DOCSLIB.ORG

Eros and Culture : Gender Theory in Simmel, Tönnies and Weber

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Eros and Culture : Gender Theory in Simmel, Tönnies and Weber Telos Telos A Quarterly Journal of- Critical ThouphtV A Quarterly Journal of Cntical Thought Number 82 Winter 1989-90 Ediror: Pnul Pirrotl~ Notes Editor: Warren L. Hnhih Ri~okRrvicw Editor: FloRndo VoIpacchio Managing Editor: Ker~Milliroll Manuscript Editor: ßooid Pan Table of Contents Editorial Associatcs: Frank Adler, John Alt, Ken Anderson, Russell Bernlnn,, Pau/ II II Hr~itr~s.Jri~~tr Corndi, Roh~rtD'Antuo, Andrew Fraser, Nonette Fu& Moish<?Gonraks, Dnrlid (;rOs.!, Roh~rt fIu/ht-Ktnt05 Russell Jacoby, Tin2 Luke, Eleni ~~hi~~-~&~~i. ßnr~id Ost. J«SP/)~.hicCahely. Arshi Pipa, MMicel Pollall, Gdbor Ritterspol?~,Chri.stina The End of “East German Socialism" ................................................. 3 .S/)ullnrn~.XIirhnrl Tnr~~s.G. I,. IJlnzen, Victor Zaslaayky. Sigrid Meuschel 'S~)ccialCotisiiltatit: I-:drin 1.. Coplnn Israel and South Africa: Conflict Resolution in Ethnic States ..................................................27 Heribert Ahm ***** Introduction to Elkins ......................................................................47 Subscription Rates Murray Bookchin The Politics of Mystical Ecology ........................................................ 52 Oti<'-v('at.Iti<livi(liial ... $26.00 One-ycar Institutional .....$fi0.00 Stephan Elkins 71'\vo-&sarlti(livicliid ...$52.00 Two Ycars lnstitutioiial ...$120.00 Durkheim and the Principles of 1789: The Issue of Gender Equality .. 7 1 7 (Foi.cigti Sut~scnbrrs,including Canadians, add 10%) Guather Roth ***** Eros and Culture: Gender Theory in Simmel, Tönnies and Weber ..... 89 Hark I.c\ut's ni~ni/~i/)l~:trs. 13. 17-18, 20-51, 53-81 nt $7.50 ~ach($is.OO Jhr iti.stitu- Klaus Lichtblau ti~iti.\,I.I'iirt3igti »nf~~r.\,c;rl/l 10%. Allpaynien!.~niust he in f1.S. rum~lry.Out nfpritrt i.ssric~s (11s. ;-12. 14-lh) c-/~tlh,~ ohlai~l~d in nlicrofornl orficsiniil~through Ilnivu,sity r2li1.r$lvra. Notes - X0 i\'ort/r Zvph Hd.. Air~rArhor, MI 48/06, U.S.A. Does Critical Theory have a Future? TPos tiiiiiiil>c.r 82 c.orrc-spotids to vol. 22, no. 4. Teos is l>uhlishcd in tlic. Spritig, The Elizabethtown Telos Conference (February 23-25, 1990) .......... 11 Siiiiiti,cr, Fall. aiid Witttcr by'rclos kess Ltd., 431 E. 12th Strci-t, Ncw York, N'' Telos Staff 10009. Scc.orlcl (:lass postagr paid at Ncw York and additional iiiailiii~J of1ic.c.s. Norberto Bobbio at 80 ................................................................... 13( Telos Frank Adler 431 E. 12th Strrct Dcmocracy - the Threatened Utopia: Ncw York, NY 10009 U.S.A. An Intewiew with Norberto Bobbio .............................................. 134 Peter Glotz und Otto Kallscheuer @ 1989, Tc.ios Press Lrd. After the Aging of the New Music ................................................... 134 lSSN 0090-65 14 Daniel Barbiem From Uplift to Gadgetry: Barbiere, Eno and New Age Music ........... 151 lJlisoiicitccl iiiaitll\~~ril>tswill t)c «)iisiti<.rcd o~il!~il' rlic atrthor f>roviclc*\ati Robert Hullot-Kentor ~t)~-<.h~~~~)~~i~)I(~di\k(.ttc iii ASCII, Woi-dstar or ~ot-dpc~.fi,ct,oi iit Ii'asi tlbn'(' Xmas Ideology: Unwrapping the New Ded and the Cold War fiiii\lic.<l(,t,ic-\ cottfbriiiing to the apl>i.o!>riatc Telos sc)ll('. Allow at Under the Christmas Tree .............................................................. 157 )r \)l1t)li(';itioii t}irec. lliOiir~lstor (.t\itond r\~alilation. Maniiscnpts ac-ccpt(.ti Tim Luke autliofi lor lilial Al'- i rliii.ti illicl(.ip, Oti,i(l<.ial>lc (~dititigwill t>c rnt hack I Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Good Smoke: l>roval.R(:jcc.t(.tl tii~ttiiisc.iiptswill not t)c rctumcd. Xmas Ideology or Reaganism? ......................................................... 