"Man's nature, originally good and common to all, should develop unhampered"
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Simmel compresses an ethical thesis and a sociological program into a single line. Human beings share a common core, and that core is good; the task of culture is to let it unfold without needless obstruction. This connects with Enlightenment and Romantic ideas of Bildung, the formation of the self from an inner potential rather than through externally imposed molds. Yet Simmel places the ideal within the complexities of modern life, where the very institutions that expand freedom also threaten to stifle it.
He argued that modern differentiation, the money economy, and the big city grant individuals unprecedented autonomy, but they also flood life with impersonal forms. The metropolis breeds a protective indifference; money renders qualities commensurable and exchangeable; bureaucratic routines standardize conduct. These forms make coordination possible, but they can harden into barriers that press the living core of the person into templates. Unhampered development, then, does not imply the absence of form so much as forms that remain porous to life, instrumental rather than dominating.
Simmel’s notion of a common goodness counters elitism and determinism. If the good is shared at the root, differences in outcome reflect environments and structures more than innate hierarchies. The ethical task becomes facilitating conditions in which latent capacities can surface: education that cultivates rather than drills, economies that recognize qualitative values, urban arrangements that protect individuality amid density. He does not deny conflict or the necessity of constraint; he insists that constraints be enabling, opening paths instead of narrowing them.
The line also reframes morality. If goodness is original, moral progress is less about suppressing impulses and more about removing distortions that deflect them. The tragedy of culture, for Simmel, arises when objective forms outgrow and overshadow subjective life. The remedy is not abolition but recalibration: keep forms light and revisable so that the shared, good human nature can find its singular expression.
He argued that modern differentiation, the money economy, and the big city grant individuals unprecedented autonomy, but they also flood life with impersonal forms. The metropolis breeds a protective indifference; money renders qualities commensurable and exchangeable; bureaucratic routines standardize conduct. These forms make coordination possible, but they can harden into barriers that press the living core of the person into templates. Unhampered development, then, does not imply the absence of form so much as forms that remain porous to life, instrumental rather than dominating.
Simmel’s notion of a common goodness counters elitism and determinism. If the good is shared at the root, differences in outcome reflect environments and structures more than innate hierarchies. The ethical task becomes facilitating conditions in which latent capacities can surface: education that cultivates rather than drills, economies that recognize qualitative values, urban arrangements that protect individuality amid density. He does not deny conflict or the necessity of constraint; he insists that constraints be enabling, opening paths instead of narrowing them.
The line also reframes morality. If goodness is original, moral progress is less about suppressing impulses and more about removing distortions that deflect them. The tragedy of culture, for Simmel, arises when objective forms outgrow and overshadow subjective life. The remedy is not abolition but recalibration: keep forms light and revisable so that the shared, good human nature can find its singular expression.
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| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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