieved in aesthetic equivalence of objects by any of them.
For them cascades down an equally bright sheen over everything, while the same is the lowest the highest, but also the highest to the lowest.
differences on our sensations are linked, the value of not less than the sensation of the skin or sense heat.
We can not always walk on the same level, at least not at the highest, which is accessible to us in our best moments, and so we must pay the elevation of the lowest in the aesthetic level with the waiver of those recoveries that only rare can be isolated and only over the surface of a deeper, darker and darker Raise world.
But not only this conditionality all feeling by the difference that we like than to grazing chain and imperfection sensitivity of our system builds the value of things in their distance from each other: on that same distance in itself lies a value of beauty.
That the world to light and darkness is divorced, that their elements do not merge into equivalence informally in each other, but each have a hierarchy of values his place between the higher and lower, that the ruder and Lower the meaning of his existence is find to support and background of the Fine, Hellen, his chief: This is in itself a high aesthetic appeal and value of world view.
divorce Thus irreconcilable ways: The "worth a thousand depths to one height's sake, and the value of things is in their summit, from which he returned beaming allocates all Niedere its meaning and its value measure - he is never Others understand that the worm will hear the voice of God speak and the right of each thing, to apply for as much as the other perceives as justice.
And who lack the drama of the structure and grading, shaping the world view to the more or less their beauty does not like - He will never live in an inner world with others, sees the harmony of things in their equality, that charm and ugliness the sight, foolish chaos and meaningful only concealing robes are behind which he sees everywhere the same beauty and soul of being, thirst for his soul.
here to search for a reconciliation, according to a concept and theory, which demonstrates this opposite direction of the value of feelings as friendly and in a higher tendency running together, because in fact prevail in many souls both with shared rights: This is something like: the contrast between day and night away to prove because there is a twilight.
Here we are at the source of all things human, the flow depending on the areas through which they, the enormous contrasts of political socialism and individualism, the pantheistic or atomic realization of aesthetic adjustment or differentiation can flourish.
These sources themselves, these last being directions, we can not describe in words, only those individual phenomena, they can in their governance of the empirical in life, as it were, when mixed with them, they recognize or draw at least they are on as the unknown forces that shape the matter of our being to its forms, forever unreconciled and precisely because each of the other fresh stimulus exciting, the life of our species his restlessness, his struggle, his swing between opposites guaranteed, so that the satisfaction of the one attracting the most powerful storm of the other.
And this alone is what one might call their reconciliation: not barren in the evidence that they are reduced to a conceptual entity, but rather that they meet continually in a class of beings, indeed, in every single soul and fight.
Because that is precisely the height and glory of the human soul, its living that life, their non-handling units, contribute in every moment of the forces in the leaves that are completely incompatible per se but from disparate sources to flow completely estuaries.
On top of all aesthetic Motive is the symmetry.
order in which things idea makes sense to bring harmony, one must first make it balanced, make up the parts of the whole together, arrange them evenly around a center point.
The shaping power of the people to the randomness and confusion of the design is only natural sensualizes so in the quickest, most visible and direct way.
So the first step is through the aesthetic mere acquiescence of the futility of things out of the symmetry, to later refinement and deepening of ties in the Irregular just back to the asymmetry, the extreme aesthetic appeal.
wins in symmetrical formation of the first visible form of rationalism.
As long as life in general still instinctively, emotionally, is irrational, the aesthetic salvation comes from him in such a rationalistic form. If
understanding, calculation, adjustment have only penetrated flee the aesthetic need again in his opposition, and examined the irrational and its external form, the unsymmetrical.
The lower level of the aesthetic impulse in favor of system building that holds the objects in a symmetrical image.
Sun introduced, for example, penitential books of the sixth century, the sins and punishment systems in of mathematical precision, more even structure.
The first attempt, the moral errors deal with a whole mind was so in the form of a possible mechanical, transparent, symmetrical scheme, if they were bent under the yoke of the system, could sense it the faster and, as with the least resistance record.
System form is broken as soon as one's own importance of the facility has grown internally and it needs to borrow not only from one context to another, at this stage so faded and the aesthetic appeal of symmetry, with which you deal put the elements initially.
