How is Society Possible?
by Georg Simmel
American Journal of Sociology
vol. 16 (1910-11)


    Kant could propose and answer the fundamental question of his
philosophy, How is nature possible?, only because for him nature
was nothing but the representation (Vorstellung) of nature. This
does not mean merely that "the world is my representation," that
we thus can speak of nature only so far as it is a content of our
consciousness, but that what we call nature is a special way in
which our intellect assembles, orders, and forms the
sense-perceptions. These "given" perceptions, of color, taste,
tone, temperature, resistance, smell, which in the accidental
sequence of subjective experience course through our
consciousness, are in and of themselves not yet "nature;" but
they become "nature" through the activity of the mind, which
combines them into objects and series of objects, into substances
and attributes and into causal coherences. As the elements of the
world are given to us immediately, there does not exist among
them, according to Kant, that coherence (Verbindung) which alone
can make out of them the intelligible regular (gesetzmassig)
unity of nature; or rather, which signifies precisely the
being-nature (Natur-Sein) of those in themselves incoherently and
irregularly emerging world-fragments. Thus the Kantian
world-picture grows in the most peculiar reJection (Wiederspiel),
Our sense-impressions are for this process purely subjective,
since they depend upon the physico-psychical organization, which
in other beings might be different, but they become "objects"
since they are taken up by the forms of our intellect, and by
these are fashioned into fixed regularities and into a coherent
picture of "nature." On the other hand, however, those
perceptions are the real "given," the unalterably accumulating
content of the world and the assurance of an existence
independent of ourselves, so that now those very intellectual
formings of the same into objects, coherences, regularities,
appear as subjective, as that which is brought to the situation
by ourselves, in contrast with that which we have received from
the externally existent - i.e., these formings appear as the
functions of the intellect itself, which in themselves
unchangeable, had constructed from another sense-material a
nature with another content. Nature is for Kant a definite sort
of cognition, a picture growing through and in our cognitive
categories. The question then, How is nature possible?, i.e.,
what are the conditions which must be present in order that a
"nature" may be given, is resolved by him through discovery of
the forms which constitute the essence of our intellect and
therewith bring into being "nature" as such.
    It is at once suggested that it is possible to treat in an
analogous fashion the question of the aprioristic conditions on
the basis of which society - is possible. Here too individual
elements are given which in a certain sense always remain in
their discreteness, as is the case with the sense-perceptions,
and they undergo their synthesis into the unity of a society only
through a process of consciousness which puts the individual
existence of the several elements into relationship with that of
the others in definite forms and in accordance with definite
laws. The decisive difference between the unity of a society and
that of nature, however, is this: the latter - according to the
Kantian standpoint here presupposed - comes to existence
exclusively in the contemplating unity (Subject), it is produced
exclusively by that mind upon and out of the sense materials
which are not in themselves interconnected. On the contrary, the
societary unity is realized by its elements without further
mediation, and with no need of an observer, because these
elements are consciously and synthetically active. The Kantian
theorem, Connection (Verbindung) can never inhere in the things,
since it is only brought into existence by the mind (Subject), is
not true of the societary connection, which is rather immediately
realized in the "things" - namely, in this case the individual
souls. Moreover, this societary connection as synthesis, remains
something purely psychical and without parallels with
space-structures and their reactions. But in the societary
instance the combining requires no factor outside of its own
elements, since each of these exercises the function which, with
respect to the external, the psychic energy of the observer
supplies. The consciousness of constituting with the others a
unity is the whole unity in question in the societary case. This
of course means, on the one hand, not the abstract consciousness
of the unity concept, but the innumerable singular relationships,
the feeling and knowing about this determining and being
determined by the other, and, on the other hand, it quite as
little excludes an observing third party from performing in
addition a synthesis, with its basis only in himself, between the
persons concerned, as between special elements. Whatever be the
tract of externally observable being which is to be comprehended
as a unity. the consummation occurs not merely by virtue of its
immediate and strictly objective content, but it is determined by
the categories of the mind (Subject) and from its cognitive
requirements. Society, however, is the objective unity which has
no need of the observer not contained in itself.
