Relationality, Life and Philosophy

Abstract

Simmel’s work does not lend itself to any easy summary; it is just too rich, rhizomic, inconsistent, and multifaceted for that. Landmann (1968, p. 8) has felicitously stated that ‘Simmel’s thinking is kindled by the variety of phenomena’. He treats topics as diverse as sociability, the picture frame, the adventurer, money, religion, the ruin, female culture, the landscape, death, sociology of the senses, and so on. Simmel is also consistently reluctant to express his philosophical position. Perhaps this is because Simmel is constantly uncovering connections between objects. Given that he is after relations, Simmel is always on the move. After all, one cannot trace relations by being fixed in one position. Relations are ways of travelling, of weaving even the most distant objects to one another. Ultimately, it is by connecting seemingly separate objects that Simmel also tries to make his way to a synthesis and get a glimpse of the totality of things. For Simmel, the totality of the world does not mean absolute, substantial unity, but endless entities connected to one another by reciprocal relations.