Georg Simmel and Erving Goffman: Conceptions of the Self

Running Head: GEORG SIMMEL AND ERVING GOFFMAN
Georg Simmel and Erving Goffman: Conceptions of the Self
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Georg Simmel and Erving Goffman: Conceptions of the Self
This essay spells out both Georg Simmel and Erving Goffman`s conceptions of the self. To discuss each of these formal sociologists` conceptions of the self, each conception will be spelled out and critiqued in some detail.
Georg Simmel
Simmel`s (1910) conception of the self is associated with his three sociological a priori conditions articulated in “How is Society Possible?” Simmel suggests that since society consists of sociation, then, the make-up of society “must have its ultimate basis in individual existences, in certain cognitive dispositions” (Simmel 1910:150). Thus, “Simmel asks, what are the universal and a priori characteristics that must be presupposed as extant in all individual minds in order for them to engage in sociation? What cognitive procedures must be present in every mind for any kind of sociation to take place at all?” (Simmel 1910:220). For Simmel (1910), the answer is his three sociological a priori conditions.
Importantly, Simmel tells us that the typification procedure operates only within the already existing society as a priori of the further reactions which develop between individuals (Simmel 1910:380). In other words, we can only paint a picture and assign imperfect form to individuals’ content/material from the pre-existing pictures or societal forms, categories, constellations, or spheres of societal units that are infused into language—that have been, or will be, generated from or out of sociation. Simmel also tells us that our typifications of others, our pictures or the forms that we assign to each other, generate from within our individual content/material, our personality, our soul (Simmel 1910:380). Again, subtly distinct from Smith’s (1989/2000) interpretation, Simmel’s content is more than cognition. Human content is everything that makes up the self (Simmel 1917/1950). As Simmel (1908/1910) note, the picture that we paint of others is imperfect. We paint this picture from our own constellation of contents, and we paint a picture of the other that approaches the other’s reality (from within our own reality), but it can never truly reflect or be that person’s reality; we can never truly enter another’s content.
Individual typifications are certainly cognitive, but they are only a priori because the constellations of social forms we typify them from are sociologically a priori. Images of social forms exist through language a priori to the individual; and, phenomenologically, language and images are taught to us through socialization. For example, prior to sometime in the 1970s, we could not typify a person as a “punk rocker.” It is only after various individuals’ content surfaced through sociation that the punk rocker emerged, became socially established, somewhat agreed upon, infused into language, and thus added to the common stock of knowledge. The “punk rocker” typification evolved, in other words.
Sociologically, then, society is made possible with Simmel’s first sociological apriority because humans have the cognitive ability to utilize and understand language in order to socialize individuals into typifying others’ content from their own content, stemming from a priori existing social forms. For Simmel, with his second sociological apriority, the “extra-social” is located in the a priori social form of the social being. For Simmel, speaking of individuals, “[e]ach element of a group is not a societary part, but beyond that something else” (Simmel 19910:381). That something else is, in part, the conception that “the sort of his socialized-being (Vergesellschaftent-Seins) is determined or partially determined by the sort of his not socialized being” (Simmel 1910:381). In other words, analytically, I interpret Simmel’s ideas here as similar to the Meadian (1934/1969) “I” and the “me,” which for Simmel’s (1910:381) is the “Within” and “Without.” Within and Without may be distinct categories illuminating a sociological self. However, contextually, like the “I” and the “me,” the Within and Without develop symbiotically and through socialization. They “signify the whole unitary position of the social living human being” (Simmel 1910:386). One’s “existence is not merely, in subdivision of contents, partially social and partially individual,” but rather “it stands under the fundamental, formative, irreducible category of a unity” (Simmel 1910:387).
For Simmel, this unity is the social being. It is “the synthesis or the contemporariness of the two logically antithetical determinations— articulation and self-sufficiency, the condition of being produced by, and contained in, society, and on the other hand of being derived out of moving around its own center” (Simmel 1910:387). Simmel’s social being is a social form. It is a priori where the social being in Western European civilizations is infused with, and it is, a continuum of tension between individuality and conformity. As Simmelian social beings, we teach our young to be both individualistic and to conform. Thus, society is made possible through Simmel`s second sociological a priori condition because the social being is an a priori social form that teaches its young to acknowledge, accept, and utilize one’s individuality as well as one’s sense of conformity. We do this to typify others as well as to align one’s “inner calling,” or one’s content of individuality, with existing “vocations” located outside of the self and in the social structure.
Erving Goffman
Foremost, Goffman asks what constitutes the self? For Goffman, the self is a continuum between individuality and conformity and action and being associated with a personal and social identity. This, then, is tied to and defined by social entities and social bonds. Goffman then asks how the individual handles this defining of self (1961b:175). Goffman’s primary adjustm...