The intellectually sophisticated person is indifferent to all genuine individuality, because relationships and reactions result from it which cannot be exhausted with logical operations.
Category Archive: Georg Simmel
For, to be a stranger is naturally a very positive relation; it is a specific form of interaction.
Every relationship between persons causes a picture of each to take form in the mind of the other, and this picture evidently is in reciprocal relationship with that personal relationship.
Every relationship between two individuals or two groups will be characterized by the ratio of secrecy that is involved in it.
For the division of labor demands from the individual an ever more one-sided accomplishment, and the greatest advance in a one-sided pursuit only too frequently means dearth to the personality of the individual.
The psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individuality consists in the intensification of nervous stimulation which results from the swift and uninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli.
Secrecy involves a tension which, at the moment of revelation, finds its release.
The first internal relation that is essential to a secret society is the reciprocal confidence of its members.
Discretion is nothing other than the sense of justice with respect to the sphere of the intimate contents of life.
On the one hand, life is made infinitely easy for the personality in that stimulations, interests, uses of time and consciousness are offered to it from all sides. They carry the person as if in a stream, and one needs hardly to swim for oneself.