University of Chicago Press

The Challenge of Durkheim and Simmel

Author(s): Kurt H. Wolff
Source: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 63, No. 6, Emile Durkheim-Georg Simmel, 18581958 (May, 1958), pp. 590-596
Published by: University of Chicago Press
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THE CHALLENGE OF DURKHEIM AND SIMMEL

KURT H. WOLFF

ABSTRACT
Two newly published works-a Durkheim translation and a collection of Simmel writings in German
-provide the starting point for an assessment and a comparison of them as men and philosophers. Consideration is given to their philosophical aims, as well as to their proximity to, and distance from, contemporary sociologists. Simmel is held to be far less time-bound than Durkheim. His aim is preponderantly theoretical and ahistorical; Durkheim's, predominantly practical and historical.

The recent publication of two books-a

new Durkheim translation and a German
collection of writings by Simmell-is not
by way of commemorating the one-hundredth anniversary of the authors' births,
but we can hardly be prevented from trying to relate these works to such a commemoration. On this occasion may we not
ask, anew, who were these men, what did
they attempt to do, what did they accomplish, and, also, who, in their eyes, are we
and what are we trying to achieve?
We must remember about both Durkheim and Simmel, it seems to me, a whole
avalanche of things: possibly that they are
our fathers and our tyrants and, aside from
being sociologists, that they are men and
philosophers. I begin with the last element
in this complex because they may just
manage to lord it over us if we ignore them
as men and philosophers and tend to take
them at their face value as sociologists.
In the first place, they are philosophers
by training and (though Simmel more
clearly than Durkheim) by profession; in
their writings it is stated publicly. But this
is only the most "sociological"sense of the
1 Professional Ethics and Civic Morals. By Emile
Durkheim. Translated by Cornelia Brookfield. Preface by H. N. Kubali. Introduction by Georges
Davy. ("International Library of Sociology and
Social Reconstruction.") London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1957.
Briicke und Tiir: Essays des Philosophen zur
Geschichte, Religion, Kunst und Gesellschaft. By
Georg Simmel. In collaboration with Margarete
Susman. Edited by Michael Landmann. Introduction by Michael Landmann. (With a bibliographical appendix.) Stuttgart: K. F. Koehler Verlag,
1957.

predication. More relevant, their work in

sociology is based on philosophicalassumptions, raises philosophical questions, and
has philosophical aims. The first two of
these characteristics,of course, apply to all
scientific, hence also to all sociological,
work; but the last, a matter of intent, does
not. Thus it may be well to remember all
three. As to "philosophical assumptions,"
it is enough to recall that Kant was a major
influence on both Durkheim and Simmel,
even though he did not furnish them with
quite the same viatica. "Philosophicalquestions" refer to characteristically Kantian
queries-ontological, moral, epistemological queries-concerning the nature of reality and of those parts of it (such as society, religion, the individual, history) that
our authors singled out, and our relation
to reality, particularly the relation of
knowledge. "Philosophical aims" include
the establishment of sociology as a science,
demanded by the time-the same time-in
which Durkheim and Simmel lived, even
though they differed in their conceptions
of, as well as in their involvement in, both
the sociology to be founded and the time
which argued such a goal. The goal, of
course, they share with most of the earlier
practitioners of our discipline, but it is no
less philosophical or less worthy of reinspection for that.

Durkheim's Professional Ethics and

Civic Morals is the translation of Lecons
de sociologie: Physique des mwurs et du
droit (1950), "a course of lectures given by

590

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CHALLENGE OF DURKHEIM AND SIMMEL

