The form-content distinction is a methodological device, not a real separation

Evidence

Historical-psychological processes, in their fluctuations and complexities, can never be completely rationalized. Geometry, by contrast, does have the power to isolate absolutely pure forms out of their material realizations. It should always be remembered that this identity of the kinds of interaction in the face of the simultaneously existing variety of human or objective material (and vice versa) is nothing primarily but a device to make and legitimate the scientific discrimination between form and content in the treatment of empirical phenomena. Methodologically speaking, this discrimination would be required even if the actual constellations did not call for the inductive procedure of crystallizing the like out of the unlike. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 204

Categorization

• XREF: A candid caveat that the sharply separate form and content (stranger-role vs. Julius) is an analytic imposition, relevant to the reader’s need to defend cross-text synthesis. — connects to: What is form in one context can be content in another. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 53; Oral and written composition are continuous rather than opposed techniques. — Homer; Robert Fagles; Bernard Knox, The Odyssey, 50; Idealist aesthetics identify form and content, not technique and plot (+4 more)

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