[Xmca-l] Re: Further reflections on hope as the not yet formed

[rjsp2]

He's welcome to the rain. We've had more than enough of it today :-(

On 28/02/2015 20:15, HENRY SHONERD wrote:
> Mike,
> And we don’t have to dress up. I’m still in my jammies (pajamas) here in snowy Albuquerque. Shall I send some snow your way, or would you rather have Rob’s rain?
> Henbry
>
>> On Feb 28, 2015, at 12:37 PM, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:
>>
>> This isn't a salon?
>> We lack class I guess, along with inadequate tastes and intellects!
>> :-)
>> mike
>>
>> On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 11:22 AM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Larry,
>>> Again, this is a fantastic redux, so thanks. And also thanks for the
>>> Gadamer special issue. I've downloaded and hope to be able to get to them
>>> soon.
>>>
>>> A somewhat sideways comment on the Simmel post - it makes me wonder about
>>> the possibility of a "salon culture" in the U.S. today. It seems an
>>> impossibility among adults for too many reasons (I say "adults" because
>>> when I was in high school, a group of us referred to ourselves as "Madam
>>> Geoffrin's Salon" - apparently entirely oblivious to the gender politics
>>> involved considering that we were all male!).
>>>
>>> Anyway, it is difficult to imagine any group of people being able to give
>>> an afternoon once a week to discussion of important matters. The only
>>> matters that seem to matter today are making money.
>>>
>>> But maybe there are spaces for this in academic life? (esp. if you already
>>> have tenure...).
>>>
>>> -greg
>>>
>>> On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 5:56 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> This is an extended commentary introducing a few key concepts of
>>> Simmel's
>>>> approach to being human,
>>>> I thought I would post this reflection on Simmel as a dialectical thinker
>>>> and a hopeful thinker.
>>>> It may be of interest to a few on this site to add to understanding of
>>>> "salon culture" in the Germanic cities at the beginning of the 20th
>>>> century.
>>>> There is a re-emerging interest by Simmel scholars who are
>>>> re-searching  the centrality of the theme of dialectic within Simmel's
>>>> scholarly explorations. This is the subject of a new book, titled: "Form
>>>> and Dialectic in Simmel's Sociology. A New Interpretation" [2013].  The
>>>> authors are Henry Schermer and David Jury.
>>>>
>>>> They make a case that what Simmel offers is a mode of analysis located
>>>> within the dialectical tradition within German social thought, a
>>> tradition
>>>> with roots extending from Heraclitus and Paramedes through Kant, Hegel,
>>> and
>>>> Marx. This dialectical thread has been hidden in Anglo-American reception
>>>> and rendering a Simmel cleansed of what was seen as the contamination of
>>>> the dialectic within his work. The aim of this book is to convey what the
>>>> authors see as the core of Simmel's method and the potential of its
>>> further
>>>> expansion.
>>>>
>>>> The core concept is "Wechselwirkung" [reciprocal effect] and the
>>> dialectic.
>>>> This has a similar sense to Zinchenko's concept of "oscillation".
>>>> Wechselwirkung or recirocal effect is ever present in Simmel's approach
>>>> and the movement at the core of his "relational" and "dialectical theory.
>>>> Wechselwirkung AS "social interaction" is his central concept of
>>>> interaction.
>>>>
>>>> This overarching conception is a Spinozian emphasis on "interrelations"
>>> and
>>>> on "process" rather than discrete "things". This notion of dialectical
>>>> "truth" as neither absolute nor relative.  Both separations AND
>>>> unifications are significant aspects of his conceptual truth of the world
>>>> as mediated by a plurality of concepts. All such relational assumptions
>>>> include an open-endedness of human "possibilities".
>>>> Simmel does make a connection between the biological and sociological
>>>> realms as dialectically related between nature and human social
>>> existence.
>>>> This is Simmel's first great dualism, within which the second great
>>> dualism
>>>> [between subject and object within modernity]
>>>>
>>>> Henry Schermer and David Jury elaborate what they see as Simmel's
>>> abstract
>>>> conceptual model and method.  In outline they make these key formulations
>>>> of Simmel's work:
>>>>
>>>> 1] Simmel proceeds dialectically with two sets of concepts: i] a limited
>>>> number of GENERAL polarities or dualities. ii ] identification of a
>>>> potentially unlimited number of social and cultural 'forms' derived from
>>>> application of these general polarities.
>>>>
>>>> 2] The former general categories are seen as a hierarchy from most
>>> general
>>>> to least general dualities, including modalities and categories - such as
>>>> space and time - drawn from Kant and Hegel and others. Simmel draws a
>>> well
>>>> known distinction between "form" and "contents". These forms reveal the
>>>> fundamental patterns, and causes, and implications, of phenomena and by
>>>> presenting examples of these forms he elaborates his method.
>>>>
>>>> 3] the  polarities consist of pairs of "contradictory" concepts that
>>>> operate dialectically, with outcomes in cultural and social forms as
>>>> syntheses. For Simmel, recurring "social forms" such as "conflict" and
>>>> "co-operation" or "superordination" and "subordination" are patterns of