Durkheim between the years 1890 and

1900 at Bordeaux and repeated at the Sorbonne, first in 1904, and then in 1912, and
revised some years before his death" (Preface, p. ix). While this information makes
it fairly certain that this material precedes
Durkheim's last major work, the Elementary Forms, it is not specific enough to
locate it within the chronology of his three
earlier important books, all of which appeared in the 1890's, although part of the
manuscript (p. x) stems from 1898-1900,
that is, it is later than the Division of Labor, Rules, and Suicide. Still, most of what
this book tells us about the development
of Durkheim's thought requires the assembling and sifting of internal evidence, a
task I shall not broach.
The book consists of eighteen chapters,
three on professional ethics, six on civic
morals, one on murder, one on theft, three
on property, and four on contract. Its concern, characteristicof Durkheim, is mixed:
orderly exposition and plea-among other
things, for professional groups and for accepting and acting on an evolutionary
view of history or social change. We have
problems, we are in trouble, Durkheim
says; what are these problems; what must
we do? Where do we come from, and
might this tell us how we should move?
"One of the gravest conflicts of our day"
is between the "national ideal" and the
"human ideal," between "patriotism and
world patriotism" (p. 72). It could be
solved if "civic duties" were to become
"only a particular form of the general obligations of humanity," which would be in
line with evolution (p. 74): "it is human
aims that are destined to be supreme" (p.
73); societies could "have their pride, not
in being the greatest or the wealthiest, but
in being the most just, the best organized
and in possessing the best moral constitution" (p. 75). This, to Durkheim, appears
more feasible than does a world society, a
solution of the problem only "in theory";
and a "confederation of European States"
is dismissed as just another "individual
State," not "humanity" (p. 74).

591

This series of arguments shows how

Durkheim's academicism handicaps his
practical concern: the consideration of a
European union leading to world society is
dropped because Europe is not the world.
But his practical concern does not leave
him alone: as long as there is no world
society, there can be no world morality,
since "man is a moral being only because
he lives within established societies" (p.
73), "civilized," quite generally, meaning
"socialized" (p. 25). This blunt equation
reflects Durkheim's "sociologism,"a limitation often criticized-and once more in this
book, in Georges Davy's interesting lqtroduction (esp. p. xliii). Durkheim himself, however, has his doubts about the
exalted place he has given society. He does
not feel at ease with its large modern
variety (cf. pp. 15-16, 60-61), and his
doubts go back to his first book. Even there,
he tries to find grounds on which to applaud the development from "mechanical"
to "organic"and to argue the moral nature
of the division of labor but finds his optimism dampened by the realization of
anomie and in need of a fresh impetus,
provided by the vision of a society reorganized on the basis of professional groups.
The argument in favor of professional
groups is restated in the first three chapters of this new book, but it appearsin many
other places in the book as well. It culminates in some practicalproposals (pp. 3 7 ff.;
see also 94-97) which are in keeping with
Durkheim's evolutionary conception of social change. Social change itself-which
must always be preceded by careful reflection (p. 90)-has brought us to the age of
democracy, which he characterizes in this
way: the democratic state is distinguished
by "(1) a greater range of the government
consciousness, and (2) closer communications between this consciousness and the
mass of individualconsciousnesses"(p. 88);
democracy is
the politicalsystem by which the society can
achieve a consciousnessof itself in its purest
form.The morethat deliberationand reflection
and a criticalspiritplay a considerablepart in

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592

THE AMERICAN JOURNALOF SOCIOLOGY

the right to say that this or that form . . . must

disappear, requires more from us than merely
showing that these forms conflict with an earlier
principle. There still remains to demonstrate
how they were able to establish themselves and
Reflection, furthermore,increases readiness under the influence of what causes, and to prove
to change, while "sacredness," to uise the that these same causes are no longer actually
term employed by ILoward Becker in a present and active. We cannot demand that
similar proposition, makes change difficult existing practices be put down on the score of
(pp. 84, 87). Finally, democracy "is the an a priori axiom [pp. 124-25].
the course of public affairs, the more democratic
the nation. . . . [Democracy] is the form that
societies are assuming to an increasing degree
[p. 89].

