Georg Simmel: Three Forms of Individualism

and Historical Understanding

Efraim Podoksik

In “Individualism,” a short essay published in 1917, the philosopher Georg

Simmel (1858–1918) distinguished between two forms of individualism: the
Romanic and the Germanic.1 Whereas the former regards every human being
as representing the human type in general, the latter emphasizes each individ-
ual’s uniqueness. According to Simmel, these two attitudes represent two dif-
ferent ways in which European culture formulated for itself the notion of the
individual.2
The contextual significance of this conceptualization is twofold. It fits
well in the kind of discourse adopted during World War I by prominent Ger-
man thinkers such as Thomas Mann, Werner Sombart, and Wilhelm Wundt.3
In their attempt to bestow cultural significance on the war, these thinkers

This article is part of my research on Georg Simmel’s philosophy supported by the Israeli Science
Foundation (grant no. 220/05).
1. Simmel never analytically distinguishes between the terms individualism and individuality,
and therefore I use them interchangeably.
2. Georg Simmel, “Individualismus,” in Georg Simmel Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1989–), 13:209–306; hereafter cited as GSG.
3. See Thomas Mann, Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man (1918), trans. W. D. Morris (New York:
Ungar, 1983); Werner Sombart, Händler und Helden: Patriotische Besinnungen (Munich: Duncker und
Humblot, 1915); Wilhelm Wundt, Die Nationen und ihre Philosophie (Leipzig: Kröner, 1915). On the
attitude of German intellectuals to World War I, see Wolfgang J. Mommsen, ed., Kultur und Krieg: Die
Rolle der Intellektuellen, Künstler und Schriftsteller im Ersten Weltkrieg (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1996).
On Simmel’s position, see Uwe Barrelmeyer, “Der Krieg, die Kultur und die Soziologie: Georg Simmel
und die deutschen Soziologen im Ersten Weltkrieg,” Sociologia Internationalis 32 (1994): 163–90.
New German Critique 109, Vol. 37, No. 1, Winter 2010
DOI 10.1215/0094033X-2009-020 © 2010 by New German Critique, Inc.

119
120 Georg Simmel

emphasized, overstated even, the differences between cultural legacies of the

rival European nations. The struggle of European powers could thus be per-
ceived as a struggle between different systems of values and ways of life. It
could be rationalized as a conflict between culture and civilization, hero and
merchant, cosmopolitanism and internationalism, or the Teutonic and the
Latin spirits. Quite often in these polemics, the whole set of values composing
Western liberal civilization was rejected. Such words as civilization, democ-
racy, progress, rationalism, and positivism were used pejoratively. Mann, for
example, scorned the concepts of progress and democracy in his Reflections of
a Nonpolitical Man.
Yet Simmel’s conceptualization shows the limits of this rejection, as not
every value ascribed to Western modernity could be easily discarded and substi-
tuted by a contrary value. Individualism/individuality was one such notion.4
Unwilling or unable to give up on its positive connotations, German thinkers
preferred to regard it as a German value. Germany was said to have developed its
own authentic notion of individualism, unrelated to that of France or England.
This view had a long history in Germany. For example, the idea of two
rival sorts of individualism appears in Ferdinand Tönnies’s Gemeinschaft
und Gesellschaft (Community and Society, 1887). Of those two ideal types of
social life, Tönnies clearly favored Gemeinschaft (community). He regarded
it as less modern, less rationalistic, and less atomistic but, at the same time,
as more authentic and natural. Yet he did not argue (as one might expect) that
Gemeinschaft was a less individualistic form of social organization. On the
contrary, according to him, individualism characterizes both community and
society, though their individualisms differ.5
This view naturally followed from Tönnies’s methodological individual-
ism, as he based the entire analysis of the differences between community and
society on his theory of individual human will. This reflected a typical bias of
German Geisteswissenschaften (humanities) toward methodological individu-
alism. Wilhelm Dilthey’s Verstehen (understanding) hermeneutics and Max
Weber’s Verstehen sociology are perhaps more familiar examples of this bias.6
And although this pattern of thinking also had its critics (such as Wundt),7 in

4. The other was probably freedom. See Leonard Krieger, The German Idea of Freedom: His-
tory of a Political Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957).
5. Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Civil Society, ed. Jose Harris, trans. Jose Harris and Mar-
garet Hollis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
6. See Theodore Plantinga, Historical Understanding in the Thought of Wilhelm Dilthey (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1980); and Richard Swedberg, “The Changing Picture of Max Weber’s
Sociology,” Annual Review of Sociology 29 (2003): 283–306.
7. Wilhelm Wundt, Probleme der Völkerspsychologie (Leipzig: Wiegandt, 1911), 51–83.
 Efraim Podoksik 121

Germany it certainly enjoyed a greater preeminence than, say, in France, where

the tradition of social studies was long dominated by attempts to overcome
methodological individualism, and where the very word individualisme lacked
unambiguously positive connotations.8
The idea that a German concept of individuality existed and possessed
little in common with its liberal counterpart is also accepted by many scholars.
Thus Gerald Izenberg claims that one should distinguish between the concepts
of individualism and individuality because the two are antithetical to each
other.9 The former refers to the notion of self-interest, leading to the ideals of
social liberty and democracy, whereas the latter frequently possesses anti-
liberal aspects. According to Izenberg, only German Romantics used the word
individuality, although the idea behind this word was shared by European
Romantics in general. They “believed that individuality demanded the expan-
sion of the self towards infinity, and all of them insisted that this was not only
compatible with, but dependent on, a fusion with totality conceived, or at least
named, as a finite entity—nature, woman, form, Absolute, God, state.”10 Louis
Dumont takes a similar line, speaking about the synthesis of holism and self-
cultivated individualism that he attributes specifically to Germany. Being hos-
tile in its essence to liberal individualism, this synthesis, according to Dumont,
was one of the principal features of the “German ideology.”11
Both these interpretations, following Simmel’s aforementioned distinc-
tion between two kinds of individualism in European thought, help us remove
much of the ambiguity surrounding the history of the notion of individualism.12
Nevertheless, one can see a certain simplification in the picture they draw.
According to these interpretations, liberal individualism is opposed by one
and only one concept: the Romantic one. This concept is supposed to contain
two contrary elements: radical uniqueness and an attachment to some larger
totality. On this account, the Romantic conception of individuality is perceived
as essentially antiliberal.

8. On the German and French traditions of sociological thinking, see D. N. Levine, Visions of
the Sociological Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 152–211. See also Alexis
de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. H. Reeve (New York: Bantam, 2000), 618–27, as an
example of negative connotations that the social phenomenon of “individualism” could evoke.
9. Though useful, this taxonomy is a bit anachronistic, because these two words were used more
interchangeably.
10. Gerald Izenberg, Impossible Individuality: Romanticism, Revolution, and the Origins of
Modern Selfhood, 1787–1802 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 50.
11. Louis Dumont, German Ideology: From France to Germany and Back (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1994), 20.
12. See, e.g., Izenberg, Impossible Individuality, 5.
122 Georg Simmel

Now, it is true that radical individualism in German philosophy was

often pushed to its very opposite: to some form of holistic metaphysics. One
can claim, for example, that this happened to the “I” in the philosophy of
Johann Gottlieb Fichte.13 And it is also true that the German adepts of Roman-
tic individuality tended to be harsh critics of the modern liberal order.
Yet one must beware of overstating this point. First, the Romantic frame
of mind sometimes led to what can be called “Romantic liberalism.”14 Second,
even when the radical conception of individuality adopted an illiberal form, as
it certainly did in the cases of Max Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche, this did
not necessarily presuppose the assimilation of individuality into a larger whole,
such as the nation, the state, or the world. Nietzsche, for example, can hardly
be interpreted as a holist. Indeed, the fact that his individualism did not make
him adopt any form of communitarian patriotic ethics annoyed many German
intellectuals otherwise sympathetic to his ideas and legacy. Thus Mann com-
plained that Nietzsche’s Europeanism had contributed to Germany’s democra-
tization.15 And Simmel spoke of his uneasiness over Nietzsche’s ideal of “light
feet,” which he regarded as too “Romanic” and un-German.16
Such criticism did not mean, however, that Simmel himself fully sub-
scribed to the patriotic discourse of the immersion of individuality into totality.
It is true that he claimed (a year before the outbreak of the war) that the duty of
army service resided in the soldier’s “individual law.”17 Yet during the war he
was generally restrained in his rhetoric, fluctuating between the desire to be part
of the ongoing war effort and the intellectual detachment so characteristic of
his thinking.18 Thus, reflecting on possible advantages the war could bring,
he dreamed less about a renewed sense of community (which was perhaps
Tönnies’s hope)19 and more about the return to conditions that would enable
the conduct of a deeply private and intellectually satisfying life. He hoped that
the war would help purify German intellectual life, ridding it of mediocrity and