    The things in nature are, on the one hand, more widely
separated than souls. In the outward world, in which each entity
occupies space which cannot be shared with another, there is no
analogy for the unity of one man with another, which consists in
understanding, in love, in common work. On the other hand, the
fragments of spatial existence pass into a unity in the
consciousness of the observer, which cannot be attained by
community of individuals. For, on account of the fact that the
objects of the societary synthesis are independent beings,
psychic centres, personal unities, they resist that absolute
merging in the soul of another person, to which the selflessness
(Selbstlosigkeit) of soulless things must yield. Thus a
collection of men is really a unity in a much higher, more ideal
sense, yet in a much lower degree than tables, chairs, sofa,
carpet and mirror constitute "the furniture of a room," or river,
meadow, trees, house, "a landscape," or in a painting "a
picture."
    In quite a different sense from that in which it is true of
the external world, is society "my representation" (
Vorstellung), i.e., posited upon the activity of consciousness.
For the soul of another has for me the same reality which I
myself have, a reality which is very different from that of a
material thing. However Kant insists that objects in space have
precisely the same certainty as my own existence, in the latter
case only the particular contents of my subjective life can be
meant; for the basis of representation in general, the feeling of
the existing ego, is unconditional and unshakable to a degree
attained by no single representation of a material externality.
But this very certainty has for us, justifiably or not, also the
fact of the thou; and as cause or as effect of this certainty we
feel the thou as something independent of our representation,
something which is just as really for itself (genau so fur sich
ist) as our own existence. That this for-itself of the other
nevertheless does not prevent us from making it into OUr
representation, that something which cannot be resolved into our
representing still becomes the content, and thus the product of
our representation-this is the profoundest
psychologico-epistemological pattern and problem of
socialization. Within our own consciousness we distinguish very
precisely between the fundamentality of the ego (the
presupposition of all representation, which has no part in the
never wholly suppressible problematics of its contents) and these
contents themselves, which as an aggregate, with their coming and
going, their dubitability and their fallibility, always present
themselves as mere products of that absolute and final energy and
existence of our psychic being. We must carry over to the other
soul, however, these very conditions, or rather independence of
conditions, of our own ego, although in the last analysis we must
represent that soul. That other soul has for us that last degree
of reality which our own self possesses in distinction from its
contents. We are sure that the case stands the same way with the
other soul and its contents. Under these circumstances, the
question, How is Society possible? has a wholly different
methodological bearing from the question, How is nature possible?
The latter question is to be answered by the forms of cognition,
through which the mind synthesizes given elements into "nature."
The former question is answered by the conditions residing a
priori in the elements themselves, through which they combine
themselves actually into the synthesis "society." In a certain
sense the entire contents of this book, as developed on the basis
of the principle announced, may be regarded as the material for
answering this question. The book searches out the procedures,
occurring in the last analysis in individuals, which condition
the existence of the individuals as society. It does not treat
these procedures as temporally antecedent causes of this result,
but as partial processes of the synthesis which we
comprehensively name "society. "But the question must be
understood in a still more fundamental sense. I said that the
function of achieving the synthetic unity, which with reference
to nature resides in the observing mind, with reference to
society passes over to the societary elements themselves. The
consciousness of constituting society is not to be sure, in the
abstract, present in the individual; but everyone always knows
that the others are connected with himself, although this knowing
about the other as the associated, this recognizing of the whole
complex as a society usually occurs with reference to particular
concrete contents. Perhaps, however, the case is not different
from that of "the unity of cognition" (die Einheit des
Erkennens), according to which we proceed indeed in the processes
of consciousness, arranging one concrete content with another,
yet without having a separate consciousness of the unity itself,
except in rare and late abstractions. Now, the question is: What
lies then, universally and a priori at the basis, what
presuppositions must be operative, in order that the particular
concrete procedures in the individual consciousness may actually
be processes of socialization; what elements are contained in
them which make it possible that the product of the elements is,
abstractly expressed, the construction of the individual into a
societary unity? The sociological apriorities will have the same
double significance as those "which make nature possible," on the
one hand they will more or less completely determine the actual
processes of socialization, as functions or energies of the
psychical occurrence, on the other hand they are the ideal
logical presuppositions of the perfect - although in this
perfection never realized - society. A parallel is the use of the
law of causation. On the one hand it lives and works in the
actual cognitive processes. On the other hand it builds up the
form of the truth as the ideal system of completed cognitions,
irrespective of whether that truth is realized or not by that
temporal, relatively accidental psychical dynamic, and
irrespective of the greater or lesser approximation of the truth
actually in consciousness to the ideal truth.