political system that conforms best to our

present-day notion of the individual" (p.
90), which is that of the "autonomous"
individual who understands "the necessities he has to bow to and accept[s] them
with full knowledge of the facts" (p. 91).
Durkheim believes that history tends
toward such autonomy (pp. 56, 68, 112).
His optimism is supported by his conception of the state. The state is the "social
brain" (p. 30) which "decides for" the
society (p. 49) but "does not execute anything"; its "principal function" is "to
think" (p. 51). It increases its functions
and consciousness along with the development of individualism (p. 57). This "in its
essence individualist" (p. 69) view is to
overcome the "mystic" conception, accord
ing to which the state has aims higher than
the individuals' on whom at best it may
shed some rays of its glory (pp. 54, 64).
Yet, if the state "is to be the liberator of
the individual, it has itself need of some
counterbalance; it must be restrained by
other collective forces" (p. 63), that is, by
professional groups.
This analysis, these assessments, Durkheim insists, are superior not only to the
Hegelian mystique (p. 64) but also to the
views of classical economists and Socialists
alike (pp. 10, 15, 29, 122, 216). Neither
economists nor Socialists, for instance, see
the state for what it is, "the organ of moral
discipline" (p. 72); nor would a shift from
private to collective ownership of the
means of production solve our basic problem, which is the infusion of moral rule
into economic life (p. 30). This is an instance of Durkheim's conviction that the
examination of our past shows us that
things are as he sees them. Nevertheless,

Here we have in a nutshell Durkheim's

conception of social change, including its
far-reaching confusion. It commissions
causal explanation to decide on how things
are and hang together but smuggles the
"Ought" back into the "facts" by giving
causal explanation a second task, that of
serving as a recipe for practice. The classical case of this confusion is Suicide, which
opens with rigorous causal analysis; then,
in effect, abandons the law of one-causeone-effect laid down in the Rules; and ends
up in a vision, plausible and troubled, of
the relations among types of social cohesion and types of suicide and in practical
questions of policy. Durkheim confuses or
mixes history with social change, interpretation with explanation (on this cf.
Davy, toward the end of his Introduction),
practice with theory, ontology with methodology, plea with exposition. Once these
dichotomies are espoused, once the two
elements in each of them are separately
torn out of reality, as they are by Durkheim's positivism and in his strenuous effort to establish a scientific sociology, their
synthesis is impossible, its only deceiving
hope being verbal legerdemain.2
Durkheim was moved by two forever
muddled inspirations-the improvement of
our society and the development of an in2 Another element in Durkheim's makeup as a
sociologist is his conservatism, shown in the present
work in some of the conceptions mentioned, as well
as in his poor grasp of power and stratification and
his respect for the status quo (cf. Lewis A. Coser,
"Durkheim's Conservatism and Its Implications
for His Sociological Theory," to be published in a
volume commemorating the hundredth anniversary
of Durkheim's birth [Ohio State University Press,
1958]). I must also abstain from talking about what
are, from a theoretical and sociological standpoint,

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CHALLENGE OF DURKHEIM AND SIMMEL

strument carefully and passionately forged

to be inadequate to the task. He was a man
who either eats his cake or his bread and is
poor: reformer, historian, philosopher; or
keeps it and starves: theorist, scientist, sociologist. In his search for what he could
believe in as real, he found himself incapable of accepting anything but Society. He
sanctified it as the source of all that he
loved-religion, morality, knowledge; he
sanctified it as the Reality behind all these
realities-and mustered all the more fervor dissecting it in his "piacular" rites of
the scientist who longs for a lost sacred
world.
Something of this sort may suggest
Durkheim's philosophical aims. In less emphatic metaphors, he wanted to design a
society and wished his fellow men to accept it-a secular society, to be embraced
with sacred passion. This is one of the
numerous ties that connects him with his
predecessor, Comte, and distinguishes him
from his contemporary, Weber, who affirmed secularization as definitively as
Durkheim did but who suffered from his
clearerknowledge that one meaning of such
affirmation is to accept "the fundamental
fact" of being "destined to live in a godless and prophetless time."
Do we not recognize ourselves? Do we
not have aims similar to Durkheim's and
perhaps similarly confused? Is not Durkheim thus one of our fathers, and must we
not emancipate ourselves from him? And
is this not painful because we love him
and, in outgrowing him, must go through
the pain that was his own? Is he, then, not
one of us, a little older, to be sure, since
he helped to push us to where we are?