174 - Paul Piccene -- Eros and Culture: Gender Theory in Simmet Iönnies and Weber* Klaus Lichtblau When the "founding fathers" of Geman sociology Set about to cre- ate a theory of cultural modernity, they treated gender as cruciaily im- ponant. At the Same time, their work reflected the contemporary tend- ency to articulate the culturai crisis of the age as a gender problem. German sociology, which understood itself mostly as a Kultunuissen- schaj, and the bourgeois women's movement mutually influenced each other. In fact, there were close personal contacts between male sociologists and leading figures in the women's movement. In the period before WWI, two gender issues in particular were much discussed in both circles: the gender-specific character of all so- cial conditions and all "objective culture," and the significance of eroticism and sexual love in relation to marriage and culture-at-large. in time, both perspectives coaiesced into a critical position for which the history of occidental culture appeared as a form of domination shaped by patriarchalism and asceticism. In this contexc, the gender problem attained the dimensions of a cultural revolution that was part- ly linked to the emancipatory demands of the labor movement, but ul- timately went beyond them. Friedrich Engels and August Bebe1 antici- pated the revolutionary potential of the gender issue and atempted to combine the critique of patriarchalism with the Marxian critique of the capitalist mode of production. For them, the outcome of the struggle * Traiislated by Gurrither Roth. The Gennan original will appear in Ilona Osmer arid Klaus Lichtblau, rds., Kultur-WLIsnzschaft-Fr~ua~rschung(Fmkfun a/M: Campus Vcrlag, 1990). EROS AND CULTURE 91 against the social repression of women and against a repressive sexual morality would depend on the success of the bade against private prop- of Kulhirpessimismus might have some empirical plausibility, but I erty, which constituted the historical and logical foundation of the would like to examine instead the ways in which the articulation of the present gender relation. The notion of the prehistoric existente of a so- crisis of culture in gender terms appeared in the works of some idu- cial order based on mother right (Mutterrecht), as it was advanced by ential sociologists. My purpose is threefold: Johann Jacob Bachofen and WsHenry Morgan, aided not only the First, to show how Georg Simmel and Ferdinand Tönnies anaiyzed socialist critics of bourgeois society but also gained, reinforced by Nie- various "objectifications" of Western culture in gender terms. Sim- tzsche and Freud, explosive force in various circles of the intellectual and mei's writings, in particular, delineate in paradigmatic fashion the van- artistic avant garde. The Dionysian exaltation of the vision of a new cul- tage point from which it becomes meaningful to ask whether a genuine ture that rests again on mother right was not only hostile to every pamar- "female culture" is possible at all vis-d-vir a dominant "objective cul- chal order but repudiated, in its profoundly anti-modernist thrust, every ture" that has been shaped by a "male principle." His work is also of form of rationalism and intellectualism, including those elements on exemplary importance in that it allows us to identify antinomies that which the socialist critique of society relied. In its more attenuated form, must necessarily emerge out of a dualistic gender metaphysics. this movement resulted in an ethical and esthetic individualism that cul- Second, to deal with Max Weber's views on the significance of the tivated individual lifestyles and aimed at enthroning sexual love as the erotic sphere as a genuine "subjective culture," i.e., a forin of subjec- dominant culturai force. .In the flourishing literature on sexual science, tive experience in a "disenchanted" world