1. Overviews are provided by H.P. Müller and M. Weihrich in Lebensweise—Lebensführung—Lebensstile. Eine kommentierte Bibliographie (München, 1991); St. Hradil (ed.), Zwischen Bewusstsein und Sein (Opladen, 1992); H.C. Brose und B. Hildenbrand (eds.), Vom Ende des Individuums zur Individualität ohne Ende (Opladen, 1988).

2. See N. Luhmann, “Individuum, Individualität, Individualismus”, in Gesellschaftsstruktur und Semantik, Band 3, p. 229 (Frankfurt/M, 1989). Luhmann's own conception here is in many ways an extrapolation of Simmel.

3. cf. G. Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life”, trans. Edward S. Shils, in Georg Simmel. On Individuality and Social Forms, edited with an Introduction by Donald. N. Levine (Chicago University Press, 1971), pp. 324–339. Page numbers in brackets in the text refer to this essay.

4. See G. Simmel, Kant: 16 Vorlesungen (Leipzig, 1904), p. 136.

5. G. Simmel, “Goethe's Individualism”, Logos, III, 1912, p. 251.

6. See G. Simmel in K. Gassen and M. Landmann (eds), Buch des Dankes an Georg Simmel. Briefe, Erinnerungen. Bibliographie (Berlin, 1958).

7. cf. Simmel, “Goethe's Individualism”, op.cit. p. 252 where he states “In the 18th century's world of ideas, the human being's differential existence, its concentration in the autonomous point of the `I', is dominant... (the human being) is... simply an individual being, and thus it is just as free metaphysically as it is supposed to be politically, intellectually, religiously”.

8. cf. G. Simmel, “Goethe's Individualism”, op.cit, p. 253 where he states: “not the autonomy in the being of fundamentally similar personalities, but the irreplaceability in the being-so of fundamentally different personalities” determines the value of individuality.

9. Nervousness and neurasthenia were “discovered” as illnesses by the American doctor G. Beard in 1880 and became the fashionable designation for sickness induced by civilization. In Germany, where they were related to hypersensitivity by K. Lamprecht, they were regarded as typical of the “modern psyche” and of impressionism. cf. L. Müller, “Die Groβstadt als Ort der Moderne”, in K.R. Scherpe (ed.) Die Unwirklichkeit der Städte (Reinbek, 1988).

10. cf. “The Metropolis and Mental Life”, p. 338: “Life is made infinitely more easy”.

11. cf. G. Simmel, “Goethe's Individualism”, p. 251.

12. For this point see G. Simmel, Das Individuelle Gesetz, edited by M. Landmann (Frankfurt/M, 1968); G. Simmel, Lebensanschauung (München-Leipzig, 1918). I have examined this more extensively in G. Lohmann, “Fragmentierung, Oberflächlichkeit und Ganzheit individueller Existenz, Negativismus bei Georg Simmel” in Dialektischer Negativismus, edited by E. Angehrn, H. Fink-Eitel, Ch. Iber and G. Lohmann (Frankfurt/M. 1992).

13. For more details see G. Lohmann, p. 362 ff.

14. cf. G. Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, translated by Tom Bottomore and David Frisby, esp. Chap. 6 “The Style of Life” (London, Routledge, Kegan Paul, 1978).

15. See G. Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, and Philosophische Kultur (Berlin, 1983).

16. cf. Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1978), esp, chap. 1 “Aims of the New Epoch”.

17. J. Böhringer, “Der Essay Georg Simmels”, Merkur, 39 (April 1985), nr. 4, p. 302.

The Adaptation of Individual Life to the Inner Infinity of the Metropolis. Forms of Individualization in Simmel

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