13. See Roger Hausheer, “Fichte and Schelling,” in German Philosophy since Kant, ed.
Anthony O’Hear (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 10.
14. See Nancy Rosenblum, Another Liberalism: Romanticism and the Reconstruction of Lib-
eral Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
15. E.g., Mann, Reflections, 60–61.
16. “Die Dialektik des deutschen Geistes,” in GSG, 16:36.
17. “Das individuelle Gesetz,” in GSG, 13:457–59.
18. On Simmel’s complex and changing position during the war, see Gregor Fitzi, “Patriotis-
mus und europäisches Ideal: Das Dilemma des gemäßigten Intellektuellen während des Ersten
Weltkriegs und seine aktuelle Bedeutung,” Simmel Studies 15 (2005): 39–61.
19. Arthur Mitzman, “Tönnies and German Society, 1887–1914: From Cultural Pessimism to
Celebration of the Volksgemeinschaft,” Journal of the History of Ideas 32 (1971): 507–24.
 Efraim Podoksik 123

the mechanical specialization of intellectual activities.20 This tension between

solidarity and intellectual detachment is tellingly exemplified by an anecdote
from Simmel’s own life that he revealed to one of his acquaintances. Having
volunteered to read lectures to soldiers on “Goethe’s love,” he discovered that
the listeners often left his lectures before their end. The reason was that the audi-
ence expected to hear some piquant stories about Goethe’s life; instead, however,
it was given a typically Simmelian highbrow philosophical presentation.21
Leaving aside the anecdotic level, it is important to realize that this dif-
ference between the cult of radical individuality and the ideal of totality as
the true expression of individuality is clearly outlined in Simmel’s philosophy.
Simmel was aware that at least two different alternatives existed to the Enlight-
enment liberal individualism. That is, contrary to the common perception, I
believe that Simmel distinguished among three, not two, forms of individual-
ism in European thought.22
One reason that this tripartite distinction largely remains unnoticed
is that Simmel never explicitly announced it. Moreover, it appears only in his
later works, having been preceded by a long intellectual evolution.23 The devel-
opment of Simmel’s idea of individuality consisted of three stages: from a
naturalistic notion of individuality, Simmel then pushed it in a more radical
direction and finally came to the verge of transcending the idea of separate
individuality altogether and lapsing into a peculiar form of holism.
These three stages more or less corresponded to the stages of his own
general development, usually divided into three periods. Although throughout
his life Simmel’s thought was marked by a strong influence of neo-Kantianism,
in his early period he was also influenced by Darwinism, anthropology, posi-
tivism, and Herbert Spencer’s sociology, whereas in the third period he moved
from neo-Kantianism toward phenomenology and life philosophy under the
influence of such thinkers as Henri Bergson.24 My claim is then that initially,

20. “Deutschlands innere Wandlung,” in GSG, 16:15–16. Mann cherished a similar ideal of
privacy and nonengagement, regarding them as a specific feature of the German character.
21. Ernst Morwitz, “Erinnerungen an Simmel,” in Buch des Dankes an Georg Simmel, ed.
K. Gassen and M. Landmann (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1958), 276–77.
22. The essay “Individualism” seems to be an exception. Though written in 1917, it reflects
Simmel’s earlier views rather than the position he came to hold during the last years of his life.
23. An explicit distinction of this sort can be found later in the work of Simmel’s student Her-
man Schmalenbach, “Individualität und Individualismus,” Kant-Studien 24 (1919–20): 365–88.
24. See, e.g., Michael Landmann, “Georg Simmel: Konturen seines Denken,” in Ästhetik und
Soziologie um die Jahrundertwende: Georg Simmel, ed. H. Böhringer and K. Gründer (Frankfurt
am Main: Klostermann, 1976), 3–11; and Werner Jung, Georg Simmel zur Einführung (Hamburg:
Junius, 1990), 26–28.
124 Georg Simmel

in accordance with his more positivistic inclinations at that stage, Simmel did
not clearly differentiate among various forms of individualism and espoused a
somewhat naturalistic idea of individuality. Later he distinguished between
two forms of individualism, which radicalized his notion of individuality. This
development corresponded with his properly neo-Kantian stage. Yet toward
the end of his life he attempted to develop a third notion of individualism. This
change was accompanied by his general turn toward life philosophy. It is this
final change in his understanding of individualism that escapes most commen-
tators’ attention.
To buttress this interpretation, I compare Simmel’s notion of individual-
ity with some aspects of his philosophy of history. I especially focus on what
Simmel considered a central epistemological problem of the philosophy of his-
tory: the question of the Nachbildung (reconstruction or, as it is traditionally
translated, re-creation) of the mental processes behind the actions of historical
agents.25 I hope to show that if one juxtaposes the changes in Simmel’s analysis
of individualism with those in his account of historical re-creation, one finds
that the two aspects of his thought proceed in parallel, transformation in one of
them demanding a corresponding evolution in the other.
I juxtapose Simmel’s views of individualism with his philosophy of his-
tory for two reasons. The first is pragmatic. Changes in Simmel’s view of history
can be quite easily tracked, because his writings on this subject are relatively
limited, and they are separated from each other by at least several years. There-
fore they can easily be divided into three blocks neatly corresponding to the
three aforementioned periods of Simmel’s development, each representing a
particular period in his thought.26
The other, more substantial reason is that Simmel’s theory of individu-
alism is analyzed here in the more general context of the German notion of
individuality. So it is important to pick up the area of Simmel’s philosophy

25. The best philosophical treatment of historical Verstehen in Simmel, although drawing almost
exclusively on his later works, can be found in Rudolph H. Weingartner, Experience and Culture: The
Philosophy of Georg Simmel (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1962), 99–127.
26. Simmel published the first edition of Problems of the Philosophy of History in 1892, and so
this work clearly belongs to the early period. See Problems of the Philosophy of History, ed. and
trans. Guy Oakes (New York: Free Press, 1977); hereafter cited as PPH. The text was published
originally as “Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie: Eine erkenntnistheoretische Studie,” in
GSG, 9:227–419. In his second period he published a significantly revised edition of the same work
(1905), with a third one almost identical to the second (1907). Later on, during his third period, he
worked on what would be the fourth edition, but he did not complete it. However, he left us three
essays: “The Problem of Historical Time” (1916), “The Constitutive Concepts of History” (1918),
and “On the Nature of Historical Understanding” (1918). These essays are published in Georg Sim-
mel, Essays in Interpretation in Social Science (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1980); here-
after cited as EISS. For the original texts, see GSG, 15:287–304; 13:321–69; 16:151–79.
 Efraim Podoksik 125

that better reflects the tradition of thought that influenced him. From this
viewpoint, history is a better choice than, for example, sociology. Toward
the beginning of the twentieth century, sociology was still a new discipline,
and Simmel contributed to this field as an innovator. By contrast, history
was then regarded in Germany as one of the most established and presti-
gious disciplines of humanities, second perhaps only to classical philology.
The “historical outlook” was a constant subject of self-reflection.27 Further-
more, history was strongly associated with the notion of individuality, for it
was a widely shared opinion that historical research deals with unique indi-
vidualities, whether individual human beings, individual events, or individual
polities.28
Therefore Simmel’s writings on history were more in line with the gen-
eral cultural tradition to which he belonged, perhaps, than his writings on other
subjects. Original as it was, his formal sociology did not earn full appreciation
from colleagues such as Weber, largely because it excluded the questions of
individual motives and causality. By contrast, Simmel’s philosophy of history
did allow for these questions, thus making itself more relevant to a discussion
about individuality.29

Simmel’s famous distinction between two forms of individualism is espoused

in the essay “Two Forms of Individualism” (1901) and in the sixteenth lec-
ture on Kant (1904).30 It contrasts the individualism of identity, exemplified
by the ideology of the Enlightenment, with the individualism of difference,
a child of the Romantic era. The concept of quantitative individualism was,
according to Simmel, predominant in the eighteenth century, whereas that
of qualitative individualism developed from the nineteenth century. The for-
mer, associated with Kant, proclaimed the individual’s independence from