593

there is more to him than the invention of

formal sociology, which the critical and
enthusiastic Albion W. Small presented to
the readers of his American Journal of Sociology in the 1890's and which has long
since demonstrated its academic respectability in one history of sociological thought
after another. But, as yet, there are only a
few of us for whom he is among the
fathers. Emancipation is still far off because we have not even gone through
domination and love. Perhaps we can take
another road, learning from the history of
our relations with Durkheim.
Simmel reminds us of things we tend to
forget but would gain from remembering.
The central concern of Comte, Durkheim,
Weber, and many other nineteenth- and
twentieth-century sociologists and philosophers was the time in which they lived,
particularly as the promises of liberalism
and the Enlightenment were being broken,
ever more incontrovertibly, before their
eyes. Unlike theirs, Simmel's concerns only
included that over his historical period. It
was not primary. A remarkablesociologist,
he was, much more clearly and purely than
Comte or Weber or any of those referred to
(or than many professional philosophers),
a philosopher, a man who "wonders," and
who wonders even about received notions
of which, since he was an unusually alert,
perceptive, sensitive person, he had a
wealth at his disposal.
He was far less deeply time-bound than
Durkheim, although, of course, his time
influenced him. Thus, for instance, he
thought that people who were on their way
to self-realization and abhorred the detours which led them outside themselves
hated "culture" (p. 90): here a nineteenthII
century bourgeois notion of "culture" is
With Simmel matters are quite different. slipping in. He thought that it is the naWe hardly know him yet. We are just dis- ture of the inner life to seek artistic excovering, thanks to new translations, that pression in self-contained forms which contrast with its dynamic and perhaps torn
the most challenging chapters of the present book,
character (p. 99): this is directed against
those on property and, above all, on contract, the
latter fully justifying Parsons' praise of Durkheim's expressionism-he thought that it is the
essence of art to present the human body
treatment of the subject (cf. The Structure of Social Action [Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1949]).
in a way which shows it controlled and

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594

THE AMERICAN JOURNALOF SOCIOLOGY

unified by mind or soul (p. 132); this

would disqualify much twentieth-century
art. Or he thought that it is inherent in the
sociology of the meal for the dinner table
not to exhibit "the broken, differentiated,
modern colors but the broad, glossy ones
which relate to wholly primary sensitivities: white and silver" (p. 248). Simmel
occasionally mistook matters of his time as
timeless, but such a confusion is not constitutive of his achievement as Durkheim's
very different one is of his. It rather reminds one of a distracted professor's pet
notions or absent-mindedness.
To go beyond characterizing Simmel as
a wonderer whose locale, rather infrequently, intrudes, it is convenient to indicate the content of the twenty-eight pieces
brought together in Briicke und Tur. In
time, they range from 1896 to 1918, the
year of his death. In content, they are
placed under six headings: "Life and
Philosophy," "History and Culture," "Religion," "Aesthetics and Art," "Historical
Figures," and "Society." Only three of
them, or less than one-sixth--"The Field
of Sociology," "The Metropolis and Mental Life," and "The Individual and Freedom," all under "Society"-are available
in English.3 Of the title essay, Michael
Landmann, the editor, writes:
As one of the most beautiful examplesof
Simmel'sway of letting himselfbe inspiredby
the nearestthings [aroundhim] and wresting
theirultimatemeaningfromthem,... ["Bridge
and Door"] is placed at the beginning.The
humancapacityof "connecting"which it isolates and elucidatesis so characteristicof Simmel hirnselfthat ... its title ... seemedsuitable
as that of the wholecollection[p. 271].

temporary American living rooms symbolize or promote the disappearance of both

privacy (separation) and-since doors can
also be opened, while no-doors cannotfreedom? It is a Simmelian kind of question, although American homes were not
among his "nearest things." Yet many
items might and did become the occasion
for his thought, which skipped time and
place and could descend on any of them:
While the worldsurely determineswhat the
contentof our cognitionshall be, but only because cognition determinedbeforehandwhat
can be world to us, so fate surely determines
the life of the individual,but only becausethe
individualchose,by a certainaffinitywith them,
those events on whichit can bestowthe meaning wherebythey becomehis "destiny"["The
Problemof Destiny" (1913), p. 13].

