The German Genius

“unbearable” for people who had lived in metropolises.
    In May 1889 Simmel gave a paper on “The Psychology of Money.” 21 Somewhat expanded, this was to become Die Philosophie des Geldes ( The Philosophy of Money ) which, when it appeared in 1900, was welcomed with great acclaim. Karl Joël declared it to be “a philosophy of the times,” Max Weber thought its analysis of the spirit of capitalism was nothing less than “brilliant,” and Rudolf Goldscheid suggested it formed “a very interesting correlate to Marx’s Capital .”
    Simmel’s argument owed something to Dilthey because he argued that “Money, like other phenomena, can never be grasped from a single science.” Nevertheless, for Simmel money was important because it symbolized “the fundamental relatedness of social reality.” The meaning of money, he said, is grounded not in production, as Marx would have it, but in exchange . Exchange, he insisted, is the source of value, embodying the process of sacrifice and gain. “Every interaction [in society] has to be regarded as an exchange: every conversation, every affection (even if it is rejected), every game, every glance at another person.” Such interactions always involve the exchange of personal energy, and this, for Simmel, is what metropolitan life is about and why it is new. 22
    A money economy creates new dependencies, “especially upon third persons, not as persons but as representatives of functions.” One consequence is that the personalities of those we now become dependent upon are irrelevant and far less tense emotionally. Money enables us to participate in a much wider range of relationships and associations but without any real emotional involvement, still less commitment. Money is both “disintegrating and isolating” but also “unifying,” in that it brings together elements of a society that otherwise “would have no connection whatsoever.” Simmel even compared the money economy to prostitution: “The indifference as to its use, the lack of attachment to any individual because it is unrelated to any of them, the objectivity inherent in money…which excludes any emotional relationship…produces an ominous analogy between money and prostitution.” 23
    In the final chapter of The Philosophy of Money —which ranks as one of the first sociological analyses of modernity—Simmel tried to work out an updated theory of alienation. Money, he said, helps modern culture toward a “calculating exactness,” and the ease of understanding of these monetary relationships eclipses all others, so that the individual’s chances to be creative and develop in particular directions becomes restricted. Furthermore, it is in the nature of the production process that more impersonal objects are preferred “because they are suitable for more people and can be produced cheaply to satisfy the widest possible demand.” In this way individual experience becomes flattened, intimacy is lost— this is the modern alienation and, for Simmel, the “tragedy of culture,” compounded further by the loss of philosophical coherence brought about by scientific specialization.
    In 1903 Simmel published his no less famous work, Die Großstadt und das Geistesleben ( The Metropolis and Mental Life ), later expanded into Soziologie ( Sociology ; 1908). Here he argued that great cities are not only characterized by far more social differentiation than before but also that there is a totally new phenomenon, the “indefinite collectivity” we refer to as crowds, which are characterized by “total indifference to one’s fellow human beings.” 24 This experience—unknown in traditional, rural communities or market towns—provokes “extreme subjectivism,” he said. The individual’s struggle for self-assertion, against “the pervasive indifference” of much metropolitan social interaction, leads to excessive behavior, “the most tendentious eccentricities, the specifically metropolitan excesses of aloofness, caprice and fastidiousness, whose significance no longer lies in the content of such behaviour, but rather in its form of being different, of making oneself stand out and thus attracting attention.” Metropolitan life atrophies genuine individuality and replaces it with an artificial, contrived, calculated individuation. This too is a form of alienation. 25
    Both Georg Lukács and Walter Benjamin found The Philosophy of Money second only to Marx in importance. It also helped imbue