Article

Theory, Culture & Society

29(7/8) 101–123
In Search of Unity: ! The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/0263276411435568

Italian Cities as Works tcs.sagepub.com

of Art
Efraim Podoksik
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Abstract
The article suggests that Simmel’s thought should be interpreted as a coherent series
of continuous attempts to solve philosophically the dilemmas entailed in the German
ideal of Bildung. By analysing Simmel’s three short essays on Italian cities, and by
placing them in the context of both his own intellectual development and the intel-
lectual context of his time, the article will show how ideas expressed in these essays
reflect this basic character of Simmel’s thought. In other words, far from being
independent momentary images, Simmel’s essays on Italian cities reflect his concern
with whether and how culture in general, and works of art in particular, may help
modern personality reconcile itself with the world.

Keywords
art, Geisteswissenschaften, Germany, individuality, Italy, Nietzsche, Simmel

Georg Simmel’s reputation as a major philosopher of urban modernity is

based mainly on his famous essay ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’
(1950b) and on related passages in his other works such as Philosophy
of Money.1 This view was held by German intellectuals such as Siegfried
Kracauer and Walter Benjamin, and by American sociologists such as
Louis Wirth and Robert Park already in the 1920s. The subsequent
popularity of the Frankfurt School and the influence that its thinkers
exercised over more recent waves of Simmel scholarship further
entrenched this line of interpretation, so that Simmel’s name is now
often evoked in the context of topics such as literary modernism,
urban fragmentariness or alienation. For example, David Frisby’s
(1992) groundbreaking work presents Simmel as a sociological

Corresponding author:
Efraim Podoksik, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel
Email: podoksik@mscc.huji.ac.il
http://www.sagepub.net/tcs/
102 Theory, Culture & Society 29(7/8)

impressionist and a philosopher of ‘modernity’; Ralph Leck (2000) exam-

ines Simmel’s influences on the German avant-garde; and countless
studies examine Simmel’s work on the city in the context of the
urban sociology and philosophy of later periods (e.g. Gross, 2001;
Vidler, 1991).
In my view, however, this tradition of interpretation seems to overrate
the significance of Simmel’s analysis of the modern metropolis in the
context of his thought as a whole. For even among his writings specific-
ally dedicated to cities, the essay on metropolis is an exception. In his
other works related to this subject Simmel took a very different, one
could say a more classicist, approach.
I refer here to three essays in which Simmel attempted to outline the
aesthetic significance of Italian cities – Rome, Florence and Venice
(2007a, 2007b, 2007c).2 Simmel’s interest in Italy and Italian cities
indeed took a form usual for the German educated strata of his time
(James, 1989: 28–9). Italy and its cities attracted him not as a contem-
porary society, but as the birthplace of modern European culture. This
was the Italy which Goethe imagined in his travel notes, entitled Italian
Journey, 1786–1788 (1970). And this was the Italy about which
Burckhardt wrote his famous Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
(1951 [1860]). Renaissancismus – the fascination with the culture of the
Renaissance, including its alleged humanistic ideal of universal man –
was widespread in Germany in the late 19th century (Buck, 1990).
The study of Renaissance and pre-Renaissance Italy was one of the
first cultural traditions to which Simmel was initiated as a student at
Berlin University, where one of his favourite teachers (allegedly the
only one to whom he was personally close) was Hermann Grimm, an
art historian and the author of monographs on Michelangelo and
Raphael (Köhnke, 1996: 41). It is a revealing though not widely
known fact that early Italian art and literature was the secondary field
(alongside philosophy) of Simmel’s doctoral examination, during which
he had to answer questions on Petrarch, Raphael and Michelangelo
(Landmann, 1958: 18). His ‘Dante’s Psychology’ (1989a [1884]) and the
essay on Michelangelo’s poetry (1989b [1889]) belong to this side of
Simmel’s early academic interests. It appears that at a very early point
in his academic life he considered the career of a scholar of early modern
Italy to be one possible option for his future, and that he absorbed the
cultural attitudes characteristic of the community of connoisseurs of
Italian culture: their classicistic aestheticism, as well as the ideal of uni-
versality attributed to Renaissance Italy. Even later, when Simmel aban-
doned this direction, he retained a sympathy for Italy, coloured with the
sentiment of aesthetic admiration. During his travels there, visiting
famous cultural sites remained a necessary part of the programme (H.
Simmel, 2008: 53–6). ‘Florence’, he once wrote to Edmund Husserl, ‘is
‘‘my country’’, the homeland [Heimat] of my soul’ (Simmel, 1989j: 570),
Podoksik 103

adding though that he doubted whether such a homeland existed for him
at all.
Now, my reading of Simmel is that his essays on Italian cities are much
more characteristic of his thought in general and of his attitude to the
question of urbanity, than his statements on the modern metropolis; that
his diagnosis of modern ‘fragmentation’, instead of signifying his cultural
immersion in the ‘modernist’ experience, points rather to his detachment
from it and to his search for alternatives.
Therefore, I believe that Simmel’s approach towards urban life
requires re-examining, and the aim of this article is to contribute to
such a re-examination. More specifically, three moments related to
Simmel’s works on Italian cities will be discussed here. First, I will
point to the conceptual framework within which Simmel’s essays on
Italian cities are best understood, and more specifically to the ideal of
Bildung,3 the adherence to which characterizes Simmel’s thought in gen-
eral and distinguishes him from the younger generation of thinkers such
as Wilhelm Worringer. Second, I will analyse in detail Simmel’s argu-
ment about the three cities in order to show how the changes in his
approach towards the Bildung ideal are reflected in the differences in
his descriptions of these cities. Finally, I will briefly discuss the effect
this re-examination may have on the question of the relevance of
Simmel’s ideas.

