The social Theory of Georg Simmel

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1024612627

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-166627

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Spykman, Nicholas J. http://d-nb.info/gnd/124229867

Title:: The social Theory of Georg Simmel

Place of publication:: Chicago

Publisher:: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Year of publication:: 1925

Scope:: XXIX, 297 S

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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116 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL People unite to contest, and the contest takes place accord- ing to rules and regulations acknowledged by both and defining the form of the interrelation. These norms create the technique without which the contest would be impos- sible. A contest implies a form of association, and the norms for this association are usually much more strict and impersonal, and are lived up to with a finer sense of honor, than are the norms of co-operative associations. The Legal Contest The intimate correlation between the opposition and union which is the essence of conflict finds its clearest man- ifestation in the contest game. It illustrates how the one realizes its full sociological significance and efficacy only in and through the other. A similar sociological form, al- though not in such purity, joins the two parties of a legal contest. There is in this case an object of contest, but the form of the contest is purely impersonal and factual. The respective claims are asserted with relentless objectivity and pushed with employment of all available means, with- out being diverted or modified by personal reactions or ex- traneous considerations. Nothing enters into the contest which does not properly belong in the conflict and which does not serve the ends of the conflict. In other battles, in- cluding the most savage struggles, there is always the pos- sibility of the intermixture of subjective elements or of the intervention of a third or of a freak of nature. From the legal battle all that is excluded. It is to be fought to the bitter end without any interference on the part of what is not immediately pertinent to the main contention; and it is this impersonal character which makes it so severe, sharp. and merciless. On the other hand, the whole contest presupposes and implies a narrow unity between the parties. Their contest

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