One can now the role played by the symmetry in social formations, recognize quite how seemingly purely aesthetic interests caused by material expediency and vice versa, into aesthetic subjects in the formations that seem to follow the pure expediency.
We find, for example, in various ancient cultures, the co-closure of ten members of the group to a special unit - in military, fiscal, criminological and other ties - often so that ten such sub-groups again a higher unit Hundred form.
The cause of this symmetrical structure of the group was certainly the lighter clarity, Bezeichenbarkeit, Manageability.
The peculiar stylized image of the company that came out from these organizations was found to be a success simple utility.
But we know also that this meaning of the "Hundred" Finally, often only for the preservation of the mere name carried: that often contained hundreds, often less than a hundred individuals.
In medieval Barcelona, for example, the Senate was called the hundred, although he had about two hundred members.
This deviation from the original effectiveness of the organization, while at the same time the fiction was maintained, shows the transition of the merely utilitarian to the aesthetic, the appeal of symmetry, the architectural tendencies in the social sector.
The tendency to symmetry, to a uniform arrangement of elements according to principles is continuous, then continue all despotic societies own.
Justus Moser wrote 1772: "The gentlemen of the General Department would like all to simple rules have returned. Thus we move away from the true plan of nature that show their wealth in the manifold, and pave the way for despotism, the all want to force a few rules. "
The symmetrical arrangement makes the mastery of the many made of light from a point .
The impetus for more contact, with less resistance, more predictable by a symmetrically arranged medium continues as if the internal structure and boundaries of the parts are irregular and fluctuating.
thus wanted leveling Charles V, all irregular and peculiar political structure and rights in the Netherlands and they transform into a in all parts of the uniform organization, "he hated," writes one historian of this era, "the old charters and obstinate privileges which his ideas of symmetry disturbed "
And rightly has been called the Egyptian pyramids as symbols of the political structure, to the great oriental despot performed. a completely symmetrical structure of the Company whose elements upward in size lose weight fast, increase the amount of power to fast until they terminate in a tip that uniformly dominates the whole.
evolved this form of organization and from their sheer usefulness to the needs of despotism, it is growing it into a formal, aesthetic meaning: the appeal of symmetry, with their inner balance, their outward unity, their harmonious relationship between the parts into a single center looks safe with the aesthetic appeal of the exercise by the autocracy, the unconditional nature of a country will on many minds.
Therefore, the liberal form of government is inclined reverse the asymmetry.
lifts all directly Macaulay, the enthusiastic Liberal showing the actual than the strength of the British constitutional life. We "think, he says, not" to the symmetry, but much of the usefulness, and we never remove an anomaly merely because it is an anomaly, and we set up any standards of greater extent than is the special case to which it currently is, requires. These are the rules that have guided the whole, from King John to Queen Victoria, the considerations of our 250 parliaments. "
Here is thus the ideal of symmetry and logical complement to all individuals from a point of its meaning is to the benefit of that other discarded which every element is live independently under its own terms, and present the whole thing as natural an irregular and uneven appearance leaves.
is Yet even in this asymmetry, this liberation of the individual case by the prejudicing by his counterpart, an aesthetic appeal in addition to all their real motives.
This overtone sounds much out of Macaulay's words, he comes from the feeling that this organization brings the inner life of the state for most typical expression in most harmonious shape.
most decisively, the influence of aesthetic forces social facts in the modern conflict between socialist and individualist tendency visible.
that society as a whole is a work of art in which every part has a recognizable meaning in virtue of his contribution to the whole receives, that instead of the rhapsodic randomness with which passed the performance of individuals now to benefit or detriment of the whole, a uniform all productions directive determines appropriate, that instead of kraftverschwendenden competition and struggle of the individual against each other entering an absolute harmony of the work - the ideas of socialism, business undoubtedly aesthetic interests and - what other reasons we also reject his claims mag - they refute any case, the popular opinion that socialism, only sprung to the needs of the stomach, also only lead to them, and the social question is not only an ethical but also a ästhetische.1)
The rational organization of Society has, quite apart from its palpable consequences for the individuals, a high aesthetic appeal, they will make the life of the whole work of art as it can now hardly be the life of the individual. to include
The combined entity more sedate our view is capable of more decisive is the application of aesthetic categories of individual, sensible walk up to the social structures.