that is in the grip of instru- sexual ethics and eroticism, the phenomenon of sexual love appeared as mental rationality. The erotic relation of the sexes can be viewed as an a crucial symhol that reflected the cultural distinctiveness of modernity. exarnple for the place of a strictly esthetic and expressive lifestyle in the In a critical vein, Gertrud Bäumer, one of the most influential leaders, pluralistic model of culturai modernity. I would like to suggest that obseived in 1904: "A sensual and artistic historicai epoch thit desires to within the framework of a "polytheism of values" the antinomies of experience the intoxicating power of all natural drives is dawning. People dualist gender metaphysics can be avoided, without abandoning simul- have become attuned to the vibrations of the sensual energies in the bal- taneously the critical and utopian dimension of the gender problem. ance of pleasure and pain. Eroticism has become vitally important. Ellen Third, to treat Simmel's project of a "sociological aesthetics," which Key goes so far as to claim that love is for people in the present what reli- harks back to the idealist theory of autonomous aesthetics. This will al- gion was in the past. Love becomes the object of a restless interest that low me to confront the fragrnentary character of cognition as it is pos- drags all its mystical secrets into the limelight . .hdmultiplies its power tulated by the Neokantian theory of value-spheres with the idea of through ever greater auto-suggestion."~For women like Bäumer, the "reconciling" nature and culture through the erotic relations of the glorification of eroticism appeared as an exaggeration which undercut sexes. Simmel's inquiq into "sociality" and "coquetry" can illustrate the theoretical and literary expression of this life experience. "The first how the different expenences of modernity in the various spheres can female enthusiasts for the rights of man," she continued, "held woman- be related in such a way that a "purely formal" unity is at lea5t
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Capitalistic Ecosystem of Fashion Culture: an Exploration of Georg Simmel's Analysis And
    The Capitalistic Ecosystem of Fashion Culture: An Exploration of Georg Simmel’s Analysis and its Applications to the Digital Age Roberta Samuel History Department, Barnard College Professor Dorothy Ko April 17, 2019 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 3 Introduction 4 Chapter I 8 Simmel and Berlin: A Man in Place Simmel’s Education: A Man in Intellectual Lineages Simmel’s Legacy: A Man Marginalized Chapter II 22 The Subjective Soul and Objective Product: Simmel’s Metaphysical Conception of Culture The Capitalistic Ecosystem and the Rise of Voyeuristic Relating Self-Consciousness in the Metropolis: The Emergence of the Need to See and Be Seen Chapter III 35 Fashion as a Cultural Phenomenon Chapter IV 57 Pixelated Voyeurism: Seeing and Being Seen in the Digital Age Existential Escapism in Modern Conditions A Consideration for the Silver Linings of the Digital Age Conclusion 71 References 75 2 Acknowledgements I would like to begin by thanking Professor Ko for her generous and unwavering support. From the meaningful conversations we shared in your office about all the ways Simmel changed my personal views on the questions I considered for this project, to your insightful and empowering views on life and writing, I am grateful for your all of your guidance. I would not have enjoyed the process of completing my senior thesis or grown as much as I did if it were not for the ways in which you supported my thoughts and process throughout this year with kindness and patience. Thank you to my thesis group. Angela, Camilla, Kate, Sophie, and Nikki— it was a pleasure to share the moments of uncertainty and many, many laughs with all of you throughout this year.