    It is a mere question of terms whether investigation of these
conditions of the socializing process shall be called
epistemological or not, since that structure which arises from
these conditions, and which has its norms in their forms, is not
cognitions but practical processes and real situations.
Nevertheless what I now have in mind, and what must be tested as
the general concept of socialization by its conditions, is
somewhat epistemological, viz., the consciousness of associating
or of being socialized. Perhaps it should be called a knowing
rather than a cognizing (besser ein Wissen als ein Erkennen). For
in this case the mind does not immediately confront an object of
which it gradually gains a theoretical picture, but that
consciousness of the socialization is immediately its vehicle or
inner significance. The matter in question is the processes of
reciprocation which signify for the individual the fact of being
associated. That is, the fact is not signified in the abstract to
the individual, but it is capable of abstract expression. What
forms must be at the basis, or what specific categories must we
bring along, so to speak, in order that the consciousness may
arise, and what consequently are the forms which the resulting
consciousness - i.e., society as a fact of knowing - must bear?
We may call this the epistemological theory of society. In what
follows, I am, trying to sketch certain of these a priori
effective conditions or forms of socialization. These cannot, to
be sure, like the Kantian categories, be designated by a single
word. Moreover, I present them only as illustrations of the
method of investigation.
    1. The picture which one man gets of another from personal
contact is determined by certain distortions which are not simple
deceptions from incomplete experience, defective vision,
sympathetic or antipathetic prejudice; they are rather changes in
principle in the composition of the real object. These are, to
begin with, of two dimensions. In the first place we see the
other party in some degree generalized. This may be because it is
not within our power fully to represent in ourselves an
individuality different from our own. Every reconstruction
(Nachbilden) of a soul is determined by the similarity to it, and
although this is by no means the only condition of psychical
cognition (sic) - since on the one hand unlikeness seems at the
same time requisite, in order to gain perspective and
objectivity, on the other hand there is required an intellectual
capacity which holds itself above likeness or unlikeness of
being-yet complete cognition would nevertheless presuppose a
complete likeness. It appears as though every man has in himself
a deepest individuality-nucleus which cannot be subjectively
reproduced by another whose deepest individuality is essentially
different. And that this requirement is not logically compatible
with that distance and objective judgment on which the
representation of another otherwise rests, is proved by the mere
fact that complete knowledge of the individuality of another is
denied to us; and all interrelations of men with one another are
limited by the varying degrees of this deficiency. Whatever its
cause may be, its consequence at all events is a generalization
of the psychical picture of the other person, a dissolving of the
outlines, which adds to the singularity of this picture a
relationship with others. We posit every man, with especial
bearing upon our practical attitude toward him, as that type of
man to which his individuality makes him belong. We think him,
along with all his singularity, only under the universal category
which does not fully cover him to be sure, and which he does not
fully cover. This latter circumstance marks the contrast between
this situation and that which exists between the universal idea
and the particular which belongs under it. In order to recognize
the man, we do not see him in his pure individuality, but
carried, exalted or degraded by the general type under which we
subsume him. Even when this transformation is so slight that we
cannot immediately recognize it, or even if all the usual
cardinal concepts of character fail us, such as moral or immoral,
free or unfree, domineering or menial, etc. - in our own minds we
designate the man according to an unnamed type with which his
pure individuality does not precisely coincide.
    Moreover this leads a step farther down. Precisely from the
complete singularity of a personality we form a picture of it
which is not identical with its reality, but still is not a
general type. It is rather the picture which the person, would
present if he were, so to speak, entirely himself, if on the good
or bad side he realized the possibility which is in every man. We
are all fragments, not only of the universal man, but also of
ourselves. We are onsets not merely of the type human being in
general, not merely of the type good, bad, etc., but we are
onsets of that not further in principle nameable individuality
and singularity of our own selves which surrounds our perceptible
actuality as though drawn with ideal lines. The vision of our
neighbor, however, enlarges this fragment to that which we never
are completely and wholly. He cannot see the fragments merely
side by side as they are actually given, but as we offset the
blind spot in our eye so that we are not conscious of it, in like
manner we make of these fragmentary data the completeness of an
individuality. The practice of life is more and more insistent
that we shall form our picture of the man from the real details
alone which we empirically know about him; but this very practice
rests upon those changes and additions, upon the reconstruction
of those given fragments into the generality of a type and into
the completeness of this ideal personality.