This is about the same aesthetic appeal as the exercise which the machine can.
The absolute usefulness and reliability of the movements, the extreme reduction of resistance and friction, the harmonious meshing of the smallest and largest components: This gives the machine itself from the face of a strange beauty that is repeated the organization of a factory in enhanced mass and to repeat the socialist state in its broadest.
This peculiar interest devoted to harmony and symmetry, in which his rationalist socialism Character is and with whom he wants to stylize the social life as it occurs purely external out that socialist utopias construct the local details of their ideal cities or states and with the idea of symmetry in either circular or square shape, the villages or building arranged.
In Campanella sunshine state is the plan of the capital clearly laid out mathematically, just as the daily schedule of the citizens and the gradation of their rights and obligations.
This general train of socialist plans reflects only in raw form for the deep attraction to the idea of harmonious, internally balanced, all the resistance of the irrational individuality overcoming organization of human activity carries - an interest which, quite beyond the material, tangible consequences of such organizational forms, certainly as a purely formal aesthetic one never quite vanishing factor in social arrangements.
When the attraction of beauty has put into it, that his idea would mean a reduction in force of thought, the rolling of a maximum number of ideas with a minimum of effort, so filled with symmetric, to set free construction of the group, such as striving of the Socialists, this requirement perfectly.
The individualistic society with its diverse interests, unreconciled with its tendencies, her countless times started and - as worn by individuals - as often interrupted development series: one such company offers the mind a restless, so to speak, uneven image, their perception calls constantly new innervations, understanding new effort, while the socialist, harmonious society its organic unity, its symmetrical arrangement, the mutual contact of her movements in common centers of the observing mind is a maximum of perceptions, one embracing the social image with a minimum possible of intellectual effort,-a fact the aesthetic meaning much more than this abstract formulation suggests, the psychological constitutions influence in a socialist society would have.
symmetry means the aesthetic function of each element from its interaction with all others, but at the same time isolation of the so called circle, while asymmetrical designs allow the individual rights of each element is more room for free and far-flung relations.
This corresponds to the internal organization of socialism and the experience that all historical approaches to socialist constitution took place only in strictly closed circles, who rejected any relations with outside powers located.
This unity, both the aesthetic Character of symmetry as the political character of the socialist state is, means that it is not emphasized in view of the liquidated international transport more generally, socialism could only be uniform throughout the civilized world, but not used in any one country to rule.
But now shows the validity length of aesthetic motives is that they are at least the same force and in favor of the opposite external social ideal.
The beauty that has come to feel in fact that, almost exclusively individualistic character.
It carries mainly to individual phenomena, whether in their opposition to the characteristics and living conditions of the mass, it is in direct opposition to it.
In this self-oppose and isolate the individual against the general, against what is true for all, rests in large part the really romantic beauty - even if we condemn both ethically.
just that the individual is not only the element of a larger whole, but even a whole is that now fits more into that as such is not symmetrical organization of socialist interests - precisely this is an aesthetically appealing image.
Even the most perfect social mechanism is very mechanism and is devoid of freedom, which, as we construe it philosophically may, but appears as a condition of beauty.
are so well because of the recently came out on the world views held most individualistic: that of Rembrandt and the Nietzsche consistently supported by aesthetic reasons.
Yes, so far is the individualism of the modern sense of beauty, that flowers, especially the modern culture, flowers, may no longer bind to ostriches: they are left alone, binds a maximum single very loosely.
Each is too little for themselves, they are aesthetic individuality, which together do not arrange themselves to a balanced unit, while the undeveloped, as it still more in the generic type remaining meadows and woodland flowers just delightful bouquets give.
This binding of the like stimuli to irreconcilable differences points to the peculiar source of aesthetic feelings.
less safe we know about this, we feel it likely that has been the usefulness of the material objects, their usefulness for conservation and improvement of the living species, the starting point for its value of beauty.
Perhaps for us the beautiful, which has tested the species to be useful and what we do, therefore, insofar as it lives in us, like prepared without us as individuals, yet the real Usefulness of the object comrade.