    [Show full text]
  • Charisma, Medieval and Modern
    Charisma, Medieval and Modern Edited by Peter Iver Kaufman and Gary Dickson Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Religions www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Peter Iver Kaufman and Gary Dickson (Eds.) Charisma, Medieval and Modern This book is a reprint of the special issue that appeared in the online open access journal Religions (ISSN 2077-1444) in 2012 (available at: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/charisma_medieval). Guest Editors Peter Iver Kaufman Jepson School, University of Richmond Richmond, VA, USA Gary Dickson School of History, Classics, and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh Edinburgh, EH, Scotland, UK Editorial Office MDPI AG Klybeckstrasse 64 Basel, Switzerland Publisher Shu-Kun Lin Production Editor Jeremiah R. Zhang 1. Edition 2014 0'3,%DVHO%HLMLQJ ISBN 978-3-03842-007-1 © 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. All articles in this volume are Open Access distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. However, the dissemination and distribution of copies of this book as a whole is restricted to MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. III Table of Contents List of Contributors ............................................................................................................... V Preface
    [Show full text]
  • A New Look at Max Weber and His Anglo-German Family Connections1
    P1: JLS International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society [ijps] PH231-474840-07 October 28, 2003 17:46 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999 International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 17, No. 2, Winter 2003 (C 2003) II. Review Essay How Well Do We Know Max Weber After All? A New Look at Max Weber and His Anglo-German Family Connections1 Lutz Kaelber2 Guenther Roth’s study places Max Weber in an intricate network of ties among members of his lineage. This paper presents core findings of Roth’s analysis of Weber’s family relations, discusses the validity of Roth’s core theses and some of the implications of his analysis for Weber as a person and scholar, and addresses how Roth’s book may influence future approaches to Weber’s sociology. KEY WORDS: Max Weber; history of sociology; classical sociology; German history; Guenther Roth. “How well do we know Max Weber?”—When the late Friedrich H. Tenbruck (1975) raised this question almost thirty years ago, he had Weber’s scholarship in mind. The analysis of Weber’s oeuvre and the debate over it, fueled by a steady trickle of contributions of the Max Weber Gesamtaus- gabe, has not abated since. Thanks to the Gesamtausgabe’s superbly edited volumes, we now know more about Weber the scholar than ever before, even though the edition’s combination of exorbitant pricing and limitation to German-language editions has slowed its international reception. Tenbruck’s question might be applied to Weber’s biography as well. Here, too, the Gesamtausgabe, particularly with the edition of his personal letters, has been a valuable tool for research.1 Yet the fact remains that what we know about Weber the person derives to a significant extent from 1Review essay of Guenther Roth, Max Webers deutsch-englische Familiengeschichte, 1800–1950.
    [Show full text]
  • The Theme of Transcendence in Georg Simmel's Social Theory the Theme of Transcendence
    THE THEME OF TRANSCENDENCE IN GEORG SIMMEL'S SOCIAL THEORY THE THEME OF TRANSCENDENCE IN GEORG SIMMEL'S SOCIAL THEORY By John Mitchell McTaggart, B.A. A Thesis Submitted to the school of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts McMaster University (c) Copyright by John Mitchell Mc Taggart, September, 1989 MASTER OF ARTS (1989) McMASTER UNIVERSITY (Sociology) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: The Theme of Transcendence in Georg Simmel's Social Theory AUTHOR: John Mitchell McTaggart, B.A. (McMaster University) SUPERVISOR: Dr. Roy W. Hornosty NUMBER OF PAGES: vi, 135 ii ABSTRACT This thesis is both an extension and a er i tique of Roy Hornosty's doctoral dissertation. In "Conceptions of Human Nature in the Sociological Tradition", Hornosty traces the development and career of two distinct concepts of human nature as they are reflected in sociological theory. Hornosty argues that sociology originally emerged with two competing ideas of man, one stressing the logical priority of the individual, and the other, the predominance of the collective. In the course of his study, Hornosty discusses what he refers to as the second generation of European sociologists, comprised of Durkheim, Weber, Simmel and Pareto. Hornosty suggests that each theorist of this generation describes a conception of human nature based on an 'inner dialectic' between the individual, who seeks independent self-actualization, over and against the demands of the collective, which develops according to laws which are often in stark contrast to the dictates of individuality. One chapter of Hornosty's study is devoted to Georg Simmel's sociological thought.