I
In my view, Simmel’s philosophy taken as a whole is characterized by a
significant inner unity which is stronger than usually assumed. This unity
is to a great degree based on Simmel’s immersion in the tradition
and ideal of self-cultivation, or Bildung as it came to be known. This
Bildung ideal underlies not only Simmel’s writings on aesthetics and edu-
cation but also his works on less obvious subjects, such as sociology or
Kant.
Grasping Simmel’s philosophy as a whole is of course an intricate task
due to the great complexity and variety of his writings. For this reason,
I cannot attempt to prove or describe in sufficient detail my understand-
ing of it. This will be accomplished in my future book-length study.
However, in order to make the present analysis of Simmel’s essays intel-
ligible, I would like to offer a concise summary of my understanding of
the Bildung ideal in general and to show what this understanding reveals
about the difference between Simmel’s aesthetic views and those of some
of his younger contemporaries, in particular.
The kernel of the problem of Bildung can be characterized, first, as the
question of how a harmonious individual can feel at home in the modern
world, which is perceived as essentially fragmented or on its way to being
fragmented. In other words, the problem of Bildung is one of a synthesis
104 Theory, Culture & Society 29(7/8)

between integrated personality, on the one hand, and the manifold exter-
nal reality, on the other. Second, the modern world is perceived as secu-
larized. This implies that the reconciliation of its fragmentariness with
the demands of personality can no longer be achieved with the assistance
of some extra-natural benevolent force (thus religion can no longer play
the integrative role it played before), and therefore the task of performing
this reconciliation is now left to man himself.
Whatever the differences in nuances among authors, the classical strat-
egy of realizing the Bildung ideal almost always included two stages: first,
objectification, or self-alienation, that is, when a person goes beyond
himself, immersing himself in the variety of the world; and then a
return to himself, with variety now becoming a new unity, though on a
higher level – a unity which involves diversity, conflicts and apparent
contradictions. It is this vision of a person’s development which is sum-
marized in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister as ‘drawing men out of themselves,
and leading them, by a circuitous road, back’ (1874: 102). Simmel called
this process ‘culture’ (Kultur) and described it as the way ‘of the soul to
itself’, which leads ‘from the closed unity through the unfolded multipli-
city to the unfolded unity’ (1968a: 27, 29).
In German intellectual life, the concept of ‘culture’, as a means by
which Bildung is realized, gradually took the place which was previously
occupied by religion.4 That is, culture was supposed to show to the
modern secularized and dispersed mind the way out of the fragmentari-
ness of its own existence.5 Yet Bildung, due to its dialectical character,
was a hazardous ideal. Denying the existence of the straight road to
perfection, it postulated the idea of the reconciliation of contrasts.
Conjuring up a fruitful tension and its later resolution, it demanded
strange detours in the process of self-cultivation. Detours, however,
might lead one astray. The main danger was that the stage of self-
alienation would not be followed by return. The modern world was so
complex and diversified that it could not be easily subsumed in its entir-
ety under a unifying image. Immersing oneself in the world might lead
one to remain stuck in only one particular aspect of it, even become
fascinated by it, becoming the prisoner of a fragment, rather than
using the fragment as a gate towards the whole.
This is the danger that the notion of culture was supposed to over-
come, by mapping particular aspects of human activity within the whole.
Yet in the course of the long 19th century, the initial optimism about the
role of culture would gradually recede, to the point where, during the
Second German Empire, and especially in the years immediately preced-
ing the outbreak of the First World War, there was growing talk about
the crisis of culture. As a consequence, within just a few years, following
the shock of the defeat, these two concepts – Bildung and culture – were
openly challenged, and lost their integrative consensual function.6
Podoksik 105

The early symptoms of this farewell, however, were already apparent

during the Wilhelmine era. Consider, for example, the dissertation of art
historian Wilhelm Worringer (1997 [1906]), in which he attacked the
tendency, as it were, to make classical art into the standard by which
the aesthetic value of all art should be judged. He suggested that, instead,
two ideal types should be distinguished: the art of empathy and that of
abstraction. Classical art was the closest approximation to the former
type. There, the predominant sentiment was to feel at home in the world.
This feeling was expressed by welcoming that thing which reveals the
world in its organic manifoldness – space. Abstract art, by contrast,
was driven by the fear of the outside world, thus rejecting space and
the organic, and striving instead to find the point of release from the
world in mechanical rhythm. Worringer argued that abstraction was a
form of art in its own right, and that it had to be judged by its own
criteria. This emphasis on abstraction potentially challenged the very
essence of the Bildung ideal, as it threw in doubt the role of art as a
medium through which personality is connected with the universe. It
presented the possible alternative function of art – that of building a
fence between the world and one’s own personality.
Many years after the publication of the dissertation, Worringer (1997
[1906]: xvii, xx) would recall that its main idea sprang out of a long
conversation he once held with Simmel. Indeed, in those years, Simmel
too seems to have felt that a work of art, rather than being a medium that
gave access to the totality of the world, was a fragment which could offer
only a temporary resting point. In this sense, one can speak about a
certain congruence between Simmel’s philosophy of art and
Worringer’s idea of abstract art.
But on closer examination this apparent similarity reveals a gap
between their worldviews, which actually reflects the gap between two
generations: the older still adhering to the principles of Bildung versus the
younger which has started to challenge them. For in almost all of his
writings on art, Simmel made the problem of organic unity one of their
central issues. Generally, when he compared art with other human activ-
ities, he saw it as possessing perhaps the greatest capacity for unity,
although (or rather because) this act of unity is performed and perceived
intuitively (e.g. Simmel, 1989f: 211). Art is in the position to overcome
the usual obstacles which reflection, with its requirement of analysis, puts
in the path to unity.
For Simmel, a work of art, even as a fragment, never meant an escape
from the world into the mechanical. Even if art cannot lead us to the
totality of the world, it at least exists as a symbol of this world. For him,
a work of art possessed on the micro level those qualities that the world
would ideally possess on the macro level: completeness and organic
unity.7 In other words, in Simmel’s thought, the recognition of the
106 Theory, Culture & Society 29(7/8)

fragmentariness of modern existence went hand in hand with the hope of

retaining some sort of unity.