This is long hinweggeläutert by the length of the historical development and heredity, and the material motives, from which comes our aesthetic sense, are in on time, distance, and let the beautiful way, "the character of" pure form, some supernatural nature and unreality, as the same transfiguring touch puts on his own experiences of the past.
Now, the manifold is a very useful, in different adjustment periods, so, in different provinces of the same period, often of opposite content.
particularly those great opposites of all historical Life: the organization of society for which the individual only element and element, and the evaluation of the individual, the society is only base gain, owing to the variety of historical conditions, alternately forehand and mix in every moment in most variable proportions.
This is now the conditions are met, the way the aesthetic interests of a social life can turn as fast as the other.
The apparent contradiction that the same aesthetic appeal accrues to the harmony of the whole, in which the individual disappears, and the self-assertion of the individual, can easily be explained if all Sense of beauty, the distillate, the idealization, the serene form, resonate with the feelings, adjustments and usefulness of the species in the individual, those on the real meaning has been passed only as a spiritual and formalist.
reflect Then all manifolds and all the contradictions of historical development in the vastness of our aesthetic sensibility, the Sun can make to the opposite poles of the social interests of the same strength of stimulus.
The inner significance of the artistic styles can be viewed as a consequence of the different distance interpretation, they produce between us and things.
changed all Artworks the viewing distance, in which we originally set, and of course the reality.
it brings us a hand closer to their true and deepest sense, it puts us in a more direct relationship, behind the cool strangeness of the outside world, she tells us the soulfulness of being, by which it is used, and we understand.
but also donates every art a distance from the immediacy of things, they can withdraw the concreteness of the stimuli and draws a veil between us and them, like that of fine blue fragrance that is spun by distant mountains.
make, on both sides of this antagonism is equally strong stimuli, the voltage between them, their distribution is the diversity of the demands on the work of art, each artistic style his own character.
"in naturalism, in its opposition to all true" stylization, at first seems to outweigh the proximity of the objects.
The naturalistic art wants from each piece of the world to get its own significance, while the stylized a prejudice requirement of beauty and significance between us and the things is.
From the bottom of the immediate impressions of reality, all art is nourished, if it is also an art and only when, it rises above this floor, it shall provide a inner, unconscious reduction process forward, to convince us of its truth and importance, with the naturalistic art this reduction is short and easy.
It requires therefore not as strong and far-reaching self-activity of the genius of sending, but takes his approach to things in the most direct routes.
So now the connection which the naturalistic art in many cases - though of course not at all necessary - having a sensual lust.
Because that is the point from which to take place on the fastest and most direct a shakeup of the entire internal system: the object and the subjective reaction to it are here closest together.
Still lacking also naturalism is not of a very fine long-range effect of the stimulus of things when we pay attention to the fondness with which he has no objects in the most ordinary life, in the humble and mundane.
For very sensitive souls, the removal of the peculiar work of art comes from the immediacy of the experience just then out particularly when the object is very close to us.
For less delicate sense of it requires to make it taste this irritation of the distance, a greater distance of the object itself: Italian-stylized landscapes, historical dramas, each uncultivated and childlike aesthetic feeling is more fantastic, the fact also must be the object on which is the artistic form to its effect.
finer nerves need this as it material support do not, for them in the artistic form of the object of all the mysterious charm of the distance is from the things, the liberation of their dull pressure, the momentum of the nature of the mind, and are more intense they feel that, to the closer, lower, material on earth, it takes place.
One can perhaps say that the artificial sense of presence is essentially the appeal of distance strongly emphasized to the appeal of the approach.
And it knows how these to give not only on the indicated paths of naturalism.
Rather is this strange tendency to let things possible to act from a distance is a common sign in many fields of modern times.
His is the preference for spatially and temporally distant cultures and styles.
The Remote attracted very many, bright up-and abschwankende ideas and so complies with our versatile excitation need, but sounds like any of these strange and distant ideas because of their irrelevance to most personal and material interests of our own but only weakly, and therefore seems the weakened nerve only comfortable to excitation.
So now the
now perceived as vivid charm of the fragment, the mere hint of the aphorism, the symbol, the undeveloped art styles.
All these forms, which are native to all the arts put us in a distance from the whole and full of things, they speak to us "like from a distance," the reality is in them not having an even safety, but with immediately withdrawn fingertips.