    This procedure, which is in principle attempted, although in
reality it is seldom carried through to completeness, operates
only within the already existing society as the apriori of the
further reactions which develop between individuals. Within a
sphere which has any sort of community of calling or of
interests, every member looks upon every other, not in a purely
empirical way, but on the basis of an apriori which this sphere
imposes upon each  consciousness which has part in it. In the
circles of officers, of church members, of civil officials, of
scholars, of members of families, each regards the other under
the matter of course presupposition-this is a member of my group.
From the common basis of life certain suppositions originate and
people look upon one another through them as through a veil. This
veil does not, to be sure, simply conceal the peculiarity of the
individual, but it gives to this personality a new form, since
its actual reality melts in this typical transformation into a
composite picture. We see the other person not simply as an
individual, but as colleague or comrade or fellow partisan; in a
word, inhabitant of the same peculiar world; and this
unavoidable, quite automatically operative presupposition is one
of the means of bringing his personality and reality in the
representation of another up to the quality and form demanded of
his sociability (Soziabilitat).
    The same is evidently true of members of different groups in
their relations with one another. The plain citizen who makes the
acquaintance of an officer cannot divest himself of the thought
that this individual is an officer. And although this being an
officer may belong to the given individuality, yet not in just
the schematic way in which it prejudges his picture in the
representation of the other person. The like is the case with the
Protestant in contrast with the Catholic, the merchant with the
official, the layman with the priest, etc. Everywhere there occur
veilings of the outline of reality by the social generalization.
This in principle prohibits discovery of that reality within a
group which is in a high degree socially differentiated.
Accordingly man's representation of man is thrown out of true by
dislocations, additions and subtractions from all these
categories, which exert an a priori influence, since the
generalization is always at the same time more or less than the
individuality. That is, the individual is rated as in some
particulars different from his actual self by the gloss imposed
upon him when he is classified in a type, when he is compared
with an imagined completeness of his own peculiarity, when he is
credited with the characteristics of the social generality to
which he belongs. Over and above all this there sways, as the
principle. of interpretation in cognition, the thought of his
real solely individual equation; but since it appears as though
determination of this equation would be the only way of arriving
at the precisely founded relationship to the individual, as a
matter of fact those changes and reshapings, which prevent this
ideal recognition of him, are precisely the conditions through
which the relationships which we know as the strictly social
become possible - somewhat as with Kant the categories of reason,
which form the immediately given into quite new objects, alone
make the given world a knowable one.
    2. Another category under which men (Subjecte) view
themselves and one another, in order that, so formed, they may
produce empirical society, may be formulated in the seemingly
trivial theorem: - Each element of a group is not a societary
part, but beyond that something else. This fact operates as
social apriori in so far as the part of the individual which is
not turned toward the group, or is not dissolved in it, does not
lie simply without meaning by the side of his socially
significant phase, is not a something external to the group, for
which it nolens volens affords space; but the fact that the
individual, with respect to certain sides of his personality, is
not an element of the group, constitutes the positive condition
for the fact that he is such a group member in other aspects of
his being. In other words, the sort of his socialized-being
(Vergesellschaftet-Seins) is determined or partially determined
by the sort of his not-socialized being. The analysis to follow
will bring to light certain types whose sociological
significance, even in their germ and nature, is fixed by the fact
that they are in some way shut out from the very group for which
their existence is significant; for instance in the case of the
stranger, the enemy, the criminal, and even the pauper. This
applies, however, not merely in the case of such general
characters, but in unnumbered modifications for every sort of
individuality. That every moment finds us surrounded by
relationships with human beings, and that the content of every
moment's experience is directly or indirectly determined by these
human beings, is no contradiction of the foregoing. On the
contrary the social setting as such affects beings who are not
