Culture 01
Tragedy of Culture – Georg Simmel (1) [Related Post]
Culture makes us happy. Civilization makes our lives worthy and valuable. At least, a creator aims to create more joy for life all the time.
However, Georg Simmel (1858–1918) points out the tension between “objective culture” and “subjective culture” in modern society.
The vast accumulation of products, technology, and knowledge produced by society grows too large and too complex, and overwhelms the ability of individuals to internalize and utilize these developments for our own self-development.
Read the full article on Brainwashed!
“The material products of culture – furniture and cultivated plants, works of art and machinery, tools and books – in which natural material is developed into forms which could never have been realized by their own energies, are products of our own desires and emotions, the result of ideas that utilize the available possibilities of objects. It is exactly the same with regard to the culture that shapes people’s relationships to one another and to themselves: language, morals, religion and law.” (6. The Style of Life, The Philosophy of Money. Georg Simmel)
When Culture alienates the Individual
● Objective culture
“Objective culture is the historical presentation or more or less perfect condensation of an objectively valid truth which is reproduced by our cognition.” (6. The Style of Life, The Philosophy of Money. Georg Simmel)
“The objectification of the mind provides the form that makes the conservation and accumulation of mental labour possible; it is the most significant and most far-reaching of the historical categories of mankind.” (6. The Style of Life, The Philosophy of Money. Georg Simmel)
● Subjective (individual) culture
“By cultivating objects, that is by increasing their value beyond the performance of their natural constitution, we cultivate ourselves: it is the same value-increasing process developing out of us and returning back to us that moves external nature or our own nature.” (6. The Style of Life, The Philosophy of Money. Georg Simmel)
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| Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” (1936) |
“If one compares our culture with that of a hundred years ago, then one may surely say – subject to many individual exceptions – that the things that determine and surround our lives, such as tools, means of transport, the products of science, technology and art, are extremely refined. Yet individual culture, at least in the higher strata, has not progressed at all to the same extent; indeed, it has even frequently declined.” (6. The Style of Life, The Philosophy of Money. Georg Simmel)
Creativity devours the Creator — the Tragedy of Culture
Georg Simmel's Real-Life Alienation and Anti-Semitism
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| Georg Simmel (1858–1918) |
Intellectual Marginality
Anti-Semitism and Discrimination
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Further reading (sponsored by Amazon):
● Georg Simmel (2011, originally published in 1900). “The Philosophy of Money” (Routledge Classics). 596 pages. Routledge.
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In “The Philosophy of Money,” Georg Simmel puts money on the couch. In “The Philosophy of Money,” Simmel provides us with a classic analysis of the social, psychological, and philosophical aspects of the money economy, full of brilliant insights into the forms that social relationships take. Simmel analyzes the relationships of money to exchange, human personality, the position of women, and individual freedom! As an immense and profound piece of work, “The Philosophy of Money” demands to be read today and for years to come as a stunning account of the meaning, use, and culture of money!
Table of Contents
Foreword to the Routledge Classics Edition
Preface to the Third Edition
Introduction to the Translation
Preface
Analytical Part
1: Value and Money
2: The Value of Money as a Substance
3: Money in the Sequence of Purposes
Synthetic Part
4: Individual Freedom
5: The Money Equivalent of Personal Values
6: The Style of Life
Afterword: The Constitution of the Text
Name Index
