Both nature’s mechanism and history’s determinism oppress the modern self

Evidence

Kant’s answer provides release from one of the two oppressions which threaten modern man, nature and history. Both appear to stifle the free, self-possessed personality: the former, because its mechanicism subjects the soul to the same blind forces as the falling stone and the sprouting stalk; the latter, because it makes of the soul a mere point of intersection of social threads spinning through history and reduces its whole creativity to a matter of administering the inheritance of the race. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 163

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘point of intersection of social threads’ image resonates with the reader’s essay about civil inattention reducing the urban observer to a node rather than an agent. — connects to: Both aesthetic mood and money-possession liberate the self from resistant reality — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 451; Biological determinism is used to excuse structural inequality.; The neurotic conflict between self-denial and self-assertion is resolved only through universal human connection (+18 more)

Related

• Modern mankind splits between belief in omnipotence and experienced powerlessness (similarity 0.84)
• Human freedom to begin new things resists the tyranny of logical deduction (similarity 0.84)
• Mechanical determinism makes people believe history moves without them. (similarity 0.80)
• Social and cultural structures overdetermine our natural human constitution. (similarity 0.79)
• Nature’s qualities are historical, not fixed, under human mastery (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Biological determinism is used to excuse structural inequality. #exemplifies (0.60)
• Ideologies act on people structurally through a process that escapes them #corroborates (0.55)
• Social and cultural structures overdetermine our natural human constitution. #corroborates (0.50)
• The neurotic conflict between self-denial and self-assertion is resolved only through universal human connection #qualifies (0.40)