    [Show full text]
  • Formalist and Relationalist Theory in Social Network Analysis
    Formalist and Relationalist Theory in Social Network Analysis Emily Erikson Yale University 17 March 2011 Draft Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Peter Bearman, Scott Boorman, Richard Lachmann, David Stark, Nicholas Wilson, the participants of Boston University’s Society, Politics & Culture Workshop, and Yale University’s Comparative Research Workshop for their helpful comments. s Abstract: There is a widespread understanding that social networks are relationalist. In this paper, I suggest an alternative view that relationalism is only one theoretical perspective in network analysis. Relationalism, as currently defined, rejects essentialism, a priori categories, and insists upon the intersubjectivity of experience and meaning, as well as the importance of the content of interactions and their historical setting. Formalism is based on a structuralist interpretation of the theoretical works of Georg Simmel. Simmel based his theory on a Neo-Kantian program of identifying a priori categories of relational types and patterns that operate independently of cultural content or historical setting. Formalism and relationalism are therefore entirely distinct from each other. Yet both are internally consistent theoretical perspectives. The contrast between the two plays out in their approaches to culture, meaning, agency, and generalizability. In this paper, I distinguish the two theoretical strains. 2 Since its inception in the 1930s, social network research has become an increasingly vibrant part of sociology inquiry. The field has grown tremendously over the last few decades: new journals and conferences have been created, programs and concentrations in social network analysis have been created in institutions in both North America and Europe, and large numbers of scholars have been attracted to the field from across a wide disciplinary array, including sociology, anthropology, management sciences, computer science, biology, mathematics, and physics.
    [Show full text]
  • Speculating the Subject of Money: Georg Simmel on Human Value
    religions Article Speculating the Subject of Money: Georg Simmel on Human Value Devin Singh Department of Religion, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA; [email protected]; Tel.: +1-603-646-3738 Academic Editors: Douglas James Davies and Michael J. Thate Received: 17 April 2016; Accepted: 14 June 2016; Published: 23 June 2016 Abstract: This article initiates an inquiry into the sources and frameworks of value used to denote human subjects in modernity. In particular, I consider the conflation of monetary, legal, and theological registers employed to demarcate human worth. Drawing on Simmel’s speculative genealogy of the money equivalent of human values, I consider the spectrum of ascriptions from specifically quantified to infinite human value. I suggest that predications of infinite human value require and imply quantified—and specifically monetary-economic—human value. Cost and worth, economically and legally defined, provide a foundation for subsequent eternal projections in a theological imaginary. This calls into question the interventionist potential of claims to infinite or unquantifiable human value as resistance to the contemporary financialization of human life and society. Keywords: Simmel; Dodd; Foucault; money; value; financialization; secularization; theology 1. Introduction The question of human value—its sources and justifications—and the practice of pricing human life remain a challenge to moral and theoretical discourse in the West. They also persist as sources of cognitive dissonance for social practice. Voices from across the political spectrum decry the bald or naked economization of human value. Even most defenders of free-market logic and rational choice shy away from full-throated claims for a straightforward pricing of human life.