II
It is in this context of searching for unity that Simmel’s essays on Italian
cities should be understood. In his discussion of the characters of these
cities, his major question was whether – seen as aesthetic objects – they
satisfy our quest for unity and, if so, what kind of unity they represent.
Yet, though the question remained the same in all the three essays,
Simmel’s treatment of it and the answers he suggested were different.
The difference sprang from the evolution his thought underwent regard-
ing the problem of Bildung.
This process of change can be roughly divided into three phases, the
main parameters of which I would like to outline.8 In the first phase,
covering the period of Simmel’s young years up to the mid 1890s, his
attitude to the Bildung ideal was relatively unproblematic. He was aware
of the existence of conflicts within the process of self-development of
modern personality, and especially of the conflict between the demand
of universality posited by Bildung, on the one hand, and that of growing
professionalization and the division of labour, which causes the fragmen-
tation of human capacities, on the other. Yet he did not conceive this
tension as unbridgeable in principle. On the contrary, influenced by
Spencer’s optimistic perception of modern differentiation, Simmel con-
sidered the emerging conflicts as congruent with the ideal of unity.
The second phase encompasses the period between the mid 1890s and
1908, as Simmel’s thinking moves into the direction of despairing of the
classical model of Bildung. This change happens gradually, and there is
no specific time at which the break between the first and second phases
takes place. Towards the 1900s, though, it appears that Simmel begins to
suspect that the contradictions (or, as he now prefers to say, dualisms) of
life are irreconcilable. He explores various possibilities that may offer
solutions, such as art, religious sentiment, the feminine, or even the
Alps, but in the end remains unsatisfied with all of them. These are
now merely ad hoc solutions, points of fragmentary release, which are
valid conditionally for a specific time, or for specific kinds of people.
They do not provide the general answer to the problem of modernity.
One gets from Simmel’s writings of that period the impression of aporia.
What is often perceived as their fragmentariness is to a great extent
nothing other than the flow of a constant arrangement and rearrange-
ment of ideas and arguments in search of the point at which the basic
unity of personality can be achieved and preserved.9
Yet in the end he did not accept ‘fragmentariness’ or ‘homelessness’
as the final diagnosis of modernity. The aporia was overcome by Simmel
in the third phase, beginning around 1908, when he formed a new
Podoksik 107

perspective on the possibility of the immersion of individuality in the

fragmented world. Simmel’s hero in these years happens to be Goethe,
then generally perceived as the exemplary man of Bildung. Yet Simmel
interprets Goethe by means of the conceptual apparatus of life-
philosophy, which he began to develop following his encounter with
Bergson’s ideas (Fitzi, 2002).
What happens in this third phase remains, however, beyond the scope
of this article which focuses on the first two phases, since the three essays
with which it deals belong to that period.10 More precisely, ‘Rome’ was
published in 1898, which I consider as the transitional time between
Simmel’s adherence to the classical Bildung worldview and his new anx-
iety; the two others, ‘Florence’ and ‘Venice’, were published in 1906 and
1907, respectively, when Simmel was theorizing about those various
aspects of culture which he reckoned could provide temporary release
from the dualisms of modernity.

Rome
Rome’s essential mark is the combination of its extreme multiplicity with
its unity, or, more properly speaking, Rome’s unity is based on its multi-
plicity. The immense unity of its manifold ‘is not torn apart by the vast
tension of its elements’; on the contrary, this unity ‘is displayed through
this very tension’ (Simmel, 2007b: 34).
The variety of Rome, its contrasts and oppositions, is displayed in
everything. It appears spatially in the city’s hilly landscape with its con-
trast of below and above, and temporally, due to Rome’s immensely long
and multi-faceted history. Those contrasts were not part of some precon-
ceived design. The city acquired its current form in the course of a for-
tuitous development. It was built throughout generations, none of which
cared much about the aesthetic appearance of the city. Yet, with all this
accidental variety, the feeling of unity comes naturally to us. The hilly
terrain allows the buildings to enter into a reciprocal spatial relationship
with each other, whereas the integration of older buildings into newer
ones endows the city with great dynamism. The continuity of times,
instead of separating what belongs to distinct periods, draws them all
together, as ‘everything historical does play a part in it, but not in such a
way that it would turn an object into a separate antiquity’, but ‘by
entering in the unity of Rome . . . as if the fortuitousness of history
had disappeared and the pure, dissolved contents of the things . . . had
emerged to exist next to another’ (2007b: 33–4).
In Simmel’s Rome, unity exists not versus but in variety. It is the other
side of the manifold reality of the world. Unity and variety are the two
sides of the same vision. This is what I consider to be the traditional
Bildung approach to unity. Simmel does not use the word Bildung in this
essay. Yet the interpretative parallel between the city and the ideal of
108 Theory, Culture & Society 29(7/8)

personal development is not arbitrary. It follows directly from the text, as

Simmel himself compares Rome’s ability to integrate and unify an enor-
mous and accidentally born variety to a similar process occurring in the
mind of a great person. The essence of a great individual, according to
Simmel, is to be able to encompass the variety of the content of the world
through the very force of one’s own personality. Such a person, in other
words, melds the most accomplished individuality with complete univer-
sality. And only a truly great individual can be successful in the mission
of endowing the manifold of reality with the sense of unity, whereas in a
lesser individual every fragment of the content would stand alone, dis-
connected from the rest, thus appearing insignificant.
The great person who exemplifies for Simmel this ability to combine
the individual and the universal is Goethe, described as a man who was
capable of integrating every seemingly trite detail into himself:

A narrow-minded rationalist [der rationalistische Spiebürger] is

concerned with that enthusiastic reverence that we affix to each of
Goethe’s lines: ‘No one would take any notice of it if it had been
written by some nameless person.’ This is entirely true, but even if it
had the same exact wording, it would not have the same purpose
because the meaning of each remark . . . consists only in what it elicits
and forces us to think. One of Goethe’s words necessarily lets us
think more and different things than if any Peter and Paul were to
pronounce it since we know that a very different soul has clothed its
richness with an ostensibly similar gown. (Simmel, 2007b: 35)

Simmel was hardly alone in displaying this sort of attitude towards

Goethe. He was expressing a view that became quite common once
Goethe had acquired the status of the major canonical figure of
German culture, regarded as the German Leonardo, a Renaissance
man, a universal genius. On some occasions the philosophical argument
called upon to support this perception would echo Simmel’s. Thus, just a
few years after the publication of ‘Rome’, a young Viennese author Otto
Weininger (1906 [1903]) characterized Goethe basically in the same way.
Distinguishing between ‘genius’ and a ‘talented person’, he argued that
the essence of genius lies not in his particular skill, but in his capacity to
empathize with the greatest variety of human characters:

The ideal of an artistic genius is to live in all men, to lose himself in

all men, to reveal himself in multitudes; and so also the aim of the
philosopher is to discover all others in himself, to fuse them into a
unit which is his own unit. (Weininger, 1906 [1903]: 106)