>>>> interaction analyzable as the dialectical outcome and synthesis, [the
>>>> reciprocal effects] of the combination of numerous polarities, dualities,
>>>> or "continua" [these related terms reflect  variations in emphasis,
>>>> according to context, of rejection of previous dichotomous categories of
>>>> thought.
>>>>
>>>> 4] This relational epistemology emphasizing interrelationships
>>> introduces a
>>>> related dialectical operation of dualities such as the tension between on
>>>> the one hand "human fulfillment and creativity" and on the other hand a
>>>> potentially oppressive "objective culture"-  which leads to human
>>>> "estrangement" and "alienation" - which for Simmel is thoroughly
>>>> dialectical implying an open-endedness of human capacities is present,
>>> but
>>>> this has more of a "blues hope" than the Enlightenment concept of hope.
>>>>
>>>> For Simmel it is crucial we differentiate "dualism" from
>>>> polarities/dualities. Dualism is dichotomies but polarities/dualities are
>>>> "continua". Simmel opposes "fixed" categories. Simmel's approach can be
>>>> summed up as involving "a unity of opposites". For Simmel there is no
>>>> endpoint or a final synthesis. Fusions of polarities are identified in
>>>> myriad social forms, without a fixed or final synthesis. Simmel, though
>>>> sometimes linked with Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Bergson,  his
>>> viewpoint
>>>> goes beyond these comparisons.
>>>>
>>>> "Reciprocity" the core concept for Simmel implies that nothing has a
>>> fixed
>>>> meaning and that meaning arises only through interaction.  The
>>>> subjective-objective duality [not pre-determined sides as in dualism]
>>>> Simmel sees as inherent in all social forms.  Simmel sees the properties
>>> of
>>>> form and the meanings of things AS a function of the relative distances -
>>>> and the routes taken - between things.  Life as the play of the dualities
>>>> of [distance and proximity] [separation and connection] [boundary and
>>>> separation] as hungers of the life force drives Simmel's analysis. Simmel
>>>> uses metaphor as a basic GENERAL TOOL in his analysis of forms. For
>>>> example the "bridge" correlates "separateness and unity"  The "door" in a
>>>> decisive manner reciprocally imagines "opening and closing" representing
>>>> the boundary between spaces. The doors "closure" provides a stronger
>>>> feeling of isolation against everything outside the space than does the
>>>> unstructured wall.
>>>> Hmanity can both imagine everything connected and everything separate
>>>> within reciprocal oscillation.Most often one side is imagined as
>>> "natural"
>>>> and the other side as "humanly constructed".
>>>> For Simmel, humans are BOTH "connecting" AND "bordering" creatures. This
>>>> notion of human beings suggests Simmel's general method which can guide
>>> all
>>>> our activity.
>>>>
>>>> The criticism of Simmel's work is that it was "impressionistic" and not
>>>> systematized but these may be caricatures of his work.
>>>> Lukac's belittledSimmel's work as "impressionistic". Frisby, taking his
>>> cue
>>>> from Walter Benjamin calling Baudelaire as a "flaneur"  [merely a roving
>>>> sketcher of city life as he wandered the streets] called Simmel a
>>> flaneur.
>>>> Randall Collins called Simmel a "salon entertainer"
>>>> Theodor Adorno saw Simmel as "a bourgeois aesthete" alluding to Simmel's
>>>> participation in artistic and literary salons in Berlin.
>>>>
>>>> What this actually shows is that Simmel was most focused on the
>>> "movement"
>>>> of thought itself characterized by paradox, duality, dialectic, and
>>>> relationism.  Simmel was always revising his concepts of form and content
>>>> and offered no final word.
>>>> Simmel's work presents a "unity" using the twin notions of
>>>> 1] reciprocal effect
>>>> 2] form and content
>>>>
>>>> Simmel is presenting a particular form of sociocultural order as a model
>>> of
>>>> modernity centered around "differentiation" within reciprocal enactments.
>>>> Simmel's work was not as systematic and disciplined and standardized to
>>> fit
>>>> into the emerging academy with its closed boundaries. He was more than a
>>>> sociologist. and cannot be "housed" or enclosed in that discipline. His
>>>> context was the "salon culture" and he must be read within this context.
>>>> [see Wittgenstein's Vienna for a picture into salon culture]
>>>> His informality is deceptive.  and the new re-search on Simmel as a
>>>> dialectical scholar shows how blind others are to the structure within
>>> his
>>>> approach.
>>>>
>>>> Simmel's last book [1918] "The View of Life" develops further Simmel's
>>>> notion of "life" as the vital force that moves us as an urge [a hunger]
>>> FOR
>>>> LIFE and the reciprocal life as a sense of "deadness" when closed off
>>> from
>>>> the vitality of life as open ended. This for Simmel is the realm of the
>>> "as
>>>> if" [similar to Bloch's Philosophy of Hope].
>>>>
>>>> But that also is for another post.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
>>> Assistant Professor
>>> Department of Anthropology
>>> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
>>> Brigham Young University
>>> Provo, UT 84602
>>> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an object
>> that creates history. Ernst Boesch.
>

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