27. Georg Iggers, The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical
Thought from Herder to the Present (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1983).
28. See, e.g., Ernst Troeltsch, Der Historismus und seine Probleme (Tübingen: Mohr, 1922).
On Troeltsch and individuality, see also Max L. Stackhouse, “Troeltsch’s Categories of Historical
Analysis,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 1 (1962): 223–25.
29. On this point, see Klaus Lichtblau, “Kausalität oder Wechselwirkung? Max Weber und
Georg Simmel im Vergleich,” in Max Webers Wissenschaftslehre: Interpretation und Kritik, ed.
G. Wagner and H. Zipprian (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994), 527–62.
30. “Die beiden Formen des Individualismus,” in GSG, 7:49–56 (which draws on Philosophie
des Geldes [1900], in GSG, vol. 6, chap. 4); and see GSG, 9:215–26. The sixteenth lecture was also
published separately in the same year, in a somewhat different form, under the title “Kant und der
Individualismus” (GSG, 7:273–82). Klaus Christian Köhnke advances a somewhat far-reaching
interpretation, finding intimations of this distinction in Simmel’s essay “Soziologische Aesthetik”
(1896) (GSG, 5:197–214). See Köhnke, Der junge Simmel : In Theoriebeziehungen und sozialen
Bewegungen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996), 498–99.
126 Georg Simmel

artificial constraints. For Simmel, however, this understanding of individual-

ism was not individualistic enough. It deprived the self of any peculiarity, put-
ting the individual under the rule of general principles.31 The correlatives of
this kind of individualism were the mechanistic worldview and laissez-faire
liberalism that advocated the separateness of individuals but not the develop-
ment of one’s own individuality. This is why the individualism of the Enlight-
enment was so often intolerant of an individual self-expression.
The emergence of another, qualitative concept of individualism con-
stituted an attempt to overcome the shortcomings of the quantitative one. It
started with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and the
Romantics and developed up to the radical individualism of Nietzsche. Accord-
ing to Simmel, this was a “specifically modern” (spezifisch moderne) tendency
(GSG, 7:52). It emphasized not only the quantitative separateness of individu-
als from each other but also their qualitative differences. It regarded each per-
son not as a servant of the general form but as a unique personality. The social
counterpart of this view was a society based on the division of labor, where
unity was achieved through differentiation. Because of this organic view, how-
ever, qualitative individualism often displayed an antiliberal tendency.
The distinction between two kinds of individualism is Simmel’s most
familiar statement on this subject. Yet this distinction was not present in his
thought at the beginning. Initially, Simmel considered identity and differ-
ence two necessary aspects of the same notion of individualism. Thus in the
chapter on group expansion and the formation of individuality, included in
On Social Differentiation (1890), he claimed as follows:

The notion of universal equality can find no stronger psychological sup-

port than through a sharp awareness of the essence and value of individual-
ity, of the fact that each human being is indeed an individual with his own
characteristic qualities, the exact combination of which is to be found only
once. . . . Precisely to the extent that each person is something peculiar, he
is equal to all other persons.

[Die Vorstellung der allgemeinen Gleichheit psychologisch durch nichts mehr

gefördert werden kann, als durch ein scharfes Bewußtsein von dem Wesen
und dem Werte der Individualität, von der Tatsache, daß jeder Mensch doch
ein Individuum mit charakteristischen, in genau dieser Zusammensetzung
nicht zum zweiten Male auffindbaren Eigenschaften ist . . . gerade wenn jeder
etwas Besonderes ist, ist er insoweit jedem andern gleich.] (GSG, 2:183)

31. “Denn nach dieser Form, so könnte man sie ausdrücken, sind wir nicht eigentlich Individu-
alitäten, sondern wir haben nur Individualität” (GSG, 9:220).
 Efraim Podoksik 127

Many years later, Simmel included a significantly revised version of the same
chapter in his Sociology (1908), where he claimed the opposite: that these two
categories—identity and difference (or equality and uniqueness)—were two
separate features of two distinct kinds of individualism.32
Thus during his early period Simmel spoke only in terms of individu-
alism in general, sometimes contrasting individualism in modern times with
holism in the premodern epoch.33 He did not think that the concept of radical
uniqueness was needed to assert the peculiarity of each personality. In On
Social Differentiation he described individuals as being, in a certain sense,
a function of their social environment. He claimed that an individual’s singu-
larity is attained through inclusion in many different social circles, for “the
more groups that are added, the more improbable it becomes that anyone else
will have the same combination of groups. . . . Thus from these objectified
elements we create subjectivity par excellence: personality with its individual
combination of the elements of culture.”34
Now, this sort of objectivistic attitude to individuality was not limited
to Simmel’s sociological writings (otherwise, one could claim that he was led
here by his subject matter: for the scientific study of society obviously has to
deal with groups and interactions, not single human beings as such). It reflected
the general worldview of young Simmel. To a large extent, this worldview was
influenced by atomism, propagated in Germany by scientists such as Gustav
Fechner.35 It perceived the world as composed of small distinct particles, yet
the distinctness of these particles did not imply their qualitative uniqueness.
The qualitative differentiation of phenomena was produced instead by an end-
less variety of interactions between the particles.
This sort of view can be found in that period in Simmel’s works on ethics
and, even more significantly, history.36 In principle, the historicist perspective
might allow more room for developing the concept of unique individuality. In
the first edition of The Problems of the Philosophy of History, however, Simmel
seemed to share many premises of the positivistic and atomistic approaches,

32. Georg Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms, ed. D. N. Levine (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1971), 271–74. The translator of this portion of Simmel’s text is Richard P.
Albares.
33. See, e.g., his discussion of the tension between the mystical and empiricist view of the soul
in “Dantes Psychologie” (1884), in GSG, 1:91–177.
34. Georg Simmel, “The Intersection of Social Spheres,” in Georg Simmel: Sociologist and
European, ed. P. A. Lawrence (Sunbury-on-Thames: Nelson, 1976), 97–98.
35. Hannes Böhringer, “Spuren von spekulativem Atomismus in Simmels formaler Soziolo-
gie,” in Böhringer and Gründer, Ästhetik und Soziologie, 105–14.
36. On ethics, see, e.g., Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft: Eine Kritik der ethischen Grund-
begriffe, 2 vols. (1892–93), in GSG, 3:204.
128 Georg Simmel

suggesting quite literally, for example, that the search for causal laws in the
historical process must be a major task of historical inquiry (GSG, 2:339–79).
The degree to which Simmel considered personality conditioned by its
environment is best revealed in his approach to the question of historical re-
creation. He argued that to discover mental processes behind outward
actions—that is, emotions as well as thoughts—we must “implant ourselves
in the mind of other persons” (uns . . . in die Seele der Personen versetzen)
(GSG, 2:317). This idea faced, however, numerous difficulties. At first glance,
the observer’s ability to enter into another’s emotion becomes possible only
if the observer has already felt such an emotion.37 But even if such similarity
of feeling is achieved, it cannot be truly identical, since the observer is aware
that the feeling is that of another person (GSG, 2:319). This consideration led
Simmel to a sort of neo-Kantian conclusion that understanding the conduct
of a historical personality can be achieved only through mediation of a num-
ber of presuppositions, such as the assumption of the unity of the historical
personality (GSG, 2:335).
Yet in this early work such neo-Kantian statements were relatively scarce
and sidelined by a different approach. Simmel asserted that, at least in princi-
ple, a historian can re-create the experiences of another person, provided that
both the observer and the observed have experienced the same thing. More-
over, in certain cases a historian can reach the right understanding even with-
out having previously felt a similar emotion.38 How is this possible? Simmel
rejected views based on idealism or intuitivism, and offered instead a straight-
forwardly naturalistic explanation. At first glance, the ability to grasp what has
never been experienced is the domain of a genius, who “seems to create out
of himself the knowledge which the nongenius can get only out of experience”
(scheint Erkenntisse aus sich selber zu schöpfen, die der nicht-geniale Mensch
nur aus der Erfahrung gewinnen kann) (GSG, 2:328). Yet this miraculous abil-
ity is in fact a product of latent biological inheritances. The earlier genera-
tions have passed their organic modifications, along with their inner psychic
processes, on to their descendants. Usually, we cannot retrieve these inheri-
tances by ourselves, for they exist mostly in a latent and vague form. There-
fore we apply the label “genius” to someone in whom they are so fortunately