Weininger (1906 [1903]: 148) read some of Simmel’s writings, and

Simmel was familiar with Weininger’s book (Simmel, 1989h: 539–40).
Podoksik 109

Simmel would pursue the same idea in his Goethe monograph (Simmel,
1989g [1913]: 163): ‘Goethe’s hero does not stand by himself . . . he is a
work of art presented by the author . . .’ A hero is grown, so to speak,
‘out of the living activity of Goethe, his artistic and world volition’.
Furthermore, by being a reflection of Goethe’s personality, each hero
appears to reflect the totality of the world (Simmel, 1989g [1913]: 162).
What is important in these parallels is not a hypothetical influence of
Simmel on Weininger, or vice versa (which may or may have not existed,
as these kinds of ideas were quite popular at that time), but the very fact
that, when Simmel was speaking about Goethe in his ‘Rome’ essay, he
alluded to the set of connotations immediately recognizable by any
German-speaking reader who, like him, was preoccupied with the ideal
of the formation of the most universal and harmonious personality. To
compare Rome with Goethe would unambiguously bring this pattern of
thought to the surface, and suggest that Rome as a city may provide the
example of how the ideal of Bildung – forming a harmonious and con-
sistent whole out of the greatest possible variety – can be realized.

Florence
Turning to the next essay, ‘Florence’, published eight years later, we
notice, first, that Simmel’s major concerns remained the same. He con-
sidered Florence too in terms of a work of art, and the central question
was still that of unity, even if what now was supposed to be unified was
not multiplicity but dualism: ‘Ever since that unified sense of life in
antiquity was split into the poles of nature and mind [Geist]’, the essay
begins, ‘a problem has emerged the awareness and attempted solution of
which has preoccupied all of modernity: the problem of restoring this lost
unity to both sides of life’ (Simmel, 2007a: 38). And Florence is a city
which, like Rome, seems to have accomplished this. It is described as a
wonderful work of art, successfully combining life’s opposites. ‘Here
nature has become mind without surrendering itself.’ Nature rose ‘every-
where toward the crowning of the mind’ (Simmel, 2007a: 39). This pro-
cess is symbolized, for example, by Florence’s hills, as each of them lifts
itself up to a villa or a church.
Yet, on second reading, the differences in perspective begin to emerge.
Their first indication is that Simmel explicitly contrasts Florence with
Rome. In Rome, he hints, the emphasis is on duality within unity,
whereas in Florence it is rather on ‘unity within duality’ (Simmel,
2007a: 41). This contrast by itself explains little. It possesses all the fea-
tures of that rhetorical vagueness for which Simmel was sometimes
reproached. Yet it shows that Simmel was aware that the unity of
Florence somehow represented unity of a different sort. But what was
the nature of that difference?
110 Theory, Culture & Society 29(7/8)

It appears that when Simmel speaks about Florence’s unity he does

not actually refer to the process of overcoming our conflictual existence,
as he did with regard to Rome in the previous essay. Rather, this city
provokes in him the feeling that the very opposition between nature and
mind has become void (‘sei. . . nichtig geworden’). If one were to explain
what is suggested by this phrase, I would formulate it in the following
way: in Rome unity is truly restored (or developed), whereas in Florence
it has been simply established and preserved. One gets an impression of a
sudden and complete release from the pain of contradiction.
Simmel calls this unity of Florence a ‘mysterious unity’ (Simmel, 2007a:
39). The expression is akin to what, in some of Simmel’s other writings of
that period, is called grace or undeserved gift, for those two expressions
were normally evoked by him in the context of aesthetics and in reference to
an unexplained feeling of unity bestowed on us by art. Thus, in his essay ‘On
the Philosophy of the Actor’ (Simmel, 1989e [1908]: 429), Simmel described
the effect of art as being like ‘a pre-established harmony, a grace, which
comes over life, although it cannot be derived from the forces of life’s
individual elements’. Or, in his essay entitled ‘Picture Frame’ (Simmel,
1989c [1902]: 102), he spoke about ‘the feeling of an undeserved gift with
which it [art] blesses us’. In Simmel’s mind, the unity of Florence enters the
same category – it is a unity defined by the act of grace.
Now, grace is something which is bestowed from without; it is not a
natural outcome of the sum of long and laborious human activities. And
this is precisely the way in which the unity of Florence is presented. In
order to appreciate the significance of this point, one should look back at
the essay on Rome. For, in an apparent contradiction to what has just
been said, the metaphor of ‘grace’ explicitly appears there. Nevertheless,
I would like to claim that it is Florence’s unity, and not Rome’s, that can
be properly described as coming through grace, if this notion were to
evoke the full range of connotations usually attached to it.11
Simmel indeed speaks about unity in terms of ‘grace’ as early as 1898.
I described those years as transitional, and one should not be surprised to
find already then an expression which is characteristic mainly of his
second period. Yet, although the word is there, its application to
Rome is somewhat unusual. In order to demonstrate this, I would like
to use a long quotation from the first two paragraphs of ‘Rome’:

Perhaps the most profound appeal of beauty lies in the fact that
beauty always takes the form of elements that in themselves are
indifferent and foreign to it, and that acquire their aesthetic value
only from their proximity to one another. . . . Our perception of
beauty as mysterious and gratuitous – something that reality
cannot claim but must humbly accept as an act of grace – may be
based on that aesthetic indifference of the world’s atoms and elem-
ents in which the one is only beautiful in relation to the other. . . .
Podoksik 111

We are used to seeing this miracle occur either in nature, whose

mechanical arbitrariness forms its elements as much into something
beautiful as into something ugly, or in art, which from the outset
draws these elements together for the sake of beauty. Rarely do we
encounter a third possibility: that human works which are fashioned
for some purpose in life find one another in the form of beauty,
accidentally and without being guided by any will to beauty, like
natural objects that are unaware of having any purpose. Almost
alone, old cities, in having grown without any preconceived
design, provide aesthetic form to such content. (Simmel, 2007b: 31)