For human life has a double aspect, causality and meaning, and, without both of
them, "destiny" cannot emerge. Animals
follow only causality; gods, only meaning;
man alone must live with both. It is this
same distinction between causality and
meaning (also cf. pp. 51, 76, 86) which,
in a sociological frame of reference, we
know from Max Weber's very definition of
sociology (causal explanation and understanding), and whose inadequate appreciation I urged as a characteristic of Durkheim's.
It plays a central role in Simmel's mature view of history. His paper "On the
Nature of Historical Understanding"
(1918), relevant to an illumination of
theories of understanding, including historicism, of the nature of the Thou, the
mind-body problem, and the concept of
secularization, in effect distinguishes beMan, in the title essay, is presented as tween intrinsic and extrinsic understandconnecting and separating, building bridges ing4 ("We should never understand the
and making doors, which can be opened What of things from their historical develand closed. Does the doorlessness of con3 See The Sociology of Georg Simmel, translated,

edited, and with an introduction by Kurt H. Wolff

(Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1950), pp. 3-25, 409-24,
and 58-84; the last of these is a later and much
longer version than the essay reprinted in Briicke
wnd Tiir.

4 Except for terminology, this is very similar to

Karl Mannheim, "The Ideological and the Sociological Interpretation of Intellectual Phenomena"
(1926) (manuscript translated by Kurt H. Wolff),
although to my knowledge Mannheim nowhere
refers to Simmel in the context of his discussions
of problems of interpretation or understanding.

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CHALLENGE OF DURKHEIM AND SIMMEL

opment if we did not somehow understand

this What itself" [p. 77]). This dichotomy
is related to the one just referred to
(causality versus meaning), as well as to
its variant, the objective versus the historical (psychological, meaningful):
Psychological development is controlled and
made understandableby objective development,
and objective by psychological. This signifies
that both of these are only sides, methodologically made independent, of a unity, of the historically understood event.... For life can be
understood only by life. To this purpose, life
lays itself apart in strata, each of which mediates the understandingof the others, and which,
in their mutual interdependence, announce its
unity [p. 83].

This passage, written in Simmel's last

period, that of the philosophy of life, contains, in addition to the theme of the supremacy of life, two others: what may be
called the "autonomization of parts of a
whole" and the "understandability of a
whole only through its parts." These three
themes are connected. For instance:
The Marxian scheme of economic development, according to which in every historical
epoch the economic forces engender a form of
production which is adequate to them, in which,
however, they grow to magnitudes no longer
manageable within that form but bursting it
and creating a new one for themselves-this
scheme is valid far beyond the economic sphere.
. . , Creative life continuously engenders something which itself no longer is life, something
life somehow runs up against, something which
opposes it with a claim of its own, and which
cannot express itself except in forms which are
and mean something in their own right and independently of it ["Transformations of Cultural
Forms" (1916), pp. 98-99].
That the part of a whole becomes an independent whole, growing out of and claiming its
own right over against it; this, perhaps, is altogether the most basic tragedy of the spirita tragedy which in the modern era has reached
its fullest development and has taken over the
direction of the cultural process ["Philosophy
of the Landscape" (1913), p. 143].

It is noteworthy and characteristic of

Simmel that, despite its strong tie to Hegel-

595

Feuerbach-Marx's "alienation," Simmel

does not apply his idea of the autonomization of a part to an interpretation of his
time, as Durkheim did with the concept of
anomie, which is no more closely related to
"alienation." Rather, less time-bound
philosopher that he was, he chooses that
conceptual aspect of "alienation" which he
could best put to epistemological purposes,
the illumination of the process of understanding. Hence the connection with the
second theme, the understandability of a
whole only through its parts: "Perhaps the
nature of our activity to us is a mysterious
unity which, like so many other unities, we
can grasp only by splitting it up" ("On
the Metaphysics of Death" [1910], p. 32).
Or in respect to the problem of understanding a philosopher and his work:
When we infer an innermost personality from
... [its] achievement, and again understand the
achievement through the personality, this [procedure] may well be circular. But it is one of
those circles which are unavoidable for our
thinking; it . . . merely [corresponds to] the
complete unity of the phenomenon which expresses itself in the fact that each of the elements into which we split it up becomes understandable only through the other ["On the History of Philosophy" (1904), p. 41].5

