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A concept developed by a sociological theorists of the more classical era of sociology, Georg Simmel, was his proposal of “The Tragedy of Culture” The basic premise of this subject, is that over time, our cultural products will grow beyond the individual capacities to produce, absorb, and control that culture which we have created. The two major components of this are Simmel’s concepts of Subjective/ Individual Culture (the capacity to produce objects) and Objective Culture (the objects that are produced). It is not just physical and material objects that are made that Simmel refers to but also social constructs and frames of mind.

The Essential Components: Subjective- & Objective Culture

As mentioned earlier, the two primary components of concern for Simmel’s Tragedy of Culture, are the Subjective culture, which is basically the individual’s capacity to produce and control the elements of objective culture, and objective culture, which are essentially the elements which are produced.

Subjective/ Individual Culture

Every person is endowed with the desire and individual propensities to seek expression in one form or another. It has been argued that this originates in a more irrational and abstract version of a person’s psyche. This is a person’s subjective culture. Simmel argued that the desire to express these is due to the desire for a more metaphysical completion for the self based off one’s abstract reasoning and the more immaterial portion of the self. It is from this, Simmel argued, that we put forth our products and that this is how we absorb and control the elements that we have put forth. Simmel put much time and effort into “…investigating those whom he believed embodied its most authentic expression: individuals of aesthetic and metaphysical ‘genius.’” (Kamolnick 2001). Simmel believed there to be a very large contribution by aesthetics to a person’s subjective culture, aesthetics essentially being the psychological responses to beauty and art, or a conception of what is artistically valid and beautiful.

Simmel believed that life in it’s totality/ absolute for a person would be a creative method of production, where the subjective spirit would have the upper-hand on objective culture, individuality over objectivity. “Life in its totality is interpreted after the model of the creative method of production […] and thereby unfolds the totality of his own existential powers.” (Habermas 1996).

Objective Cultue

When the inhibitions of subjective culture are released they are done through the medium of what Simmel called Objective Culture. The wide myriad of topics that encompass objective culture are virtually endless, from art, to the internet, from philosophy to the sciences. At a much more inclusive view of objective culture, it also constitutes rationalizations, forms of mind, social norms, and more. Another outlook to view objective culture is how most people would generally define what they consider culture to be in their environment.

The Tragedy of Culture

As alluded to earlier, the basic premise of Simmel’s Tragedy of Culture is essentially the negative repercussions objective culture may have (or according to Simmel, does have) on subjective culture. More specifically, the capacity of subjective culture not able to keep pace of the ever increasing objective culture.

Dynamics of Culture

The dynamic process that subjective culture has is that it becomes externalized into the objective culture. This consists of the objectifications and rationalizations that occur for the process to further assimilate into objective culture, “…a soul that works upward from nature to culture (that is, the education of the subjective spirit).” (Habermas 1996).

Furthermore, the soul/ subjective culture assimilates not just into objective culture, but more specifically, into it’s forms. Although it is off topic, another contribution that Simmel made to sociology was his concept of “forms,” which are related to the dynamics of the cultures. It is a narrowing down of a wide range of different societal options that are placed upon people and their subjective cultures. Forms for Simmel are the “…patterns that are imposed on people by the bewildering array of events, actions, and interactions in the social world…” (Ritzer 2007). Because there is such a wide range of different objective cultures, one could easily argue that a person must use forms to in order to express themselves into the objective culture community.

Relationship Between Subjective and Objective Culture

As mentioned earlier, the origin of objective culture is from the subjective culture. Objective culture does however, Simmel argued, breaks away and becomes independent for itself and for it’s necessities to sustain itself and have no concern whatsoever with the enhancement of an individual’s subjective culture. “ [Objective Cultures] have a logic of their own- bound by their own laws, they turn away from the direction by which they could join the personal development of human souls.” (Kamolnick 2001). Furthermore, not only does subjective culture have a relationship and part in creating objective culture, but objective culture also plays a hand in how the subjective aspect of a person is influenced which is discussed later under the “Variety of Culture” section.

Objective Culture’s Domination Over the Subjective Culture

Objective culture has been growing, and will continue to grow, exponentially. This has inevitably caused the objective culture to produce a wide range of parts and components. For example, video game programming contains many different parts in order to make the desired game. This causes there to many different details and programming to the particular game for a particular area for the game. The many different components of everyday objective culture add greatly to the complexity of that particular form of culture. Because so many specializations are required, there must be a division of labor which is an increase in individuals working in a more specific objective. A key concept to understanding the Tragedy of Culture is that because of this specialization process, the individual loses sight of the overall culture that he is a part of and has helped to create, or in our example, the programmer designing the eyes of a character, loses insight on the game on an overall scale and all the other components that are within it.

What kind of effect does this specialization process have on subjective culture though? Simmel argued that this can have an effect on people on both a broad perspective and on an everyday life perspective as people become more and more estranged from the products which they have created. This concept as well as the others that are a part of the tragedy of culture, confronts the “soul” or a person’s subjective culture of whether it is “still a master of it’s own house” or rather if a harmony has been established “…between its innermost life and what it has to absorb into that life as [objective culture].” (Habermas 1996).