37. “Wer nie geliebt hat, wird den Liebenden nie verstehen, der Schwächling nie den Helden,
der Choleriker nie den Phlegmatiker” (GSG, 2:318).
38. “Wir können nämlich, trotz allem, psychische Vorgänge an Anderen nachkonstruieren und
zwar mit dem sicheren Gefühl ihrer völligen Richtigkeit, die wir weder in uns selbst noch an
Anderen je erfahren haben” (GSG, 2:328).
 Efraim Podoksik 129

ordered as to be easily reproduced and brought into consciousness, so that

even those who cannot perform this re-creative act themselves nevertheless
become convinced that the interpretation is correct. This is because in princi-
ple the minds of ordinary persons already possess those mental characteristics
required for such an understanding (GSG, 2:229–30).
Thus, in the first version of his philosophy of history, Simmel considered
the actions of individuals to drive historical processes and argued that a histo-
rian needed to understand the psychic processes behind such actions. Yet it did
not occur to him at the time that these separate historical agents might possess
unique individualities that, by virtue of this uniqueness, would be inaccessible
to others. Simmel seemed to grant the possibility of our entrance into the inner
world of historical personalities, provided that similarities exist between their
and our emotional experiences. Moreover, were such an affinity absent on the
conscious level, the biological links between individuals and generations would
reveal it on the unconscious level. Paradoxically, Simmel seemed to think that
the most talented personalities were precisely those who could bring into con-
sciousness what was common to humankind, rather than developing what was
unique to themselves.

If we analyze Simmel’s attitude to individuality during the second phase of

his intellectual development, we find a number of indications that his atti-
tude was somewhat radicalized. These indications exist even in his sociologi-
cal writings, although the sociological perspective seems less fitting for the
pursuit of radical individualism in comparison with other perspectives, such
as history. Thus in Sociology Simmel expanded and revised the chapter on the
intersection of social circles, the first version of which appeared in On Social
Differentiation. In this new version he highlighted competition’s role in human
society: individuals distinguish themselves against their environment by act-
ing from a profound need to feel and to conduct themselves not only with oth-
ers but also against others.39 The proportion between cooperation and com-
petition then becomes the crucial measure of individuality.40 Yet the change
in Simmel’s approach remained blurred because of a considerable continuity
between the later and earlier versions of the same article. The individuality
about which Simmel spoke here was still individuality within society, and he
repeated his assertion that a person’s “specific individuality is preserved by

39. “Daß er mit andern, aber auch gegen andre empfinden und handeln will” (GSG, 11:479).
40. “Die Individualität ist . . . dadurch bezeichnet, welches Maßverhältnis zwischen Zusam-
menschluß und Konkurrenz das für sie entscheidende ist” (GSG, 11:479).
130 Georg Simmel

the combination of groups, which can be different in each individual case”

(GSG, 11:485).41
By contrast, when we turn to Simmel’s writings on other subjects, the
transformation in his views becomes apparent. Thus as early as 1902 Sim-
mel sounded quite sympathetic toward Nietzsche’s theory of morality. Accord-
ing to him, Nietzsche repudiated the value of social usefulness, insisting
instead on the value of the development of humankind, exemplified only by the
exceptionally gifted.42 The emphasis on the universally human, and not social,
value of the existence of these exceptional individuals implied such a kind of
distinction and hierarchy among human beings, which could not be grasped
through a usual notion of social differentiation.43 Nietzsche thus became, in
Simmel’s view, the most radical proponent of qualitative individualism.44
The metaphysical basis of this turn to a more radical perception of indi-
viduality appeared in the second and third editions of Problems of the Philoso-
phy of History. Already in the first edition Simmel regarded the human soul as
the subject of historical inquiry. Yet the metaphysical place of the soul in his
philosophy remained unclear. His naturalistic, or quasi-naturalistic, statements
implied that the soul’s activity belonged to the causal chain of events in the
natural world and therefore was subject to universal causality.
In the later editions Simmel hinted at a radically new understanding of
the essence of the human soul. First, each soul, even if subject to general laws,
hypothetically possessed its own primordial quality prior to and independent
of them, similar to how matter’s existence is distinct from matter’s governance
by general laws. These laws determine what will happen to matter, but the fact
that matter exists, its first determination, is not deduced from them (PPH, 40).
If each soul, when it first appears, is analogous to such first emergence of mat-
ter, then each soul possesses a unique element not erased by its subscription to
general laws. The difference in origin may determine the entire process of the
soul’s life, even if this process is a part of the natural world.
Second, Simmel suggested, again hypothetically, that conflating causal-
ity with general law was not necessary.45 One can think about a chain of events
in which every event will necessarily be caused by the preceding one, yet this
causality will refer only to this single moment of the connection between two

41. The translation is taken from the identical phrase from On Social Differentiation in “The
Intersection of Social Spheres,” in Lawrence, Georg Simmel, 100.
42. “Zum Verständnis Nietzsches,” in GSG, 7:57–63.
43. See Klaus Lichtblau, Georg Simmel (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1997), 89.
44. “Die beiden Formen des Individualismus,” in GSG, 7:54; “Kant,” in GSG, 9:224–25.
45. See the second edition (PPH, 106–9) and additional paragraphs not translated from the
third edition (GSG, 9:316–18).
 Efraim Podoksik 131

events. In a certain sense, one can regard this idea as both radicalizing and
simplifying the Kantian notion of the causality from freedom. One difficulty
of Kant’s theory was the dichotomy of two visions of “self”—phenomenal and
noumenal, one subject to the laws of nature, the other to the law of reason.
How could the categorical imperative demand the preference for one at the
expense of the other if they existed at so radically distinct levels that there
could be no clash between them? Kant himself tried to find some solution to
this problem from his third critique onward, but those answers did not satisfy
his critics. The problem of the causality from freedom was that this view of
human conduct could be criticized as not individualistic enough, even if this
was not what Kant meant. From the idea that true freedom of will meant the
subjection to the general maxim a conclusion could be derived that there was
only one supra-individual will, and that the reason of each individual was just
an accident of this general will. One way to solve this problem could be to
claim that there is a plurality of individual wills in which every will constitutes
by itself a new beginning of the causal chain of events. Simmel might have
been influenced by the views of the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde, for whom
social life consisted both of creative acts and of their imitations. Only imita-
tions provided regularities that could be studied scientifically. Yet in principle
it was possible to imagine a world consisting of what Simmel would call “indi-
vidual causality.”46
But if each individual soul is unique in this radical sense, then the prob-
lem of historical understanding becomes even more complicated. According
to Simmel, it is a simple matter of fact that we can understand Caesar or Luther
without ourselves being Caesar or Luther (PPH, 94). But how can we explain
this ability, given that they were unique individualities? Simmel significantly
expanded his discussion of this problem in the later editions of his treatise on
the philosophy of history. Generally, the major change in these editions, com-
pared with the first one, was that they contained a thorough neo-Kantian cri-
tique of philosophical “realism,” and thus the neo-Kantian approach now
became prevalent.47 In accordance with it, Simmel argued that “every form of

46. “Pourtant, supposons un monde où rien ne se ressemble ni ne se répète, hypothèse étrange,

mais intelligible à la rigueur” (Gabriel Tarde, Les lois de l’imitation: Etude sociologique [Paris: Alcan,
1890], 4). See Simmel’s review of this work in GSG, 1:248–50.
47. Simmel was on friendly terms with Heinrich Rickert, a leading representative of so-called
Southwest Neo-Kantianism. He corresponded with Rickert about his work on the second edition of
Problems of the Philosophy of History (1905) (see, e.g., Simmel to Rickert, November 4 and Decem-
ber 22, 1904, in GSG, 22:503–4, 508). Rickert’s own work on the philosophy of history, published in
the same year, resembled Simmel’s in structure: “Geschichtsphilosophie,” in Die Philosophie im
Beginn des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, ed. W. Windelband, vol. 2 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1905), 51–135.
132 Georg Simmel