This suggests the last of the themes that

I wish to call attention to in this wholly
fragmentary sample, designed only to lead
the reader to Simmel's work itself. It is
that of relatively autonomous and irreducible attitudes toward the world, or the
theme of "worlds,"connecting Simmel with
Husserl and later developments in phenomenology, especially in the work of Alfred Schutz.6
The great categories of our inner life-Is and
Ought, possibility and necessity, wish and fear
5 Cf. also pp. 102-3 and 149 and cases collected
in Donald N. Levine, "The Structure of Simmel's
Social Thought," and Rudolph H. Weingartner,
"Form and Content in Simmel's Philosophy of
Life," papers to be published in a volume commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Simmel's birth (Ohio State University Press, 1958).
6 Cf. Weingartner, op. cit.

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596

THE AMERICAN JOURNALOF SOCIOLOGY

-form a series through which pass the objec- ahistorical. If it is true that we feel closer
tive contents of consciousness, the logically fix- to Durkheim because our aims resemble his
able conceptual meanings of things. These cate- more than they do Simmel's, it is also true,
gories may be compared to the various states I think, that in a sense we need Simmel
which one and the same chemical substance
more urgently than Durkheim. Being deepcan adopt, or to the multiplicity of musical instruments on which one and the same melody, er-seeingand more self-conscious,he has, on
but every time in a particular tone color, can be a systematic, theoretical, ahistorical view,
played. Perhaps it is only different accompany- more for us to tackle. Our indebtedness, as
ing feelings which show us the same objective sociologists, to Durkheim has been driven
content now as being, now as non-being, now home to us with poignancy and conviction,
as an Ought, now as hoped for-or more cor- notably by Talcott Parsons and Robert K.
rectly: these feelings mean that that content Merton, and some of Simmel'sachievements
now is one and now the other. According to its in sociology have recently begun to be apover-all posture, our soul responds to the same preciated, rediscovered,and made use of in
content or perception with completely different various fields, especially in the study of
attitudes, thus giving us completely different
small groups and the phenomena of secrecy
meanings of it ["Contributions to the Episteand
secret societies. But I have tried to commology of Religion" (1902), p. 106].

Or:
In and of themselves, religion and art have
nothing to do with one another ... because each
of them by itself alone expresses, in its particular language, the whole of existence. One can
conceive of the world religiously or artistically,
practically or scientifically: it is the same contents which each time, under a different category, form a cosmos of a consistent and incommensurable character. Our soul, however, with
its short-lived impulses and its limited ability,
is incapable of developing any of these worlds
as wholly as it ideally demands. Each of them
remains dependent on the haphazard stimuli
which permit now this, now that, portion of it
to grow up in us. But it is precisely the fact
that these world images lack the self-sufficient
rounding out called for by their objective content which creates the deepest vitalities and
psychic patterns, because it urges each of these
images to take from the others impulses, contents, and challenges which, were it completely
developed, it would find in its own inner structure ["Christianity and Religion" (1907), p.
140].

III
If Durkheim's philosophical aim is to
infuse morality into the society of his time,
thus being predominantly practical and
historical, Simmel's is to understand the
world and is, above all, theoretical and

ment on Durkheim and Simmel less as sociologists than as men, endeavoringto show
some of their philosophical concerns as the
concerns of men who lived in a given time
and place and who, as men, also to an extent transcended them.
Together they challenge us to do right
by them and to do better. More specifically, we may want to identify Durkheim's
confusions and avoid them, being as fully
aware as we can of their seriousness and
pregnancy, and we may wish to pay more
attention than Simmel did to the relation
between a theoretical and a historical preoccupation. Both, though in different ways,
also invite us to reconsider our own and
sociology's philosophical premises. Of
course, we can learn from them many more
things in respect to which we want to do
them justice or surpass them. But, unfortunately or fortunately, even the narrow,
selective focus of the present allusive observations may serve to remind us that
there is no textbook which teaches us how
to approach them or go beyond themhow, if you will, to commemorate them.
They are a challenge to us, too, as men, to
the best in us, and on this ground, let us
try to remember, as sociologists.

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

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