The literary style of the century, the latest refinements in Paris and Vienna are trained to avoid the direct designation of things, says it only touches a corner, with the word of only one corner, printing, and the thing coincide with any as possible isolated pieces.
There is a pathological phenomenon of "their fear is," is of the hereby become a low-level endemic: the fear to come into too close contact with the objects, a result of hyperesthesia, which is all direct and vigorous contact a pain.
therefore act by the subtlety, spirituality, differential sensitivity so prevalent in many modern people in a negative taste, that is, the more vulnerable to damage by non-commitments in the specific Excluding the unsympathetic, the repulsion by much, so often Most of the necessary circuit of stimuli, while the positive taste the energetic Saying Yes, the joyful and rigorous grasping of pleasing, just having the energies actively appropriating large deficits.
Naturalism in its crude forms was a desperate attempt to get over the distance to take the proximity and immediacy of things, but no sooner was one they all close, so the sensitive nerves could no longer her touch tolerated and shied away, as if they had touched hot coals.
is true not only of the reaction in the painting, which was mediated by the Scottish school, and in the literature, which led from Zolaismus the symbolism, it is also true of scientific trends: so if the materialism which believes reality to engage directly in front of "new-Kantian" or subjective beliefs retreats that can break things only through the medium of the soul or distilled before they become knowledge, so if about the professional building detail work in all the sciences, the call for abstract and generalization, claims that the agency is in over-looking distance of all of the specific details, so if the ethics panel "usefulness" before later looking up, often religious, from the sensuous immediacy of widely divergent principles must withdraw. makes
at more than one point of our culture, this Tendency to alienation felt dominant, taking it for granted that I mean by a definitely perceived, that is qualitative, internal relationship to the things that I only because there is no direct expression of the fact, returns lead to the quantitative of distancing, the only Symbol and approach can be considered.
is the dissolution of the family connected with the aversion against "Familiensimpelei, the feeling unbearable tightness that the bondage to the next circle arouses so often in modern humans, and involved him so often in tragic conflict.
The ease of transport in the larger distances towards strengthened this "fear of contact."
"The" historical spirit, the abundance of internal relations to spatially and temporally distant interests, makes us more sensitive to the shock and confusion that come to us from the immediate vicinity and contact the people and things.
as a main cause of that fear of contact but I find the deeper penetration of the cash economy, which destroys the natural economic conditions of earlier times, more and more - even if this destruction is not yet completely succeeded.
The money is coming between man and man, between man and product, as a mediator, as a common denominator, the only one in Value must be brought to continue and be implemented in other values.
stand side of the cash economy are the subjects of economic intercourse not directly opposite, our interest in them breaks only in the medium of money, not their own substantive meaning, but how much they are measured at the intermediate value, value, is the expansion of human mind, many times makes his purpose awareness on this intermediate level maintenance, as the center of interest and the stationary pole, while all the practical things over drive in restless flight, loaded with the contradiction that but actually they alone can give final satisfaction, yet gain after their assessment at this characterless, without qualities scale their level of value and interest.
So we the money is with the enlargement of its role in an ever more detailed distance from the objects, the immediacy of the impressions, the value of feelings, invite interested parties is weakened, our contact with them is broken and we feel it as it only by mediation through that their full, private, immediate being can not quite get a word.
seem So very diverse phenomena of modern culture have a deep psychological train together, the one in the abstract way than the distance enlargement tendency can call between the man and his objects and the aesthetic field to win only his most obvious forms.
And if alternate so again phenomena and epochs as the naturalistic and the sensationalist, in which just a solid self-adjusting to things, a Einschlürfen unremitting reality is dominant, so this must not be misled, for just the oscillations between two extremes to prove the same neurasthenia, which already belonged to each its own.
a time, which also refers to Böcklin and Impressionism, for naturalism and symbolist, for socialism and Nietzsche says, their highest life stimuli apparently in the form of the variation between the extreme poles of all things human, weary, between hypersensitivity and insensitivity wavering nerves can bring only the abgeklärteste shape and the rough area, the most delicate and the stimuli allergröbsten new ideas.
In: the future. Edited by Maximilian Harden, 17 Volume 1896, No. 5 of 31 10. P. 204-216.