knowledge represents a translation of immediately given data into a new lan-

guage with its own intrinsic forms, categories, and requirements” (PPH, 77).
Therefore unmediated reality of the soul cannot be reached. Rather, history is
a presentation of such reality through the categories of historical inquiry, one
of which, for example, is the unity of the soul. The reconstruction of an actor’s
subjective experience becomes possible because such experience entails (or is
perceived to entail) objectivity beyond a pure subjectivity. Yet this objectivity
is not conceptual, being rather a sort of intuitive apperception of the validity of
a certain general judgment.48
These and similar statements do not offer us a satisfactory explanation
of the process of historical understanding. Simmel himself admitted having
failed to do so and presented his thoughts rather as a preliminary attempt
to outline problems surrounding this question (PPH, 76). In general, one can
summarize his answer as the denial of the possibility of unmediated historical
understanding. Yet he compromised this general neo-Kantian approach, as he
was then tempted to offer a more positive answer to the question of historical
re-creation. In his discussion Simmel simply returned to what he had said in
the first edition about latent inheritances. Despite his turn to neo-Kantianism,
he was not prepared to get rid of the naturalistic view altogether. However, he
presented this view in a significantly more qualified, that is, a sort of neo-
Kantian, form. Thus he declared himself aware that “this sort of interpreta-
tion has been discredited on the most legitimate grounds” (PPH, 95), but that
awareness did not prevent him from offering a full exposition of this theory,
although he conceded afterward that “at the very worst, this hypothesis may
be regarded as a methodological fiction. Phenomena occur, as if this sort of
latent correspondence between our minds and the minds of completely differ-
ent persons really obtained. In this case, the hypothesis may be regarded as a
symbolic expression of the as yet unknown energies that are actually respon-
sible for the existence of these phenomena” (PPH, 97). In other words, this
naturalistic hypothesis was presented now as an “as if” mental construction. It
is interesting to observe how even more cautious Simmel sounded with regard
to this hypothesis in the third edition (1907), compared with the second (1905).
In 1907 he inserted the following passage: “I mean by this not an explanation

48. “How can a state of mind of one person also be eo ipso represented as the state of mind of
another person? The mediator between these two persons is the special kind of super-personal valid-
ity that can be ascribed to the dynamics and logic of a mental construct. It has the status or value of
universality even though this universality is not conceptual” (PPH, 75). This claim certainly
reminds us about the place of the beautiful in Kant’s aesthetics, and it is no wonder that here Sim-
mel often used metaphors and examples from the realm of aesthetics to exemplify his ideas.
 Efraim Podoksik 133

of the occurrence under consideration, but only the possibility of a structural

relation which facilitates the explanation, but by which alone the object of the
explanation would not come into existence” (meine ich damit keine “Deutung”
des fraglichen Vorganges, sondern nur die Möglichkeit eines Strukturverhält-
nisses, das die Deutung erleichtere, ohne daß ihr Gegenstand durch dieses Ver-
hältnis für sich allein zustande kommen mag) (GSG, 9:302–3).
Thus the neo-Kantian assertion of the impossibility of direct historical
understanding did not altogether remove the remnants of Simmel’s earlier ideas
from his mature works. In addition, however, the neo-Kantianism of these
works was also qualified from another direction. At a certain point, Simmel
advanced the claim that historical re-creation could be “relatively easy” when
the subject matter of a historical inquiry was a sharply outlined individuality,
such as Caesar, Augustine, or the emperor Friedrich II (PPH, 97). The reason is
that such individuality realizes its human timeless essence. Even when trans-
lated into another epoch, it preserves its “essential core” (PPH, 98). Thus a
great personality exists outside its immediate environment and is more acces-
sible precisely to those who do not belong to this environment. Moreover,
strongly developed individualities demonstrate a higher unity of the self, and
the more a historical person is a unity, the easier it is to understand that person,
for “each element of his character sheds light on the other; each is a conse-
quence of his total character” (PPH, 98). This view implies that, as representa-
tives of human universality, all great personalities are alike at some deep level.
How can one reconcile this view with Simmel’s general approach?
Simmel himself pointed to two very different lines of argument. On the one
hand, he claimed the study of sharply outlined personalities to be the moment
in which naive realism, the approach postulating knowledge through identity
or resemblance (“das Erkennen des Gleichen durch das Gleiche” [GSG, 9:305;
trans. in PPH, 98]), finds its most plausible justification, because of the resem-
blance of such personalities to each other. Yet this argument is not quite con-
vincing, for it is clear that only a superficial similarity exists between this and
the kind of resemblance demanded by realism, most certainly by the natural-
istic form of realism, earlier espoused by Simmel himself. The theory that it is
easier to understand great individualities runs counter to the theory of latent
inheritances. The latter states that re-creation is possible because the observer
and the observed share the same biological characteristics, whereas the former
implies precisely that the historical person is, in a certain sense, unique. He
is unlike his environment and therefore can hardly pass his most important
characteristics to the following generations. Rather, whatever similarity is
postulated here, it seems to exist on a metaphysical, not a biological, level.
134 Georg Simmel

On the other hand, Simmel attempted to phrase this theory in a Kantian

way. Great personalities provide us with better material for performing the
unity of apperception, which is the condition of any understanding. It is not the
content but the form of the object that we most easily grasp in this case (PPH,
98–99). But then the argument goes back to the rejection of unmediated his-
torical understanding and to the necessity of forming mediating categories.
In such a case, it is not clear why Simmel regards the study of sharply outlined
individualities, unlike the study of those not so sharply outlined, as “relatively
easy.” A Kantian viewpoint tends to postulate a principal gap between the
subject and the object of knowledge, rather than a quantitative distance between
them, which may vary from case to case. If each soul is something transcen-
dent, impenetrable, something that switches on the mechanism of individual
causality, then it does not matter how well developed a specific individual
appears to be. That a particular soul possessing certain intrinsic features might
be more susceptible to the act of apperception than others would be no less a
non-Kantian thing to say than claiming that a certain piece of matter might be
more susceptible to the principle of causality.49
Furthermore, a contextual argument could be put forward here: that Sim-
mel’s claim simply reflected his sympathy with the aforementioned Nietz-
schean emphasis on the personalities who advance humankind in general
while being alienated from their social environment. This interpretation of the
emergence of Simmel’s view is probably correct. Yet a Nietzschean position,
so formulated, explains only Simmel’s attention to the notion of universality
of great individuals. It does not explain the mechanism by which re-creating
might be facilitated. Simmel’s attempt to formulate such an explanation pushed
him toward a view that differed significantly from radical individualism, a
kind of which he attributed to Nietzsche. Thus, by mentioning the possibility
of understanding developed individualities, Simmel hinted at a position that he
would tend to take in his later writings and that would differ both from the
naturalistic and from the neo-Kantian, or quasi-Nietzschean, explanation.
Thus Simmel’s discussion of the problem of historical understanding
in the second and third editions of Problems of the Philosophy of History merged
three approaches. He suggested that a historian was not able to re-create a his-
torical personality as it really existed, that the only recourse was to recon-

49. I believe that there may exist a philosophical way out of this difficulty, if one argues that
the plurality of souls should be most properly compared with the plurality of different worlds and
that some hypothetic world will, in a certain sense, be less fit to our own qualities of apperception than
the existing one. Yet this would be to push the argument too far from Simmel’s works. In any case,
in the text itself he does not discuss these philosophical difficulties and possibilities and does not
convincingly show how his claim under consideration fits into his neo-Kantian approach.
 Efraim Podoksik 135

struct the mind of such a personality in accordance with neo-Kantian catego-

ries of historical understanding. But then, Simmel also argued that one person
could possibly understand another because they both shared the same con-
tent implanted in their biological nature. Finally, he suggested that the most
unique and dissimilar personality is by this very fact most accessible for our
understanding.
I believe that the neo-Kantian interpretation is indeed most characteris-
tic of Simmel’s second period and most congruent with the distinction between
two forms of individualism that he developed at that time. For if one speaks
about the individualism of uniqueness rather than that of singleness, if one
attempts to ground the qualitative view of individuality on the notion of indi-
vidual causality emanating from every soul, then the natural conclusion is that
the true personality is impenetrable, perhaps a thing in itself. Therefore the
only hope to interpret the life of such a personality lies in building a historical
research on the foundations of the neo-Kantian “as if” fiction. But what we see
here is that Simmel was not ready to draw this conclusion, to postulate a com-
pletely esoteric individuality of each person. He was still looking for a philo-
sophical way to reconcile the individual with the world.

