Individual motives become social only through forms of mutual interaction

Evidence

I designate as the content—the materials, so to speak—of sociation everything that is present in individuals (the immediately concrete loci of all historical reality)—drive, interest, purpose, inclination, psychic state, movement—everything that is present in them in such a way as to engender or mediate effects upon others or to receive such effects. In themselves, these materials which fill life, these motivations which propel it, are not social. Strictly speaking, neither hunger nor love, work nor religiosity, technology nor the functions and results of intelligence, are social. They are factors in sociation only when they transform the mere aggregation of isolated individuals into specific forms of being with and for one another, forms that are subsumed under the general concept of interaction. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 194

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the content/form distinction underpinning all of Simmel’s work.
• XREF: connects to: Others’ signaled openness governs whether one initiates talk; Mutual eye contact is inherently reciprocal and self-revealing; The individual’s inner mental relations mirror social relations among persons — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 354 (+38 more)

Related

• The individual’s inner mental relations mirror social relations among persons (similarity 0.88)
• Social orders integrate at the level of attributed motives (similarity 0.88)
• Others’ signaled openness governs whether one initiates talk (similarity 0.86)
• Thinking is a sociable collective activity that transforms thinker and interlocutors (similarity 0.85)
• A science of society must study only forms of interaction (similarity 0.84)
• Micro-level symbolic encounters carry relative autonomy from the social structure (similarity 0.84)
• Social unity is felt through concrete relations rather than abstract awareness (similarity 0.84)
• Sociology’s proper object is the forms relating two or more individuals (similarity 0.83)
• Identical interaction forms recur across radically different social groups (similarity 0.82)
• Simmel advanced technical sociology mainly as a byproduct of metaphysical concerns (similarity 0.82)
• Social outcomes depend on joint causation, making individualist rule-following wrong for policy (similarity 0.82)
• Sociology treats psychological processes only as carriers of social forms (similarity 0.82)
• Social generalization, though distorting, is what makes social relations possible (similarity 0.82)
• The formal content distinction in sociology can only be illustrated, not yet defined (similarity 0.82)
• Human sociality is one possibility among several, not the only lens on experience (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Social structures are objectivated meanings built through inter-subjective exchange #corroborates (0.60)
• Individuality emerges from the layering and clash of overlapping social types #expands (0.50) — Janet Burroway; Elizabeth Stuckey-French; Ned Stuckey-French, Writing Fiction, Tenth Edition, 284
• The friend-enemy distinction dissolves only through mutual recognition within shared space #exemplifies (0.45)
• Identical interaction forms recur across radically different social groups #corroborates (0.40) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 198
• A science of society must study only forms of interaction #qualifies (0.40) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 196
• Ideas and practical life mutually influence each other in a reciprocal interaction #expands (0.35) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2169