Grace is described here, especially in respect of the third possibility, as

not really an addition which is brought or determined from without, but
rather as something which appears in the course of the inner process
itself, although it cannot be seen before the process is complete.
Divergent and contradictory human activities create a reality that no
one envisaged or could envisage; yet this reality makes sense, for it rep-
resents or implies a certain unity. Such is the case of old cities.
This pattern of thinking has a long genealogy in European thought. It
was a powerful source of inspiration in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Adam Smith’s invisible hand (Smith, 1976: 304), Kant’s unsociable soci-
ability (Kant, 1991: 44) and Hegel’s cunning of reason (Hegel, 2001: 47),
among others, belong to it. They all presuppose an immanent logic found
within the historical process, logic which cannot be attributed to any of
the specific moments of the process, but which is revealed in the process
as a whole. The classical notion of Bildung is intimately connected with
this tradition of thought.12
An important thing to notice about the historical significance of the
idea of immanent logic is its half-secularized character. It has the asso-
ciative relation to the notion of divine providence, yet it tends to remove
from the picture any implication of the divine personality standing in
charge of the process. Many of the thinkers who espoused this idea were
indeed influenced by the religious spirit of their age, often making use of
terms borrowed from the available stock of theological images. Yet,
while doing so, they also secularized those images, diluting what had
once possessed a more rigorously enforced signification.
This is also true regarding the ideal of Bildung, for its secular impli-
cations are often imparted to us by the expressions borrowed from an
older theological vocabulary. For it is not only that the emphasis on self-
development does not preclude the notion of unintended consequences,
as the individual undergoing this process is often unaware of where it
leads. The perception of unity behind self-development may in fact, to a
certain extent, go beyond purely unintended consequences and recognize
some kind of grace. We learn, for example, that Wilhelm Meister’s
112 Theory, Culture & Society 29(7/8)

self-development was guided by a secret society (Goethe, 1874: chs VII–

VIII); in other words, he was deliberately chosen. Yet this sort of ‘grace’
was a trigger rather than a predestination, itself an expression of purely
human and fallible efforts and not of a divine order.
The theological metaphor of ‘grace’ is historically broad enough to be
of some use to the secularized notion of immanence. In the spirit of the
Pelagian ‘heresy’ or Renaissance humanism (such as that of Pico
Mirandola, 1956; Weaver, 1996), it can be interpreted as merely assist-
ance to the man’s own efforts in his search for perfection. This weakened
notion of grace may allow for contradictions and imperfections as neces-
sary stages on the path to salvation. And it is this kind of grace which
seems to be intimated in Simmel’s Rome, whose unity is naturally com-
posed of contradictory elements.
The mysterious unity of Florence is, however, of a different kind, as it is
free of the connotation of encompassing immanence. It evokes, rather,
grace in its more familiar usage, characteristic of the Augustinian trad-
ition, which presupposes the seclusion of the righteous elect from the ills
of the secular world with its disorders (cf. Markus, 1970). Florence, in
Simmel’s account, appears to have never experienced the contradictions
which characterized other cities, as if it somehow managed to produce its
unity directly and remain even in its maturity innocently untainted by the
dualisms of life – the beautiful soul among cities. When Simmel claims
(Simmel, 2007a: 41) that in Florence ‘parts of reality are growing together
into a unified sense of being’, he does not suggest that this unified sense is
based on the inclusion of everything. On the contrary, the city would seek
only the elements of harmony and perfection, gathering ‘from every
corner of the soul all that is ripe, cheerful and alive’ (Simmel, 2007a:
40). That is, in order to achieve its unity, Florence must select. It projects
unity by ignoring what is not fit for this. Appearing in the text as a kind of
isolated island which maintains itself by exclusion, Florence is said to be
‘the good fortune of those fully mature [reifen] human beings who have
achieved or renounced what is essential in life, and who for this possession
and renunciation are seeking only its form’ (Simmel, 2007a: 41).
Simmel does not tell us more about these mature people.13 It is likely,
however, that this expression refers to Nietzsche under whose influence
Simmel came in the 1900s. The affirmation of life and the pathos of
distance – the rejection of everything unfit – were precisely the aspects
of Nietzschean philosophy which Simmel (1989d [1902]) emphasized.
Florence’s combination of ripe cheerfulness with seclusion reminds us
of the Nietzschean asceticism of fresh air (Nietzsche, 1994: 80–5).
Florence can thus be seen as the best retreat for a Nietzschean ideal man.
This retreat is not driven by fear, nor is it an escape from the world or
humanity. According to Simmel, Nietzsche’s pathos of distance should
be understood as a necessary means for breeding the better human type,
which can be realized only in a small number of individuals, and not in
Podoksik 113

the masses. In order to advance the ideal of humanity then, man should
stand apart from society (Simmel, 1950a: 63–4). Therefore, in ‘Florence’,
the Bildung ideal of harmonious personality is not abandoned, it just
characterizes only a special kind of individual, living in a special kind
of city.
The impression of Simmel’s departure from his earlier view is also
reinforced by the new description of Rome in ‘Florence’. He claims
here that Rome has managed to leave its mark on Florence in the
form of the Medici Chapel (partly designed by Michelangelo).
Referring particularly to Michelangelo’s statues, Simmel argues that
the creation is more Roman than Florentine, as it conveys the sense of
the tragic tension between its parts. Michelangelo captured ‘each figure at
that very moment in which the battle between the dark burden of earthly
severity and the mind’s longing for light and freedom had come to a
standstill’. The unity which is formed here is that of a ‘life consisting
of two irreconcilable parts’ (Simmel, 2007a: 42).
There is a clear difference in how Rome’s contrasts are presented in
this essay, compared to Simmel’s comments in the previous one. If earlier
they were understood as a necessary condition for the accomplishment of
comprehensive unity, now they are supposed to convey a sense of tra-
gedy. Tragedy always signified for Simmel the idea of inner irreconcilable
conflict. It appears, therefore, that in ‘Florence’ he does not conceive
Rome as a harmonious combination of unity and multiplicity. He implies
rather that comprehensive unity previously considered to be represented
by Rome has turned out to be unachievable. The best we can now hope
for is the model of harmony represented by Florence.
Thus ‘Florence’ reflects the mood of the second stage of Simmel’s
intellectual development. Although Simmel does not abandon the ideal
of unity and harmony in the fragmented world, he no longer postulates
the possibility of total reconciliation. The most one can achieve is to hold
on to a moment which symbolizes unity, or find a repose within a certain
aspect of existence in which unity is achieved (but only for a specific
place, or a specific kind of people, or a specific time). Florence may be
a happy release, but it is still a release and not a comprehensive solution
to the fragmentary character of modernity.