That Simmel was not satisfied with his distinction between two kinds of indi-
vidualism was already clear when he first outlined it. For example, in the lec-
tures on Kant he claimed that the new century should develop another form of
individualism that would overcome the shortcomings of the previous forms
(GSG, 9:226). There were already some theorists who attempted to articulate
individualism of a different kind. Simmel thus considered Stirner’s philosophy
to represent a radical endeavor to move beyond the two forms of individu-
alism. Stirner, according to Simmel’s interpretation, based his philosophy on
the concept of the egoistical individual indifferent to the question of his own
resemblance or difference with regard to other individuals, taking care to affirm
only his own ego. Thus “the interest of Stirner’s teaching lies in the purity with
which it pushes the consequence of individualism along its purely negative
side” (das Interesse der Stirnerschen Lehre liegt in der Reinlichkeit, mit der sie
die Konsequenz des Individualismus nach seiner rein negativen Seite hin zieht)
(GSG, 7:56).
Simmel, however, did not find this approach quite satisfactory. Stirner
detached the self even farther from the world, whereas Simmel was looking for
a form of individualism that would enable the dialectical interaction between
the self and the world: “The great task of the future . . . lies in forming such
a life and society that will create a positive synthesis of the two types of
individualism” (Die große Aufgabe der Zukunft aber ist eine Lebens- und
136 Georg Simmel

Gesellschaftsverfassung, die eine positive Synthese der beiden Arten des Indi-
vidualismus schafft) (GSG, 7:56).
In Fundamental Problems of Sociology (1917), Simmel argued that eco-
nomics had already achieved such a synthesis: “The two great principles which
operate, inseparably, in nineteenth-century economic theory and practice—
competition and division of labor—thus appear to be the economic projections
of the philosophical aspects of social individualism.”50 What was required now
was for culture as a whole to accomplish a general synthesis of the two forms
of individualism, thus producing a new type of human personality that would
supersede the other two. Even earlier, in Sociology, Simmel hinted that qual-
itative individualism might contain in itself the seeds of further transforma-
tion. He spoke there about two types of individualities, which he called “strong”
and “decided.” He did not develop this distinction, but it could hardly be adjusted
to the distinction between quantitative and qualitative individualism, for both
the strong and decided individuality seemed to correspond to the notion of
qualitative individualism.51
However, to understand better the direction Simmel’s thought took in
those years, we should consider the overall change in it. It is well known that
during the last decade of his life Simmel moved toward “life philosophy,” a
movement associated in those years with Bergson.52 “Life” became for Sim-
mel a metaphysical category through which he tried to repudiate his previous
quasi–neo-Kantian subjectivism, in which the presuppositions of the sub-
ject’s mind conditioned experience.
It is, however, rarely asked how this change might have modified Sim-
mel’s conception of individualism. Instead, it is commonly assumed that his
notion of qualitative individualism fitted his new ideas. But this is a problem-
atic assumption, because Simmel had developed the notion of qualitative
individualism long before he was converted to life philosophy.

50. The Sociology of Georg Simmel, trans. K. H. Wolff (New York: Free Press, 1950), 83. The
same passage appears in his posthumously published sketch “Freedom and the Individual,” in On
Individuality and Social Forms, 225.
51. “The decided, merely qualitative individuality [die bloß qualitative Individualität] avoids
groups in which it might find itself confronted by a majority. . . . The [other] type—the more intensive
individuality [die mehr intensive Individualität]—prefers, on the other hand, to confront a plurality
against whose quantitative superiority it can test its own, dynamic superiority” (Sociology of Georg
Simmel, 137). Since the decided individuality is referred to as “qualitative,” whereas Napoléon is
presented as an example of the strong individuality, it seems that neither of these types describes an
individuality that would submit to the principle of equality implied in quantitative individualism.
52. Gregor Fitzi, Soziale Erfahrung und Lebensphilosophie: Georg Simmels Beziehung zu Henri
Bergson (Konstanz: UVK, 2002).
 Efraim Podoksik 137

In fact, a careful analysis of Simmel’s later writings reveals that he

did modify his classification of the types of individualism explicitly at least
twice: in his interpretation of Goethe and that of Schleiermacher. If previ-
ously Simmel listed both thinkers among the proponents of qualitative indi-
vidualism, during his third period Simmel clearly tends to attribute to them
certain positions that distinguish their individualism from a typical qualita-
tive individualism.
This change seems to have occurred for the first time in Simmel’s treat-
ment of individuality in “Main Problems of Philosophy” (1910).53 In the chap-
ter dedicated to the notions of “being” and “becoming,” Simmel deals with the
whole range of questions of the relationship between particularity and univer-
sality, and among them the question of the meaning of individuality within the
whole. He distinguishes between two philosophical views of individuality. One
is that the individuality of particular realities produces a kind of division of
labor: all parts of the world, being different from each other, compose the uni-
fied whole.54 This is the view of the world as an organism. The other view, by
contrast, is that everything real is individual, yet every particularity is no more
than the realization of the universe’s totality; that individuality is the only
mode in which the universal can exist at any given moment. This view is attrib-
uted to Schleiermacher, for whom, Simmel argues, “a single individual being
represents the universe immediately and without cooperation with others; it is
the counterpart of the universe” (ist einzelne individuelle Sein unmittelbar und
ohne Kooperation mit anderem die Darstellung des Universums, ist dessen
Gegenbild) (GSG, 14:60). Although Simmel does not explicitly support either
of these positions, his sympathies seem to move toward what is described here
as the Schleiermacherian view of individuality: individuality as a reflection of
totality. Simmel never wrote a detailed interpretation of Schleiermacher’s phi-
losophy, as he did of Kant’s, Schopenhauer’s, and Nietzsche’s, but Simmel’s
later explorations of the notion of individuality are indebted especially to
Schleiermacher.55

53. “Hauptprobleme der Philosophie,” in GSG, 14:7–157.

54. “Daß die Individualität der Wirklichkeiten gewissermaßen eine Arbeitsteilung sei—als
läge jedem Stück der Welt eine Teilleistung ob, und gerade also, weil jedes dem andern ungleich
ist, ergänzten sie sich alle zusammen zum einheitlichen Ganzen” (GSG, 14:60).
55. Hartmut Kreß, “Schleiermachers Individualitätsgedanke in seinen Auswirkungen auf die
Lebensphilosophie Georg Simmels,” Schleiermacher-Archiv 1 (1985): 1243–66. Surprisingly, even
the approach of the young Simmel in his “atomistic” and “positivistic” stage has parallels in the work
of Schleiermacher, who argued that a person occupied in forming himself “uniquely combines in
himself various elements of humanity. He belongs to more than one world. How could he move in an
138 Georg Simmel

But before we delve more deeply into the kind of understanding of indi-
viduality that Simmel may have had in mind when he mentioned Schleier-
macher, it is important to note that neither of the two notions of individual-
ity discussed here can be derived from quantitative individualism. For the
latter understands individualities as separate but also, in a certain sense, sim-
ilar or equal entities. This is, however, not true of the two views of individual-
ity offered in Main Problems of Philosophy. Thus the first view, which sees
the world as an organism consisting of unique individualities, unambiguously
refers to qualitative individualism. This is clear from Simmel’s description of
differences between quantitative and qualitative individualism in all of his
writings. And the expression “division of labor” points in the same direction,
since this expression appears in Simmel only in the context of qualitative
individualism.
Nor does the other approach to individuality, the one attributed to
Schleier macher, stand any closer to quantitative individualism. For the notion
of individuality as a unique representation of totality magnifies the property of
uniqueness, and uniqueness belongs, of course, to the form of qualitative indi-
vidualism. Therefore this view of individuality seems to offer an even more
radicalized form of qualitative individualism than the one implied in the view
of the world as an organism.
Now, to understand better what this notion of unique individuality as a
representation of totality really signifies, it is not enough to limit ourselves to
Main Problems of Philosophy. Simmel’s treatment of the subject in this text
is extremely brief, perhaps only another of his interesting but fragmentary
insights (for such a mode of writing and thinking is often, though not always
justifiably, attributed to Simmel). Yet this distinction between two notions of
qualitative individualism begins to appear in his other writings of that period,
possibly pointing to a significant philosophical transformation.
The clearest presentation of this distinction appears in a monographic
study on Goethe (1913). One of its most important themes was the character of
Goethe’s individualism, to which Simmel dedicated an entire chapter (GSG,
15:151–78). At first glance, he returned in it to the familiar distinction between
two forms of individualism. Even earlier Simmel mentioned Goethe as one of

orbit exactly parallel to that of another, who is also a distinctive individual . . . ? Like a comet the
cultured individual traverses many systems and encircles many a sun” (Schleiermacher’s Solilo-
quies, trans. H. L. Friess [Chicago: Open Court, 1957], 47). This is similar to Simmel’s sociological
understanding of individuality as the outcome of a unique combination of membership in numer-
ous social circles. This view, of course, does not constitute the central aspect of Schleiermacher’s
notion of individuality, and Simmel never mentions him in this respect.
 Efraim Podoksik 139

