GENERAL INTRODUCTION

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The truth for Simmel is relative, not absolutei':A
single idea is true, is valid, only in relation to another idea,
and a whole body of knowledge is true only jn’ definite
relation to the external world. The peculiar tendency of
our mind to accept the truth of a proposition only on the
basis of a proof leads to an infinite regression, which means
the impossibility of finding the final truth which shall support
 the whole structure. If we do not want to accept dogmatically
 once and for all a proposition which shall need
no further proof, we are forced to accept a reciprocity of
proving between propositions as the basic form of cognition
 (Erkennen). Although in case of a special deduction
this process of circular reasoning can be shown to be faulty,
it may none the less be valid for the totality of our theoretic
 knowledge. Knowing (Erkennen) would then be a
free-floating process in which the elements mutually determine
 each other’s place—just as the masses of matter
determine each other’s place in space. Truth would then
be a concept of relationship, like weight, and our picture
of the world would float in space like the world itself. The
necessity for proof either postpones the recognition of the
truth till infinity, along a line of infinite regression, or it
bends this line round to a circle. Then one proposition is
true only in relation to another, this latter, however, in the
last instance only in relation to the former.
The totality of our theoretic knowledge would then be
no more true than that the totality of matter is heavy.
Only in the relation of the elements to each other do they
have this quality, a quality which the whole cannot be
said to possess. The totality can only possess this quality
in relation to something outside of itself. In the same way
the laws of geometry build themselves on each other according
 to an internal autonomy, while the axioms and
methodological norms, according to which this building