Venice
Yet another attempt at release is represented by Venice. This attempt is
alas less successful as it reveals a problematic character of the post-
Bildung modernity. Like Rome and Florence, Venice is a work of art,
and like them, it presupposes the ideal of unity. Yet Venice’s unity is not
real. It is a lie, and its purpose is not to remove but conceal the basic
dualism of existence. This is the core difference between it and Florence.
Florence’s unity may not be universal, and it may not be available to the
114 Theory, Culture & Society 29(7/8)

fallen, immature man, but at least it is the true unity between nature and
art. Venice’s sort of unity, by contrast, does not aim at reconciliation
with nature at all.
To exemplify this, Simmel compares the palaces of both cities. He
argues that the exteriors of Florence’s palaces are the exact expression
of their inner meaning, whereas ‘Venetian palaces are a precious game,
their uniformity masking the individual characteristics of their people, a
veil whose folds follow only the laws of its inner beauty, betraying the life
behind it in the act of concealing it’ (Simmel, 2007c: 43). Or, more gen-
erally, Venice is a city of appearance, artifice, mask. While Florence
expresses the true inner life, in Venice ‘all that is cheerful and bright,
free and light, has only served as a face [Fassade] for a life that is dark,
violent and unrelentingly functional’ (Simmel, 2007c: 44).
Venice – a work of art as appearance – differs in yet another aspect
from a work of art which expresses truth: its unity is based not on var-
iety, but on singleness. The life of Venice is carried out fully ‘in a single
tempo’, as ‘no draught animals or vehicles attract the attentive eye with
their alternating speeds, and the gondolas entirely follow the pace and
rhythm of people walking’ (Simmel, 2007c: 44). Venice is a dream-like
city, in which one is surrounded not by the things themselves, but by
monotonous appearances, devoid of any lively excitement.
From a certain viewpoint, Simmel’s Venice could be seen as the aes-
thete’s release, for it represents an aesthetically complete form, which is
disconnected from life and belongs solely to the realm of pure appear-
ance. It seems, however, that the aesthete who would enjoy such a city
would be one fully emancipated from the appeal of Bildung, one who
would accept Worringer’s postulates of abstract art, immersing him or
herself in Venice’s rhythmic monotony and forgetting about organic
totality.
Such an attitude of complete resignation from the world was foreign to
Simmel. Therefore, he did not accept this sort of release, arguing that the
realm of appearance never suppresses the feeling that it is a mere appear-
ance. And such awareness unmasks the release as a deception. Thus,
instead of bestowing on us the feeling of unity, Venice radiates an air
of ‘ambivalence’ [Zweideutigkeit] (Simmel, 2007c: 45). One can notice this
ambivalence in everything: in the crowding of people on its narrow
streets, so that any touching between them, while giving the impression
of sociability, is, in fact, devoid of any true emotional closeness; or in the
double life of the city, since it can be perceived either as a system of lanes
or of canals, so that it ‘belongs neither to land nor to water’ (Simmel,
2007c: 45), but constantly changes its own appearance.
This observation provides Simmel with an opportunity to make a
more general point, namely to emphasize the idea of duality of life as
such: for life is merely a foreground behind which stands death as the
only certainty. When torn out of ‘being’, life is in a constant danger of
Podoksik 115

becoming a rootless appearance. Salvation can come only from art, but
art can perform this role only in those rare moments in which it brings
‘being’ into appearance. This happens when art, though remaining itself,
goes beyond artifice, connecting itself with reality – when it is ‘more than
art’ (Simmel, 2007c: 45). Florence could be an example of this. Venice, by
contrast, is understood by Simmel as insisting on the illusion of existing
merely for the sake of beauty. Therefore, the most it can offer to life is an
ambivalent beauty of adventure that flows, rootless, in the stream of life.
And although our soul can thus find in Venice an adventure, it cannot
build a home [Heimat] for itself (Simmel, 2007c: 46).
Five years later, German readers would be offered a startlingly similar
picture of the city in Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice (1965
[1912]). All the elements of Simmel’s description of Venice as the city
of lie are there. Lie is everywhere: in the attire (Aschenbach is first
appalled by an elderly man making himself appear younger, yet in the
end succumbs to a similar masquerade); or in a pleasant monotony of
service (in the first journey in a gondola, or in the hotel), behind which
there is a ruthless functionality, deception, the lack of emotional attach-
ment. Then the greatest lie – the beauty of Tadzio, whose innocent age
suggests singleness (exemplified by his teenage fanaticism regarding the
Russians), rather than variety and complexity which are the mark of
maturity. This is a dream-like beauty – a distant appearance, or a
sweet illusion. And death is a necessary counterpart of it.
I am not aware of any evidence that Mann had read Simmel’s essay
before he completed his novella. Yet he was certainly familiar with
Simmel’s writings, for he approvingly quoted from Simmel’s
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche (published in the same year as ‘Venice’ –
1907) in his Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man (1983 [1918]: 58). In a
letter from 1932, he specifically referred to Simmel’s characterization of
Venice as ‘the ambivalent city’.14 Earlier, Mann’s close friend Ernst
Bertram (1919: 266) mentioned Death in Venice just before quoting
from ‘Venice’. And earlier still, in November 1912, several months
after the completion of Death in Venice, Mann (2002: 501) wrote to
Bertram: ‘I am even more indebted to you for the quotation from
Simmel, with which I was not familiar and which is in fact very beautiful
and ingenious.’ Since Bertram would later quote from Simmel’s ‘Venice’
right after mentioning Mann’s novella, it appears very likely that Mann
referred in his letter to the same quotation, after Bertram had apparently
drawn Mann’s attention to the parallels between the two texts. If this is
correct, one might conclude that Mann had not been familiar with
Simmel’s essay until his work on the novella was already over. Yet alter-
native interpretations are also possible. Mann started working on Death
in Venice in 1911, whereas Simmel’s essay appeared in 1907. Mann could
have read it then (it was published in a popular art magazine, Der
Kunstwart) and simply forgot about it. Or, worse, he may have
116 Theory, Culture & Society 29(7/8)

