Rationality – Cultivation – Vitality

Simmel on the Pathologies of Modern Culture

Abstract

This paper reconstructs Georg Simmel’s writings on money and modernity with a view to outlining a multi-layered diagnosis of the pathologies of modern culture. The resulting framework allows for the distinction of three different perspectives, each of them based on a speci c philosophical anthropology and presenting a distinctive assessment of the potentials and problematic features of modern life. In Simmel’s oeuvre, the pathologies of culture are understood as (1) irrational (from the perspective of rational teleological action); (2) alie- nating (from the perspective of subjective cultivation); and (3) mechanistic (from the perspective of trans-subjective vitality).