completely bounded by it. For instance, we know that the civil
official is not merely an official, the merchant not merely a
merchant, the military officer not merely an officer. This
extra-social being, his temperament and the deposit of his
experiences, his interests and the worth of his personality,
little as it may change the main matter of official, mercantile,
military activities, gives the individual still, in every
instance, for everyone with whom he is in contact, a definite
shading, and interpenetrates his social picture with extra-social
imponderabilities. The whole commerce of men within the societary
categories would be different, if each confronted the other only
in that character which belong; to him in the role for which he
is responsible in the particular category in which he appears at
the moment. To be sure, individuals, like callings and social
situations, are distinguished by the degree of that In-addition
which they possess or admit along with their social content. The
man in love or in friendship may be taken as marking the one pole
of this series. In this situation, that which the individual
reserves for himself, beyond those manifestations and activities
which converge upon the other, in quantity approaches the zero
point. Only a single life is present, which, so to speak, may be
regarded or is lived from two sides: on the one hand from the
inside, from the terminus a quo of the active person; then on the
other hand as the quite identical life, contemplated in the
direction of the beloved person, under the category of gis
terminus ad quem, which it completely adopts. With quite another
tendency the Catholic priest presents in form the same
phenomenon, in that his ecclesiastical function completely covers
and swallows his being-for-himself. In the former of these
extreme cases, the In-addition of the sociological activity
disappears, because its content has completely passed over into
consideration of the other party; in the second case, because the
corresponding type of contents has in principle altogether
disappeared. The opposite pole is exhibited by the phenomena of
our modern civilization as they are determined by money economy.
That is, man approaches the ideal of absolute objectivity as
producer, or purchaser or seller, in a word as a performer of
some economic function. Certain individuals in high places
excepted, the individual life, the tone of the total personality,
has disappeared from the function, the persons are merely the
vehicles of an exchange of function and counterfunction occurring
according to objective norms, and every thing which does not fit
into this sheer thingness (Sachlichkeit) has also as a matter of
fact disappeared from it. The In-addition has fully taken up into
itself the personality with its special coloring, its
irrationality, its inner life, and it has left to those societary
activities only those energies, in pure abstraction, which
specifically pertain to the activities.
    Between these extremes the social individuals move in such a
way that the energies and characteristics which are pointed
toward the inner center always show a certain significance for
the activities and inclinations which affect their associates.
For, in the marginal case, even the consciousness that this
social activity or attitude is something differentiated from the
rest of the man, and does not enter into the sociological
relationship along with that which he otherwise is and
signifies-even this consciousness has quite positive influence
upon the attitude which the subject assumes towards his fellows
and they towards him. The apriori of the empirical social life is
that the life is not entirely social. We form our
interrelationships not alone under the negative reservation of a
part of our personality which does not enter into them; this
portion affects the social occurrences in the soul not alone
through general psychological combinations, but precisely the
formal fact that influence exerts itself outside of these
determines the nature of this interworking.
    Still further, one of the most important sociological
formations rests on the fact that the societary structures are
composed of beings who are at the same time inside and outside of
them: namely that between a society and its individuals a
relationship may exist like that between two parties-indeed that
perhaps such relationship, open or latent, always exists.
Therewith society produces perhaps the most conscious, at least
universal conformation of a basic type of life in general: that
the individual soul can never have a position within a
combination outside of which it does not at the same time have a
position, that it cannot be inserted into an order without
finding itself at the same time in opposition to that order. This
applies throughout the whole range from the most transcendental
and universal interdependencies to the most singular and
accidental. The religious man feels himself completely
encompassed by the divine being, as though he were merely a
pulse-beat of the divine life; his own substance is unreservedly,
and even in mystical identity, merged in that of the Absolute.