    [Show full text]
  • German Historical Institute London Bulletin
    German Historical Institute London Bulletin Bd. 25 2003 Nr. 1 Copyright Das Digitalisat wird Ihnen von perspectivia.net, der Online-Publikationsplattform der Max Weber Stiftung – Stiftung Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland, zur Verfügung gestellt. Bitte beachten Sie, dass das Digitalisat urheberrechtlich geschützt ist. Erlaubt ist aber das Lesen, das Ausdrucken des Textes, das Herunterladen, das Speichern der Daten auf einem eigenen Datenträger soweit die vorgenannten Handlungen ausschließlich zu privaten und nicht- kommerziellen Zwecken erfolgen. Eine darüber hinausgehende unerlaubte Verwendung, Reproduktion oder Weitergabe einzelner Inhalte oder Bilder können sowohl zivil- als auch strafrechtlich verfolgt werden. BOOK REVIEWS GUENTHER ROTH, Max Webers deutsch-englische Familiengeschichte 18001950 mit Briefen und Dokumenten (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), xx + 721 pp. ISBN 3 16 147557 7. EUR 84.00 As a book, as a research project, and as an academic achievement, this work is quite extraordinary. Roth has tracked Max Webers genealo- gy back at least three generations and he has used every available archival source to reconstruct the various family histories. The book is based on primary sources throughout its length, which is, indeed, the reason for its own great length. The correspondence these families left behind is simply vast. The Baumgarten family, whose Hermann was Webers uncle, left an archive of 3,500 letters, and this is only a fraction of the documents utilized by Roth. To reconstruct a family narrative, the historian has to construct the letters as a correspon- dence. Sisters, who are the main correspondents, write to each other, they write to husbands, parents, and grandparents, and some of these letters are passed around the family with each reader perhaps adding their own comments.
    [Show full text]
  • Max Weber's Protestant Ethic in the 21St Century
    P1: Vendor/FZN International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society [ijps] ph137-ijps-376822 July 8, 2002 15:39 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999 International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 16, No. 1, Fall 2002 (C 2002) II. The Protestant Ethic: On New Translations Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic in the 21st Century Lutz Kaelber† The history of sociology’s most famous study began with the publication of a two-part essay. Its author, educated as a lawyer but formerly employed as a national economist, had no formal training in its subject. He had just overcome a mood disorder that had debilitated him and all but finished his promising academic career, allowing his wife to become better known in some academic and social circles than he was. The essay’s arguments were quickly challenged by historians, whose critiques the author rebuffed in an acerbic and cantankerous fashion. Within weeks and months after publishing the study, its author moved on to conduct other monumental studies and did not return to the original study’s subject matter until close to the end of his life, when the essays were thoroughly revised and made part of a much larger project comparing the interface of religion and economics in the major religions. Since the author’s death, there have been studies addressing the genesis of the original essays, the significance of the changes made in their revision, the original and revised essays’ status in the larger context of the author’s work, their extension both stepping back and moving forward in time, and, last but not least, their shortcomings and aberrations, real and imagined.1 The work itself has been translated into numerous languages.
    [Show full text]
  • From Max Weber to Public Sociology Michael Burawoy1
    From Max Weber to Public Sociology Michael Burawoy1 Growing up in a political as well as an intellectual environment, Max Weber not only sought to comprehend the world but also to change it. Arguably, he took Karl Marx’s 11th. Thesis on Feuerbach that “philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it,” far more seriously than its author. Marx, after all, did not reflect, in any systematic fashion, on the place of intellectuals and their ideas in history. Equally, Emile Durkheim – perhaps because he saw sociology as a deeply moral science, devoted to deriving what ought to be from what is – did not seriously concern himself with political engagement. Among these three founding figures of sociology, it was only Weber, who paid sustained attention to science and politics both in his life and in his writing. He strove to fathom the relation between sociology of society and sociology in society, between theory and practice. Although the notion of public sociology was absent from his conceptual armory, of the three Weber offers the greatest contribution, albeit indi- rectly, to the meaning, challenges and possibilities of public sociology. In, thus, fill- ing out Weber’s reflexive sociology with the notion of public sociology, I show the continuing relevance of his framework for the problems facing sociology and soci- ety today. Instrumental and Value Rationality One hundred years ago the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie (German Socio- logical Society, DGS for short) held its inaugural meeting in Frankfurt. Max Weber had been a driving force behind its foundation.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction 1 Interaction, Form and the Dialectical Approach