The Negative Repercussions on Subjective Culture

An impact that is imposed is that the autonomous logic of a person’s subjective culture is replaced with the logic of the objective culture. Essentially, because subjective culture cannot keep up with objective culture and it’s complexity as well as further assimilating itself, subjective culture becomes institutionalized and ritualized. This can cause subjective culture to diminish its creative and aesthetic aspects with the logic, forms, and rationales of the objective culture. Since subjective culture can only be expressed essentially through forms and objective culture, this creates a sort of “necessary evil” in regards to subjective culture. As Simmel stated, “life can express itself and realize its freedom only through forms; yet forms must also necessarily suffocate life and obstruct freedom.” (Kamolnick 2001)

Outcomes of Subjective Culture

It has already been mentioned that the principle outcome of what happens to subjective culture is that since it becomes more and more diminished in comparison to it’s objective culture on a whole and “…the frustration that comes of recognizing how much there is that we would like to know but will never have the time or mental energy to master.” (The Wilson Quarterly 2002). A more defined scenario of this was that Simmel believed objective culture would continue to grow until either subjective culture submits itself completely to the overwhelming social forms that it imposes, or on what he considered to be an even worse case scenario, that subjective culture would become completely irrelevant in modern society under any topic.

Money’s effect on the Cultures

Simmel believed that money had the potential to be liberating for a person’s subjective culture, yet it inevitably came into conflict with it. An eventual outcome is that the “soul” becomes nothing more than a component to the objective culture mainstream. Money eventually becomes a rational for the soul to further objectify itself into the objective culture. This rational can often lead to the means (money) becoming a goal. For example, how one purchases a car to travel to the destination (goal) however some people become fascinated with their car (means) over their destination. An insight by Simmel was that having money can be more valuable to a person than the things that money can buy. The logic of this is that money is essentially having the value of money plus the added choice of things that the money can buy. This rational can further fuel the person to rationale the objectification of the spirit.

Money also produces it’s form and medium, the market, which Simmel argued, furthered the complexity of objective culture contributing to the division of labor, as well as increasing complexity for the subjective culture.

Positive Aspects of Objective Culture

Simmel did not necessarily label objective culture as a negative component to society. He pointed out many positive points of objective culture. One was that even though the division of labor caused a diminishing on subjective culture, he did notice it for the increase in productivity and efficiency through specializations. It is clear that this is true in many instances, such as seeing the advances in science and medicine that could not be where they are today if there was not such a process.

Simmel also stated, seemingly contradictory, that having so much objective culture can increase individuality through assimilating a portion of each objective realm and world and to pursue those which fit us best. This can also encourage distinctiveness and personal refinement

As mentioned previously, another use for objective culture on the individual is to express a person’s subjective cultural inhibitions through it as a medium. “Simmel repeatedly asserts that subjective culture would be impossible without [objective culture] […] a medium for the cultivation of souls is inconceivable without objectifications that serve as a medium and outcome of subjective culture.” (Kamolnick 2001) .

Contemporary Criticisms to Simmel’s Tragedy of Culture

Like many, if not all, sociological theorists have criticisms and critical assessments of their accusations. One such aspect that has come under investigation is how these accusations that Simmel makes is possible to begin with at a sociological scale instead of a metaphysical one.

Another criticism is that Simmel’s dualism of objective and subjective culture fails to find a satisfactory relationship between individual agents and the human culture.

One critique is that the realm of Simmel’s dualism of his cultures is misplaced. That instead of ascertaining to a metaphysical realm, that they would be more suited in the area of developmental psychology and learning theory areas of study.

References

1) Ritzer, George. Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots. (2nd ed.) 2007 McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. 50-51

2) Ferrarotti, Franco. An Invitation to Classical Sociology, Meditations on Some Great Social Thinkers. 2003. Lexington Books. Lanham, Maryland. 61-71

3) Kamolnick, Paul. Sociological Theory, Vol. 19, No. 1. (Mar., 2001) Simmel’s Legacy for Contemporary Value Theory: A Critical. Assessment 65-85

4) Habermas, Jurgen. Translated by Deflem, Mathieu. Critical Inquiry. 1996 University of Chicago Press. Georg Simmel on Philosophy and Culture: Postscript to a Collection of Essays 408-410

5) The Wilson Quarterly. The Philosopher of Money. 2002 Vol. 26 No. 4

External Links

6) The Individual in Modern Society. < http://www.google.com/ig/dell?hl=en&client=dell-usuk&channel=us&ibd=1070211> . Updated last: 11-22-2006. Accessed: 2-26-2007

7) ed. Levine, Donald. Georg Simmel On Individuality and Social Forms. http://ssr1.uchicago.edu/PRELIMS/Theory/simmel.html . Accessed: 2-24-2007