And yet, in order to give this intermelting any meaning at all,
the devotee must retain some sort of self existence, some sort of
personal reaction, a detached ego, to which the resolution into
the divine All-Being is an endless task, a process only, which
would be neither metaphysically possible nor religiously feelable
if it did not proceed from a self-being on the part of the
person: the being one with God is conditional in its significance
upon the being other than god. Beyond this converging toward the
transcendental, the relationship to nature as a whole which the
human mind manifests throughout its entire history shows the same
form. On the one hand we know ourselves as articulated into
nature, as one of its products, which stands alongside of every
other as an equal among equals, as a point which nature's stuff
and energies reach and leave, as they circle through running
water and blossoming plants. And yet the soul has a feeling of a
something self-existent (eines Fursichseins) which we designate
with the logically so inexact concept freedom, offering an
opposite (ein Gegenuber und Paroli) to all that energy an element
of which we ever remain, which makes toward the radicalism which
we may express in the formula, Nature is only a representation in
the human soul. As, however, in this conception, nature with il
its undeniable peculiarity (Eigengesetzlichkeit) and hard reality
is still subsumed under the concept of the ego, so on the other
hand this ego, with all its freedom and self-containing
(Fursichsein), with its juxtaposition to "mere nature," is still
a member of nature. Precisely that is the overlapping natural
correlation, that it embraces not ione "mere nature," but also
that being which is independent and often enough hostile to "mere
nature," that this which according to the ego's deepest feeling
of selfishness is external to the ego must still be the element
of the ego. Moreover, this formula holds not less for the
relationship between the individuals and the particular circles
of their societary combinations; or if we generalize these
combinations into the concept of societary-ness in the abstract,
for the interrelation of individuals at large. We know ourselves
on the one side as products of society. The physiological series
of progenitors, their adaptations and fixations, the traditions
of their labor, their knowledge and belief, of the whole spirit
of the past crystilized in objective forms-all these determine
the equipment and the contents of our life, so that the question
might arise whether the individual is anything more than a
receptacle in which previously existing elements mix in changing
proportions; for although the elements were also in the last
analysis produced by individuals, yet the contribution of each is
a disappearing quantity, and only through their generic and
societary merging were the factors produced in the synthesis of
which in turn the ostensible individuality may consist. On the
other hand we know ourselves as a member of society, woven with
our life-process and its meaning and purpose quite as
interdependently into its coexistence (Nebeneinander) as in the
other view into its succession (Nacheinander). Little as we in
our character as natural objects have a self-sufficiency, because
the intersection of the natural elements proceeds through us as
through completely selfless structures, and the equality before
the laws of nature resolves our existence without remainder into
a mere example of their necessity - quite as little do we live as
societary beings around an autonomous center; but we are from
moment to moment composed out of reciprocal relationships to
others, and we are thus comparable with the corporeal substance
which for us exists only as the sum of many impressions of the
senses, but not as a self-sufficient entity. Now, however, we
feel that this social diffusion does not completely dissolve our
personality. This is not because of the reservations previously
mentioned, or of particular contents whose meaning and
development rest from the outset only in the individual soul, and
finds no position at large in the social correlation. It is not
only because of the molding of the social contents, whose unity
as individual soul is not itself again of social nature, any more
than the artistic form, in which the spots of color merge upon
the canvas, can be derived from the chemical nature of the colors
themselves. It is rather chiefly because the total life-content,
however completely it may be applicable from the social
antecedents and reciprocities, is yet at the same time capable of
consideration under the category of the singular life, as
experience of the individual and completely oriented with
reference to this experience. The two, individual and experience,
are merely different categories under which the same content
falls, just as the same plant may be regarded now with reference
to the biological conditions of its origin, again with reference
to its practical utility, and still again with reference to its
aesthetic meaning. The standpoint from which the existence of the
individual may be correlated and understood may be assumed either
within or without the individual; the totality of the life with
all its socially derivable contents may be regarded as the
centripetal destiny of its bearer, just as it still may pass,
with all the parts reserved to the credit of the individual, as
product and element of the social life.