    Notes Introduction 1. ‘Sociation’ is a term coined but variously used as a translation of Vergesellschaftung, here referring to the entirety of forms of social interactions. See also Chapter 1. 1 Interaction, Form and the Dialectical Approach – Simmel’s Analytical Conceptual Framework 1. Vandenberghe (2009) and Rose (1981/2009) indicate the disputed provenance of the terms ‘reification’ and ‘alienation’. ‘Alienation’ (Entfremdung) is often regarded as appearing first in Marx’s Paris Manuscripts. But, prior to this, Hegel had written of Verdingung, specifically with reference to property rights. 2. In the Theses on Feuerbach, inviting no disagreement, Marx stated that ‘The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively ...The highest point reached by contemplative material- ism ...is contemplation of single individuals and of civil society.’ In contrast with Hegelian dialectical idealism or a Feuerbachian materialism that dis- penses with the Hegelian dialectic, Marx insists on a dialectical sociohistorical account of humanity’s creativity, labour, reflexivity and capacity for taking a universal view. To this extent, Simmel is in broad agreement with Marx: there can be a humanistic materialism. But otherwise there was much disagreement. 3. This parallels and contrasts with the model of law-based, scientific ‘deductive- nomological explanation’, with ‘interpretans’ and ‘interpretandum’ replacing ‘explanans’ and ‘explanandum’. Ringer (1997: 30) presents Simmel as assum- ing that we cannot establish any convergent social occurrences as lawfully linked unless we first analyse these into their component elements.
    [Show full text]
  • The Madness of Eroticism: Perceptions of Nonconformist Sexuality Between Erroneous Individualism, Moral Malfunction and Sheer Madness Katharina Neef
    The Madness of Eroticism: Perceptions of Nonconformist Sexuality Between Erroneous Individualism, Moral Malfunction and Sheer Madness Katharina Neef There is a large variety of contemporary and retrospective views on the relation- ship between sexual deviance and madness at the turn of the twentieth century.1 This article investigates which semantics were used to describe a sexually deviant lifestyle in that historical setting, focussing on the triangle Else Jaffé (born Elisa- beth von Richthofen), Otto Gross, and his wife Frieda Gross (born Schloffer).2 Their erotic behavior deviated from the typical bourgeois sexual ethics, paternal- ism, and monogamy of the bourgeois social life of the Wilhelmine and Josephine era. All were part of what was regarded a sexually deviant, eroticist3 circle – concerning marital sexuality – but their environment labelled the reasons for their deviant sexual behavior quite differently: Several patterns ranging from individual failure to societal degeneration and from moral dysfunction to patho- logical behavior can be identified. And whereas madness is the common perspec- tive for Otto Gross’ biography, the women were regarded in different terms. Although the Von Richthofen sisters, Else and Frieda von Richthofen, are of- ten introduced as subjects of historiographic studies, they are frequently regarded as playing mere accessory roles to their well-known male partners such as Max Weber and D.H. Lawrence.4 In these biographies, Else and Frieda von Richthofen serve to encourage the main male character’s personal change, to en- 1 Dietze, Gabriele – Dornhof, Dorothea (eds.) (2014): Metropolenzauber: Sexuelle Moderne und urbaner Wahn. Köln/Wien. Matysik, Tracie (2008): Reforming the Moral Subject: Ethics and Sexuality in Central Europe, 1890–1930.
    [Show full text]
  • The Two Transitions in Central and Eastern Europe and the Relation Between Path Dependent and Politically Implemented Insti
    A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Zweynert, Joachim; Goldschmidt, Nils Working Paper The Two Transitions in Central and Eastern Europe and the Relation between Path Dependent and Politically Implemented Institutional Change HWWA Discussion Paper, No. 314 Provided in Cooperation with: Hamburgisches Welt-Wirtschafts-Archiv (HWWA) Suggested Citation: Zweynert, Joachim; Goldschmidt, Nils (2005) : The Two Transitions in Central and Eastern Europe and the Relation between Path Dependent and Politically Implemented Institutional Change, HWWA Discussion Paper, No. 314, Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWA), Hamburg This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/19286 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben
    [Show full text]