remembered it but did not wish to reveal this. The question mark remains
because none of the known sources of the philosophical inspiration for
the novella (such as Plato’s or Schopenhauer’s philosophy, Nietzsche’s
notions of the Dionysian and Apollonian, or Lukács’ idea of yearning
[Braches, 2008; Hoffmann, 1995]) suggests that Venice should be
described in this particular manner, whereas Simmel’s short essay per-
fectly fills the gap. Therefore, ‘Venice’ may have been in the back of
Mann’s mind when he was writing his own book. I would posit at
least a scholarly hypothesis that Simmel’s text was one of Mann’s sources
of inspiration.
Be this as it may, the parallels between the two works help me illus-
trate what I take to be Simmel’s own view. Venice signified for him the
dead-end of Bildung. Initially, in ‘Rome’, the multiplicity of the world did
not appear as a principal obstacle to unity; on the contrary, it led to unity
or presupposed unity. When later such architectonic unity was perceived
as not possible, Simmel attempted to claim the place for unity in a par-
ticular fragment. This is the significance of ‘Florence’. Although here the
work of art does not bestow comprehensive unity on the world, the
world’s ideal of unity is at least symbolized. The standpoint of aestheti-
cism, postulating the full autonomy of art, is more clearly felt in
‘Florence’, as the work of art achieves here its unity through rejecting
what is foreign to it. Yet somehow, miraculously (or one could say, by an
act of grace), art remains connected with the truth and reality.
Aestheticism, the notion of art for its own sake, remains incomplete.
The completion takes place in ‘Venice’. This city is a perfect work of
art, whose extreme beauty, with its absence of organic variety, is directed
fully towards itself. This is, so to say, a narcissistic beauty. Yet the prom-
ise of release implied in Venice’s accomplished aestheticism turns out to
be a deceit. The city can never fully succeed in concealing its own unreal-
ity. This is why Aschenbach’s adventure ends with death, and why
Simmel says that in Venice one cannot find a home. And whereas
Mann’s approach towards Venice is coloured with the aesthete’s ambi-
guity and irony, Simmel is less ambiguous in imparting us the impression
that he dislikes Venice.15 Florence was his favourite Italian city, the one
in which the dream of Bildung – of being at home in the world – was still
possible, thanks to the atmosphere of homeliness which that city pro-
vided. Venice represented the rejection of that homeliness and thus the
abandonment of Bildung altogether.
Acknowledging Simmel’s uneasiness about Venice may help us avoid
attributing to him the kind of thinking with which he was often, though
falsely, charged. One of the first examples of such attribution appears in a
book published just a few months after ‘Venice’: a very ingenious philo-
sophical work by a young art historian, Richard Hamann (1907), entitled
Impressionism in Life and Art. A graduate of Berlin University, Hamann
attended Simmel’s classes, and Simmel is said to have been a major
Podoksik 117

influence on him and his book (Hermand, 2009: 33–4, 38). Hamann’s
starting point was impressionism in painting, yet he applied this term to
the modern culture and style of life in general. All the major phenomena
of modern life carried, in his view, the characteristics which we find in the
impressionistic painting: momentary glance, superficiality, characterless-
ness, fragmentariness, etc. Modern aestheticism was just another aspect
of this spirit of impressionism, a spirit exemplified by Simmel and his
Philosophy of Money (Hamann, 1907: 217). Just a few pages before the
reference to Philosophy of Money, Hamann mentioned the modern
metropolis and then moved to discuss Venice: another example of
impressionism, described by him as ‘the city of the most perfect aestheti-
cism, of the most cultivated life of senses’ (1907: 209). He called it the
‘free city of adventurers’ (1907: 210), using basically the same expression
that had been used by Simmel: the ‘classical city of adventure’ (Simmel,
2007c: 46).
Thus, for Hamann, the style of modern life was impressionistic in the
sense that it represented superficial flux and aestheticistic fragmentari-
ness. Simmel was a major philosopher of this style of life – and Venice
was a perfect urban example of it. This was a powerful image, and it was
entirely justifiable that Hamann would try to co-opt every major cultural
element of his time to it, be it city life or Simmel’s philosophy. This does
not mean, however, that his description of Simmel’s worldview was cor-
rect. On the contrary, if one accepts the logic of Hamann’s argument, one
can derive from it the opposite conclusion regarding Simmel. The text of
‘Venice’ makes it clear that Simmel disliked precisely that feature of
Venice which Hamann made into the essence of modern impressionism:
its aesthetic superficiality. Instead of immersing himself in the flux,
Simmel was desperately looking for something solid to get hold of in
the condition of modernity. Nor was Hamann himself happy with what
he called the spirit of impressionism. He ended his book with the call:
‘More Hegel!’ (1907: 320)
Simmel, hardly an impressionist, whatever Hamann might have
thought, would not disagree with what was implied in this call: the
yearning for a comprehensive philosophical Weltanschauung. Shortly
after the publication of ‘Venice’ he began to rearrange his ideas in
accordance with the conceptual apparatus of life-philosophy. This phil-
osophy was not Hegelian in the precise meaning of this word, but its
quasi-dialectical movement as well as its quest for eternity did endow it
with a Hegelian flavour (Christian, 1978).

III
That ‘impressionism’, or ‘avant-garde’, or ‘modernistic urbanism’ do not
really characterize Simmel’s aesthetic sensibilities, which are rather ‘clas-
sicist’ at their core, has been noticed by perceptive commentators. One of
118 Theory, Culture & Society 29(7/8)