    Therewith, therefore, the fact of socialization bring; the
individual into the double situation from which I started: viz.,
that the individual has his setting in the socialization and at
the same time is in antithesis with it, a member of its organism
and at the same time a closed organic whole, an existence (Sein)
for it and an existence for itself. The essential thing, however,
and the meaning of the particular sociological apriori which has
its basis herein, is this, that between individual and society
the Within and Without are not two determinations which exist
alongside of each other - although they may occasionally develop
in that way, and even to the degree of reciprocal enmity - but
that they signify the whole unitary position of the socially
living human being. His existence is not merely, in subdivision
of the contents, partially social and partially individual, but
it stands under the fundamental, formative, irreducible category
of a unity, which we cannot otherwise express than through the
synthesis or the contemporariness of the two logically
antithetical determinations -articulation and self-sufficiency,
the condition of being produced by, and contained in, society,
and on the other hand, of being derived out of and moving around
its own center. Society consists not only, as we saw above, of
beings that in part are not socialized, but also of others that
feel themselves to be, on the one hand, completely social
existences, on the other hand, while maintaining the same
content, completely individual existences. Moreover these are not
two unrelated contiguous standpoints, as if, for instance, one
considers the same body now with reference to its weight and now
with reference to its color; but the two compose that unity which
we call the social being, the synthetic category - as the concept
of causation is an aprioristic unity, although it includes the
two, in content, quite different elements of the causing and of
the effect. That this formation is at our disposal, this ability
to derive from beings, each of which may feel itself as the
terminus a quo and as the terminus ad quem of its developments,
destinies, qualities, the very concept of society which reckons
with those elements, and to recognize the reality corresponding
with the concept (Society) as the terminus a quo and the terminus
ad quem of those vitalities and self-determinings - that is an
apriori of empirical society, that makes its form possible as we
know it.
    3. Society is a structure of unlike elements. Even where
democratic or socialistic movements plan an "equality," and
partially attain it, the thing that is really in question is a
like valuation of persons, of performances, of positions, while
an equality of persons, in composition, in life-contents, and in
fortunes cannot come into consideration. And where, on the other
hand, an enslaved population constitutes only a mass, as in the
great oriental despotisms, this equality of each always concerns
only certain sides of existence, say the political or the
economic, but never the whole of the same, the transmitted
qualities, of which, personal relationships, experiences, not
merely within the subjective aspect of life but also on the side
of its reactions with other existences, will unavoidably have a
certain sort of peculiarity and untransferability. If we posit
society as a purely objective scheme, it appears as an ordering
of contents and performances which in space, time, concepts,
values are concerned with one another, and as to which we may in
so far peRform an abstraction from the personality, from the
Ego-form, which is the vehicle of its dynamic. If that inequality
of the elements now presents every performance or equality within
this order as individually marked and in its place unequivocally
established, at the same time society appears as a cosmos whose
manifoldness in being and in movement is boundless, in which,
however, each point can be composed and can develop itself only
in that particular way, the structure is not to be changed. What
has been asserted of the structure of the world in general, viz.,
that no grain of sand could have another form or place from that
which now belongs to it, except upon the presupposition and with
the consequence of a change of all being - the same recurs in the
case of the structure of society regarded as a web of
qualitatively determined phenomena. An analogy as in the case of
a miniature, greatly simplified and conventionalized
(stilisiert), is to be found for the picture of society thus
conceived as a whole, in a body of officials, which as such
consists of a definite ordering of "positions," of a
pre-ordination of performances, which, detached from their
personnel of a given moment, present an ideal correlation. Within
the same, every newcomer finds an unequivocally assigned place,
which has waited for him, as it were, and with which his energies
must harmonize. That which in this case is a conscious,
systematic assignment of functions, is in the totality of society
of course an inextricable tangle of functions; the positions in
it are not given by a constructive will, but they are discernible
only through the actual doing and experiencing of individuals.
And in spite of this enormous difference, in spite of everything
that is irrational, imperfect, and from the viewpoint of
evaluation to be condemned, in historical society, its
phenomenological structure - the sum and the relationship of the
sort of existence and performances actually presented by all the
elements of objectively historical society is an order of
elements, each of which occupies an individually determined
place, a coordination of functions and of functioning centers,
which are objective and in their social significance full of
meaning if not always full of value. At the same time, the purely
personal aspect, the subjectively productive, the impulses and
reflexes of the essential ego remain entirely out of
consideration. Or, otherwise expressed, the life of society runs
its course-not psychologically, but phenomenologically, regarded
purely with respect to its social contents - as though each
element were predetermined for its place in this whole. In the
case of every break in the harmony of the ideal demands, it runs
as though all the members of this whole stood in a relation of
unity, which relation, precisely because each member is his
particular self, refers him to all the others and all the others
to him.