the first thinkers to espouse qualitative individualism. Yet he did not regard
Goethe as its most unambiguous representative. Goethe, unlike Nietzsche, was
for him a transitional figure who combined in himself elements of both types
of individualism. In fact, Simmel considered Kant also a thinker whose ideas
contained both forms, yet the difference between Goethe and Kant lay in the
proportion between these two aspects. While Kant’s ideas were mainly deter-
mined by quantitative individualism, in Goethe the qualitative aspect played a
larger role. Nevertheless, in Goethe’s thought one finds not only a fascination
with unique human characters but also the ideal of the universal man.
However, the coexistence of these two lines of thought in Goethe’s
worldview did not produce their synthesis. For Simmel, the true synthesis
between universality and uniqueness would occur only when the dialectal
circle was fully accomplished. In other words, the true return to universality
would happen not through a compromise but through the radicalization and
negation of dialectic’s second stage, which is represented by qualitative indi-
vidualism. In such radicalization, qualitative individualism would not turn
into complete egoism, as in the case of Stirner, but would perform the final
reconciliation of individuality and totality.
Simmel’s analysis of Goethe’s individualism did point toward such a
radical interpretation. On closer reading, one notices that Simmel, not content
merely to mention the coexistence of two forms of individualism in Goethe,
posited a more complicated claim.56 He distinguished between two kinds of
qualitative individualism, attributing one to Shakespeare and the other to
Goethe.
Shakespeare’s heroes do indeed represent the idea of qualitative individ-
ualism. According to Simmel, they are not only separate personalities, with
their own volitions. They are also distinct from each other; each affirms its own
character. Yet they possess a peculiar feature of being not only unique but also
divorced from both the nature and the personality of the author who created
them. They are like separate formations appearing out of the chaotic world.
It is different with Goethe’s characters. Of course, they are also qualita-
tive individualities, but they do not spring from nowhere. They are not only

56. Johannes Schwerdtfeger discusses a sort of synthesis of quantitative and qualitative indi-
vidualism in Simmel’s interpretation of Goethe (Das Individualitätskonzept Georg Simmels
[Heidelberg: FEST, 1999], 47–48). In an otherwise excellent analysis, however, Schwerdtfeger fails
to distinguish between, on the one hand, the cohabitation of the two forms of individualism that,
according to Simmel, is also present in Goethe and, on the other hand, the true synthesis of indi-
viduality and universality achieved through the radicalization of qualitative individualism, without
any recourse to quantitative individualism.
140 Georg Simmel

individualities in the first (quantitative) sense in that they are independent

and individualities in the second (qualitative) sense in that they are unique
but also individualities in a different (one could say, idealist) sense in that they
reflect totality. On the one hand, this is the totality of the author, whose cre-
ative power is clearly felt in their every performance: Goethe’s hero “does not
stand by himself in the same sense as in Shakespeare. Rather, he is a work of
art presented by the author. Although Goethe’s hero is just as ‘grown’ as Shake-
speare’s, he is not ‘grown,’ so to speak, out of himself, but rather out of the liv-
ing activity of Goethe, his artistic and world volition” (steht nicht in demselben
Sinne wie bei Shakespeare für sich, sondern sie ist das vom Dichter darge-
botene Kunstwerk, sie ist zwar ebenso “gewachsen” wie jene, aber nicht ebenso
gleichsam aus sich selbst, sondern aus der Lebendigkeit, dem Welt- und Kunst-
wollen Goethes) (GSG, 15:163).
On the other hand, and more important for my discussion, this is the
totality of the world.57 The unity of nature is felt behind the existence of all of
Goethe’s heroes, though not in terms of the physical laws (applicable rather to
the quantitative individuality) but in a different way. To borrow Simmel’s
favorite term of that period, Goethe’s characters possess the unity of the con-
tinuous pulsation of nature. The relation of Goethe’s heroes to this totality is
not expressed by them being subject to universal concepts. Rather, every such
individuality, although it remains just a fragment, encompasses the totality of
reality at the time of its appearance. Goethe’s individualities reflect the whole,
yet they never appear the same. They are like waves in a sea.58 As Simmel puts
it, “The human essence is a fully real individuality only when it is not a point
in the world but is itself a world” (Das menschliche Wesen ist erst dann wirk-
lich ganz Individuum, wenn es nicht nur ein Punkt in der Welt, sondern selbst
eine Welt ist) (GSG, 15:169).
A few years earlier a young Viennese author, Otto Weininger, spoke
in similar terms. In his work Sex and Character (with which Simmel was
familiar), Weininger attempted to grasp the nature of the genius, defined as a
universal person who encompasses all possible human characters.59 One
such quintessential genius, in Weininger’s eyes as well as in the eyes of most

57. Dumont confuses these two aspects, and his description of this place in Simmel does not
make it clear to the reader that the unity of Goethe’s heroes is not only the subjective unity of the
creativity of the author but also the objective unity of the world (German Ideology, 193).
58. “Wie aus dem Meere die einzelne Welle in ihrer vielleicht nie wiederholten Form” (GSG,
15:162).
59. Otto Weininger, Sex and Character (1903) (London: Heinemann, 1912), 106–7. For his
familiarity with this work, see Simmel to Martin Buber, April 28, 1906, in GSG, 22:539–40.
 Efraim Podoksik 141

German-speaking intellectuals of that time, was Goethe. Simmel’s view (and

as I have already shown, he too was interested in the nature of genius) was
not different. According to him, Goethe radicalized qualitative individuality
and, by moving beyond the notion of uniqueness, created a synthesis between
individuality and universality.
Thus the idea of individuality in Simmel’s thought develops according to
the following scheme. First, individuality is understood as separate (but neither
unique nor complete), thereby corresponding to the notion of quantitative indi-
vidualism. Then, individuality is perceived as separate and unique (but not yet
complete), exemplified by the heroes of Shakespeare’s plays and corresponding
to the idea of qualitative individualism. Finally, there is a third type of indi-
viduality that not only is separate and unique but also reflects the totality of the
world. This individuality is merely a concrete moment in the pulsation of life in
general, but it is a moment that contains in itself the world as a whole.
This latter view corresponded to Simmel’s elaboration of the category
of life, which became the cornerstone of his later philosophy as presented in
his most important philosophical work, Lebensanschauung (Life View, 1918)
(GSG, 16:209–425). To put it briefly, he perceived life as a process, a stream of
events. According to him, this very stream, rather than the content of individ-
ual events, is what gives unity to life. Every moment in this stream is in fact a
certain reflection of life in its totality. Furthermore, the totality of life tran-
scends the life of a particular being. Simmel’s concept of life in general should
not be confused with the notion of individual life. Not unlike G. W. F. Hegel’s
Spirit, which just uses individual minds as its vessels, life here is not one of
this or that particular person, although it is carried by a consecutive chain of
individual living (not necessarily human) beings.
Thus the third notion of individuality may be seen as performing such
a reconciliation of the self with the universe that does not require the recourse
to “quantitative” individuality. This notion in Simmel is usually overlooked
or not distinguished well enough from the second one, partly because Sim-
mel himself did not elaborate the difference between the third and the sec-
ond forms as clearly as he did in respect to the difference between the second
and the first. But as I have shown, the kind of individualism Simmel ascribed
to Goethe (and to Schleiermacher) was quite different from qualitative indi-
vidualism in general. His interpretation of Goethe and Schleiermacher implied
the existence of the third form of individualism, even if the character of this
form was not explicitly outlined.
Another indication that the distinction made by Simmel was not inadver-
tent is that a similar distinction had been noted in an earlier work with which
142 Georg Simmel

he must have been familiar: an essay on the philosophy of history, written by

his good friend Heinrich Rickert. There Rickert suggested that individuality
could be understood in two ways: it either could refer to the unique features
that distinguish an individual from other individuals (Simmel’s qualitative
individualism) or could mean the entirety of the individual’s qualities.60 Rick-
ert considered this second understanding worthless, arguing that rational
thinking, to operate, always needs to make distinctions. Individuality, under-
stood as a totality of qualities, preceded any distinction and therefore lay
beyond rational analysis. Yet in his third stage Simmel did want to go beyond
rationality and come as close as possible to the experience of pure life. There-
fore he began to develop this second perspective: individuality as the totality
of all its qualities and, consequently, as a reflection of the totality of the uni-
verse’s qualities.61
At this stage of Simmel’s philosophy of history, he changed his views of
Nachbildung accordingly. Remaining unsatisfied with many aspects of the
preceding editions of Problems of the Philosophy of History, Simmel worked
on the fourth and very different edition of the same book, as he informed Rick-
ert.62 Though he never finished his work on the book, Simmel did outline his
new view of the problem of re-creation in his essay “On the Nature of Histori-
cal Understanding” (1918) (GSG, 16:151–79). He looked anew at the difficulties
surrounding this subject, claiming now that the ability of understanding could
not be explained by the assumed existence of a mechanism that enables the
formation of the complete identity between mental processes of two persons.
A certain lack of identity may be a hindrance to understanding, but this does
not mean that the presence of identity is the requirement of understanding. A
child who meets the eyes of another person and who has never seen his own
eyes before can still infer the feelings of that person from the eyes’ expression.
Then again, we may remember our past from inside, but we often find our-
selves at a loss when we try to understand it. Therefore understanding is some-
thing different from the inner knowledge of the psychic process.
Simmel now argues that the entire requirement of the correspondence
between the mental states of the observer and the observed was a consequence
of an erroneous dualistic approach toward body and mind. According to this