them, for example, wonders why Simmel is ‘considered an urbanist (and

a modernist) par excellence, although he bequeathed a work clearly laced
with antiurbanist (and antimodernist) affects’ (Jazbinsek, 2003: 121). Yet
when the question is put in this dichotomous way, it may lead to the
opposite error of ascribing to Simmel a nostalgic, romantic and antimo-
dernist worldview. One might indeed be tempted to jump to such a con-
clusion at the moment one realizes that Simmel’s ideals differed from
those of his younger modernist contemporaries. But this would presup-
pose an identity between urban ‘modernism’ on the one hand, and the
actual experience of urban ‘modernity’ on the other. In such a case, any
rejection of urban modernism would naturally imply the abandonment of
modernity in general.
But this is by no means a necessary premise, and Simmel’s aesthetic
idealization of Italian cities does not have to be regarded as an escape
from modernity. His attitude was more complex. Almost all of his life
was spent in a major city – Berlin – to which he felt deeply emotionally
attached. Upon obtaining professorship in provincial Strasburg, he left
Berlin with sadness and never was able to feel at home in the new place.
He felt himself completely belonging to that kind of cultural and intel-
lectual life which only a big city could offer (or perhaps also a major
university centre such as Heidelberg). It appears therefore that Simmel
would never have accepted the dichotomy between ‘modernist urbanism’
and ‘anti-modernist anti-urbanism’. He was certainly worried about
modern superficiality, fragmentariness and the domination of the tech-
nical. But this does not add up to despising urban civilization as such.
Certainly, for Simmel, the true urban civilization, in which ‘urban’ is
synonymous with ‘urbane’, was a homeland. He was a Berliner, but his
Berlin was not Georg Heym’s Berlin of factory pipes, and even less so
was it Fritz Lang’s monstrous metropolis. His was the Berlin of the
affluent quiet environs of Charlottenburg and Westend, of daily walks
via Tiergarten, of the lecture halls of Friedrich-Wilhelm University and
of artistic salons.
Now, if one believes that life in the modern metropolis must be over-
satiated, fragmentary and alienated, then Simmel’s writings on Italian
cities would appear to possess only a historical interest and be irrelevant
to our concerns about urbanity. But what if Simmel’s description of
Italian cities was not a mere yearning for some forgotten classical past,
but represented in fact his search for what a truly modern urbanity could
look like? What if the whole ‘modernist’ chatter about cities was a mis-
take, or at least an aesthetic-sociological detour, similar to the way totali-
tarianism was the political detour of the 20th century? What if the true
contemporary urbanity is more akin to the urbanity presented to us in
Simmel’s descriptions of Rome and Florence, than to the urbanity
described in ‘The Metropolis and Modern Life’?
Podoksik 119

Consider contemporary Berlin. It could be seen as a remarkably

friendly modern metropolis, where even poor neighbourhoods appear
to join wealthier ones in conveying a certain feeling of comfort. It cer-
tainly endows us with a perception of unity – and its unity grows natur-
ally out of its unplanned variety – almost like Rome’s. And if one were to
argue that Berlin’s urbanity is a fruit of its special historical circum-
stances, then one could consider many modern towns and cities built
and developed in different parts of the world – the USA, Canada,
Australia, Malaysia, Kazakhstan. Does not the artifice in them fit very
well in their natural surroundings, providing us with the cosy feeling of
homeliness – one that might be similar to that experienced by Simmel in
Florence? And if this is so, could it be that Simmel’s vision, where urban
unity and harmony are regarded possible (despite the experience of frag-
mentation), is a better guide for contemporary urbanity than those that
lament the ills of modernity?

Notes
1. This article is part of my research on Georg Simmel’s philosophy supported
by the Israeli Science Foundation (grant no. 220/05) and by the Alexander
von Humboldt Foundation.
2. These essays have recently been translated into English and until now have
remained relatively unexplored. For one exception, see Giacomoni (2008).
3. On the notion of Bildung, see Bollenbeck (1994). Simmel is rarely analysed
in the context of this notion. For a few exceptions, see Witsch (2008),
Geßner (2003: 194–6) and Ringer (1989).
4. On Kultur as a secularized substitute for Christentum, see Rauhut (1953: 83).
My own position, however, is not that culture can be reduced to religion,
and that culture is somehow a secularized religion. The only thing I am
prepared to claim here is that religion and culture may share at least one
common function – the person’s reconciliation with the world, with the
important difference that, in Kultur, this reconciliation is performed through
the human effort itself.
5. On the significance of the term ‘culture’ and on the hope that cultural sci-
ences would open the way to a new integration, see vom Bruch et al. (1989).
6. Hans Freyer (1931: 597), for example, asserted that ‘the problem of Bildung
is not topical’.
7. For example, in ‘On the Third Dimension in Art’ (Simmel, 1968b), he saw
the illusion of the dimension of space as that which enriches and strengthens
a painting and indicates its organic unity.
8. My schema should not be reduced to the usual division of Simmel’s devel-
opment into the positivistic, neo-Kantian and life-philosophical periods
(Landmann, 1976). It overlaps with that division chronologically, but pos-
tulates a different organizing principle.
9. See also the interpretation of Klaus Lichtblau (1997: 80–1).
10. For an analysis of Simmel’s understanding of individuality in his third phase
see Podoksik (2010).
120 Theory, Culture & Society 29(7/8)

11. This is just one example of what may scare a scholar into resignation con-
cerning the possibility of finding a comprehensive logic in the development
of Simmel’s views. The difficulty should not, however, be exaggerated. What
is required in such cases is the exercise of judgement combined with a close
attention to the text.
12. On Hegel’s philosophical meaning of Bildung and its connection with the
educational ideal of the age see, for example, Schmidt (1996).
13. On the community of foreign lovers of art in fin-de-sie`cle Florence, see
Roeck (2009).
14.

und ich. . . das. . . Leben zwischen dem warmen Meer am Morgen

und der ‘zweideutigen’ Stadt am Nachmittag führe. Zweideutig ist
wirklich das bescheidenste Beiwort, das man ihr geben kann
(Simmel hat es ihr gegeben) aber es passt in allen seinen
Bedeutungslagen ganz wunderbar auf sie. . . (Mann, 1962: 317)

15. Simmel spoke quite often about his love for Florence; as for Venice, I am
unaware of any expression of his that would contain even the slightest trace
of sympathy.

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Efraim Podoksik is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political

Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He specializes in
modern British and German intellectual history, and is currently doing
research on Georg Simmel’s philosophy in context. His publications
include: In Defence of Modernity: Vision and Philosophy in Michael
Oakeshott (Imprint Academic, 2003); ‘Ethics and the Conduct of Life
in the Old Georg Simmel and the Young Michael Oakeshott’, Simmel
Studies 17 (2007): 197–221; ‘Georg Simmel: Three Forms of
Individualism and Historical Understanding’, New German Critique
109 (2010): 119–145; ‘One Concept of Liberty: Towards Writing the
History of a Political Concept’, Journal of the History of Ideas 71
(2010): 219–240. He is the editor of the Cambridge Companion to
Oakeshott (Cambridge University Press, 2012).