Talk:MSTU5606 5

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Contents 1 Discussion Group Questions 2 Principle of Reciprocity

Discussion Group Questions

     We started by sympathizing with Simmel's idea of the "blase" metropolitan attitude.  

     We asked each other about the word "Spirit," and wondered about what it meant.

     We spent some time discussing Simmel's concept of culture, especially in terms of the examples given about art. We also questioned his use of the word "form" in the essay and wondered if an idea could be a form. 

     This led us to discussing the dynamics of culture, subjectivity, and objectivity.

     We also  ruminated on Simmel's language, which at times almost appeared to be circular (ex. p45 On the Concept and the Tragedy of Culture: "While the metaphysical answers this question in general tend to cut it off by somehow demonstrating that the subject-object contrast is unimportant, culture insists on the full opposition of the parties, on the super-subjective logic of spiritually formed objects through which the subject raises itself beyond itself to itself.")

     We also talked about Simmel's take on "life."

     I'm looking forward to class, thanks to Ruthie, Kate, and Nick for a great discussion at the J-School today.       •  Dzula 04:30, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

     Spirit is the translation of Geist, a word with many meanings and uses in German. For Simmel, Geist is close to the OED's meaning 3a for ghost, the English word derived from Geist ("3. a. The spirit, or immaterial part of man, as distinct from the body or material part; the seat of feeling, thought, and moral action. Also, in New Testament language, the SPIRIT or higher moral nature of man; opposed to flesh. Obs. exc. in nonce-uses.")

     Simmel discusses Kultur, not Bildung. Translators will generally render both in English with culture. Kultur is a process that generally results in works, creations, forms, as Simmel talks about it — works of art, laws, religious doctrines, etc. Bildung is a process that forms the person; it cultivates someone. Simmel was much influenced by Nietzsche and it is helpful in reading Simmel's essays of Kultur to think of Nietzsche's second Untimely Meditation — Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben (On the Use and Disadvantage of History for Life). Kultur is an i9mportant achievement of human life and resource for it, but once a work of Kultur has been achieved, it becomes part of the human baggage, which can become a burden.

     Form is perhaps the most general way to specify the results of Kultur. Ernst Cassirer, who studied with Simmel in Berlin in the 1890s, most fully develops the concept in his multi-volume work — The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Form was also a very important concept in biological thought in the early twentieth century and D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's great study of 1917, On Growth and Form, is helpful in getting a sense of the range of things that would concern Simmel in using the concept.

     Finally, life, das Leben, was a significant philosophical concept from the 1890s on, centering on Lebensphilosophie, a term which is actually hard to translate as the obvious philosophy of life has a quite different, less fundamental meaning. Lebensphilosophie is more familiar to English speakers through its successor, Existentialism. The basic idea in Lebensphilosophie was that life, not as something studied through biology, but as the lived, life-experience that each living being has, is the ground, the lived reality. In Lebensphilosophie, most of the great dualities become Janus-like elements in lived-life.       •  Rom2 17:25, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Principle of Reciprocity

• Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Analogies of Experience 309, 313, 318, and 330