60. Rickert, “Geschichtsphilosophie,” 62–63.

61. Rickert was unhappy about Simmel’s turn toward life philosophy. See Heinrich Rickert, Die
Philosophie des Lebens: Darstellung und Kritik der philosophischen Modeströmungen unserer
Zeit (Tübingen: Mohr, 1920). See also Simmel to Rickert, April 3, 4, and 15, 1916 (GSG, 23:619,
624–27, 636–39).
62. E.g., Simmel to Rickert, December 13, 1915, in GSG, 23:578–79.
 Efraim Podoksik 143

approach, the mind exists separately from the body, so that a bodily expression
needs deciphering in order that the meaning of a person’s actions can be under-
stood. According to Simmel, however, this procedure is unnecessary. The
object of our understanding is a primary category of Thou. It is not split into
body and mind but presents itself to us as a unity and is, in a sense, immedi-
ately given to us. It is the first and last point of any understanding. Therefore,
in the process of understanding, we do not extract some pieces of conduct from
another person’s totality. Rather, everything in him we understand under the
category of Thou, which is an inherent part of us and of our relation to the
spiritual world around us.
This view differed significantly from Simmel’s previous opinions, for it
was not based on a priori categories that organize experience. It is true that he
preserved the neo-Kantian terminology of categories. Yet for neo-Kantians,
including Simmel of the middle period, forms of experience and categories of
understanding were the middle ground that mediated between subject and
object, thereby making understanding possible. By contrast, the so-called cat-
egory of Thou demolished this mediating function. It implied “the other per-
son who is immediately intelligible as an animate mind” (EISS, 106). This
Thou, “like the ego or self—is an ultimate, irreducible entity” (Urphänomen ist
ebenso wie das Ich) (EISS, 105). What we have here is not a certain set of pre-
suppositions for understanding the personality of the other but some primor-
dial unity between “myself” and the “other” that defies mediation. This is why
some commentators argue that in his last writings on history Simmel moved
from neo-Kantianism toward phenomenology.63
Simmel did not formulate this new approach clearly, so it is open to
numerous interpretations. It seems, however, that the following conclusion can
be quite legitimately and unambiguously drawn from Simmel’s argument.
Instead of postulating separate individuals trying to understand each other, he
suggested that the relationship between I and Thou was based on the dialectic
between the complete uniqueness of two persons and their complete absorp-
tion into each other:

We experience the other person, the Thou, both as the most alien and impen-
etrable creature imaginable, and also as the most intimate and familiar.
On the one hand, the ensouled Thou is our only peer or counterpart [Pair]
in the universe. It is the only being with whom we can come to a mutual

63. See Richard Owsley and Gary Backhaus, “Simmel’s Four Components of Historical Sci-
ence,” Human Studies 26 (2003): 209–22.
144 Georg Simmel

understanding and feel as “one.” If, for example, we feel ourselves in har-
mony with the natural world, this is because it is comprehended under the
category of the Thou. Consider Saint Francis, who spoke to both animals
and inanimate nature as his brothers. On the other hand, the Thou also has
an incomparable autonomy and sovereignty. It resists any decomposition or
analysis [Auflösung] into the subjective representation of the ego. It has that
absoluteness of reality which the ego ascribes to itself. (EISS, 106–7)

Therefore Thou is the expression both of our outmost personality and of some-
thing completely beyond our personality. It both belongs to and lies beyond us.
How this category works remains unclear. In any case, it seems to me that the
notion of Thou corresponds to Simmel’s third idea of individuality. As men-
tioned above, Simmel so radicalized his understanding of individuality that he
came close to postulating the person’s absorption in the totality of life, whereby
the dichotomy between the self and the world could be superseded. Each par-
ticular self then could be understood as containing the totality of the world in
itself, yet being unique in its reflection of this totality, and thus could be com-
pared to a kind of monad, despite all the differences between Gottfried Leib-
niz’s rationalistic and Simmel’s dynamic intuitional approach.64

This analysis of Simmel’s idea of individuality reveals how, under new circum-
stances and in his own way, he pursued the basic themes of German philoso-
phy from Leibniz on, such as the tension between individuality and totality, or
between identity and difference. Yet it also shows the complexity of what is
often referred to as the German idea of individuality. Two contradictory ten-
dencies are revealed in what is called “qualitative individualism.” One is the
tendency to emphasize the individual’s radical uniqueness and apartness. The
other is the tendency to bring individuality back to the totality of the universe.
Simmel’s philosophy contains both. On the one hand, he formulated the notion
of qualitative individualism; on the other, in his third period, he attempted to
make a transition from post-Nietzschean radical individualism to the cate-
gory of life that transcends individual life. Radical individualism, however,
was never completely superseded even in Simmel’s later works. What I have
described as, and what definitely looks like, ambiguity or vagueness may imply

64. Leibniz’s conception of a monad as a single particle that nevertheless reflects the universe
was perhaps the major source of the notion of individuality as a reflection of totality. See, e.g., Karl
Ernst Nipkow, “‘Ganzheitliche Bildung’ zwischen dem Ich und dem anderen: Ein anthropologisch-
ethische und bildungsphilosophische Skizze,” in Der “ganze” Mensch: Perspektiven lebensgeschicht-
licher Individualität, ed. V. Drehsen (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997), 407–30. Weininger also cites Leib-
niz in this context (Sex and Character, 171–73).
 Efraim Podoksik 145

the formation of a peculiar view, which does not necessarily require the full
domination of the third form of individualism. Instead, such a view may pos-
tulate a permanent movement from the second to the third form, the move-
ment in which the destination is never reached. The dialectical process is thus
suspended before it completes its circle. Simmel’s final notion of individuality
may then be seen in terms of a constant tension between the idea of separate
and unique individuality and the idea of individuality as a reflection of the
totality of life.
It is difficult to confirm this interpretation, since, as I have shown, Sim-
mel never explicitly formulated the distinction between these two forms. Yet
some ground for this suggestion lies in the fact that such a tension would
mirror the tension in Simmel’s philosophy in general. In fact, Simmel never
unequivocally embraced his own life philosophy. Rather, he preserved in him-
self an element of neo-Kantianism that always pointed to an inescapable frag-
mentariness of human life and prevented him from lapsing into complete
holism. In Lebensanschauung he did not resolve the tension between neo-
Kantianism and life philosophy but pursued them both to their extremes while
putting them on parallel yet mutually influencing tracks. This tension finds
its expression in the contradiction between life and form or, in their extreme
points, between “more-life” and “more-than-life.”65 One could suggest, there-
fore, that Simmel’s final word on individuality would constitute a similar pur-
suit of two parallel series exemplified, respectively, by the second and the third
types of individualism.

65. I am greatly indebted for this interpretation of Simmel’s mature philosophy to Yoel Regev,
“Georg Simmel’s Philosophy of Culture: Zeus, Chronos, and in Between,” European Legacy 10
(2005): 585–93.
Georg Simmel: Three Forms of Individualism and Historical

Understanding

Efraim Podoksik

It is a common perception that the distinction between quantitative and

qualitative individualism constitutes the basis of Georg Simmel’s theory of

individualism. Yet, by analyzing Simmel’s writings on individualism and

juxtaposing them with his theory of historical understanding, this article

argues that Simmel formulated three, not two, forms of individualism,

although the third one appears only in his later writings. This third variant is

a certain radicalization of qualitative individualism, though it is a

radicalization that transcends separate individuality and moves toward the

notion of totality.
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