    From this point, then, the apriori is visible which should be
now in question, and which signifies to the individual a
foundation and a "possibility" of belonging to a society. That
each individual, by virtue of his own quality, is automatically
referred to a determined position within his social milieu, that
this position ideally belonging to him is also actually present
in the social whole - this is the presupposition from which, as a
basis, the individual leads his societary life, and which we may
characterize as the universal value of the individuality. It is
independent of the fact that it works itself up toward clear
conceptional consciousness, but also of the contingent
possibility of finding realization in the actual course of life -
as the apriority of the law of causation, as one of the normative
preconditions of all cognition, is independent of whether the
consciousness formulates it in detached concepts, and whether the
psychological reality always proceeds in accordance with it or
not. Our cognitive life rests on the presupposition of a
pre-established harmony between our spiritual energies, even the
most individual of them, and external objective existence, for
the latter remains always the expression of the immediate
phenomenon, whether or not it can be traced back metaphysically
or psychologically to the production of the reality by the
intellect itself. Thus societary life as such is posited upon the
presupposition of a fundamental harmony between the individual
and the social whole, little as this hinders the crass
dissonances of the ethical and the eudaemonistic life. If the
social reality were unrestrictedly and infallibly given by this
preconditional principle, we should have the perfect society -
again not in the sense of ethical or eudaemonistic but of
conceptual perfection. More fully expressed, we should have, so
to speak, not the perfect society, but the perfect society. So
far as the individual finds, or does not find, realization of
this apriori of his social existence, i.e., the thoroughgoing
correlation of his individual being with the surrounding circles,
the integrating necessity of his particularity, determined by his
subjective personal life, for the life of the whole, the
socialization is incomplete; the society has stopped short of
being that gapless reciprocality which its concept foretells.
    This state of the case comes to a definite focus with the
category of the vocation (Beruf). Antiquity, to be sure, did not
know this concept in the sense of personal differentiation and of
the society articulated by division of labor.
    But what is at the basis of this conception was in existence
even in antiquity; viz., that the socially operative doing is the
unified expression of the subjective qualification, that the
whole and the permanent of the subjectivity practically
objectifies itself by virtue of its functions in the society.
This relationship was realized then on the average merely in a
less highly differentiated content. Its principle emerged in the
Aristotelian dictum that some were destined by their nature to
[Greek word omitted], others to [Greek word omitted]. With higher
development of the concept it shows the peculiar structure - that
on the one hand the society begets and offers in itself a
position (Stelle) which in content and outline differs from
others, which, however, in principle may be filled out by many,
and thereby is, so to speak, something anonymous; and that this
position now, in spite of its character of generality, is grasped
by the individual, on the ground of an inner "call," or of a
qualification conceived as wholly personal. In order that a
"calling" may be given, there must be present, however it came to
exist, that harmony between the structure and the life-process of
the society on the one side, and the individual make-up and
impulses on the other. Upon this as general precondition rests at
last the representation that for every personality a position and
a function exists within the society, to which the personality is
"called," and the imperative to search until it is found.
    The empirical society becomes "possible" only through the
apriori which culminates in the "vocation" concept, which apriori
to be sure, like those previously discussed, cannot be
characterized by a simple phrase, as in the case of the Kantian
categories. The consciousness processes wherewith socialization
takes place - unity composed of many, the reciprocal
determination of the individuals, the reciprocal significance of
the individual for the totality of the other individuals and of
the totality for the individual - run their course under this
precondition which is wholly a matter of principle, which is not
recognized in the abstract, but expresses itself in the reality
of practice: viz., that the individuality of the individual finds
a position in the structure of the generality, and still more
that this structure in a certain degree, in spite of the
incalculability of the individuality, depends antecedently upon
it and its function. The causal interdependence which weaves each
social element into the being and doing of every other, and thus
brings into existence the external network of society, is
transformed into a teleological interdependence, so soon as it is
considered from the side of its individual bearers, its
producers, who feel themselves to be egos, and whose attitude
grows out of the soil of the personality which is self-existing
and self-determining. That a phenomenal wholeness of such
character accommodates itself to the purpose of these
individualities which approach it from without, so to speak, that
it offers a station for their subjectively determined
life-process, at which point the peculiarity of the same becomes
a necessary member in the life of the whole - this, as a
fundamental category, gives to the consciousness of the
individual the form which distinguishes the individual as a
social element!