The corrosion of character: Work and personality in the modern age

Herr Simmel, as you know from my letter, the reason why I invited you here is that you are being considered for the second chair of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. The Faculty of Philosophy has expressed a very positive opinion of you and, I must say, I sincerely uphold their opinion!

Thank you so much, Herr Weber!

They appreciate your extensive, multifaceted knowledge and your penetrating intellectual vigour. My colleagues, and I myself, I might add, have no doubt that if anyone is capable of raising sociology from the state of empirical data collection and general reflections to the rank of a genuine philosophical discipline, that person is you!

I feel deeply honoured by such a generous estimation …

I must say, that if you could be secured for Heidelberg, then the social sciences as a whole, and all their branches, would find such a comprehensive representation as exists nowhere else! However, I must also tell you that it won’t be easy for me to secure this position for you. Even if the entire philosophy faculty of Heidelberg truly admires your work, I have heard that the Baden Minister of Education asked Berlin for a further report on you, and that said report was not totally favourable …

(becoming increasingly nervous) I can imagine! There are still many prejudices against sociology, and more specifically against myself as a Jewish sociologist! Among the historians at the University of Berlin, there are some who deem it a dangerous error to put ‘society’ in the place of the state and the church as the authoritative organ of human coexistence.

Anti-Semitism in academia is becoming a national disgrace! Even esteemed colleagues may be heard spouting such nonsense against sociology …

However, this hostility towards myself and the sociological discipline hasn’t halted my work … This was the main reason for the book I published recently – the Große Soziologie – to set forth the (hopefully) definitive argument against this nonsense of considering ‘society’ as the mystical object of sociology … By the way, I asked the publisher to send you a copy: have you received it? I am anxious to hear your opinion …

Yes, I received and have read the book, thank you, and I think your extraordinary efforts to systematize your sociological work have been extremely successful … I am sure this book will offer some positive arguments for those who want you in Heidelberg for the Ordinarius position. Despite the apparent fragmentary character of your research, when reading it I saw a central motif in your conception of the modern individual in the process of what you call ‘the form of sociations’. Unless I err, the subject remains the same as that of your previous work, The Philosophy of Money.

You are absolutely right, Herr Weber: this has always maintained my constant interest. I am deeply convinced that the gravest problems of modern life derive from the demands of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of technology.

This is also the main point of my bureaucracy thesis! Sorry … I didn’t want to interrupt you.

I am deeply convinced that any inquiry into the inner meaning of modern life, specifically, must answer the question of how the personality accommodates itself in adjusting to such external forces. Over the last few years, I have published many essays in various journals and newspapers on the fragmentation of personality throughout the different networks of society. I’ve entitled the book Soziologie, so my hope, eventually, is that it succeeds in relating those scattered contributions within a theoretical conception of how individuals cope with their modern condition.

I cannot but agree with you on the importance of the concept of personality for our contemporary Zeitgeist. My own research on the capitalist spirit has led me to conclude that ascetic Protestantism is at the origins of the modern Western conception of personality. However, I am rather sceptical about the revival of the use and abuse of this concept today. Personality has become a cult established by the prophets of the Youth Movement and is now hawked on every street corner and in every periodical!

Well, in this respect I understand you. I also have them in my lectures. Nevertheless …

This contemporary craving for ‘character’ has nothing to do with the inner consistency inspired by Protestant asceticism. On the contrary, it is fed by the continuous external stimuli of the predominant urban culture … The idea behind this research is that ‘lived experience’ (Erlebnis) forms the essence of ‘personality’ and becomes its foundation. People put themselves through torture in order to ‘experience’ things, because this is considered an essential part of the proper style of life of a ‘personality’. And if they don’t succeed, they must, at the very least, try to act as if they possessed this gift of grace!

Dear Herr Weber, it is undoubtedly true that today we are facing a simplistic cult of ‘personality’ and ‘lived experience’ (Erlebnis), especially among young people. We must consider that Western culture is experiencing a most profound crisis, and that this crisis reveals itself in everyday life precisely through the lack of character of the modern styles of life that young people are confronted with. Our metropolis has become the arena for a culture which outgrows personal life. Here, in our modern buildings and educational institutions, in the wonders and comforts of technology, in the formations of community life, and in the visible institutions of the state … Such an overwhelming abundance of crystallized, impersonalized spirit is being offered up that the personality – so to speak – cannot maintain itself under the impact. It is as if individuals must exaggerate this personal element in order to remain audible even to themselves.

Yes, yes … I know you are so passionate about metropolitan life: I read the transcription of your – indeed brilliant – conference paper in the yearbook of the Gehe Foundation. However, I have to say that I cannot maintain on this matter your proverbial distance … I am not able to exempt myself from judging that we are confronting an age of the dissolution of character!

Wasn’t it you who insisted so strongly that we must withhold our value judgements when investigating social phenomena?

But I am speaking here as a man, as a citizen, as a German worrying that his country – no matter if in the cultural as in the political life – is becoming an enormous café-concert!

I think you are precipitating a little bit of your judgement here. On one side we have what you call ‘the contemporary cult of personality’, on the other side you are denouncing a ‘corrosion of character’. Don’t you think that there is a contradiction here? Or are the two phenomena connected?

I don’t see a contradiction actually: the less someone has a ‘character’, the more they pretend they have one! I actually agree with what you said before: people must exaggerate their personal element in order to remain audible, even to themselves. The fact here is that in our modern, rationalized world, the only way for an individual to have a ‘personality’ is to follow impersonal laws and principles!

Through a spasmodic search for originality and lived experience, the individual reacts to the impossibility of creating harmony between the universal and the particular, between singularity and collectivity …

Sure! The process of social differentiation, which constitutes the sociological premise for modern subjectivity, may at the same time be disorienting for the individual. Modern society presents itself as profoundly ambivalent to the individual: on the one hand, it offers room to grow, while, on the other, it reduces the individual’s sense of ‘centredness’ and ‘character’ by fragmenting the personality amongst various spaces for realization – or, as I call them, the ‘polytheism of values’!

I couldn’t say it better!

On the other side, I also believe that modern specialist professions are the cornerstone of our civilization and, if we relinquish this fact, we run the risk of losing the concept of ‘ethical personality’ that goes with it.

That’s a point of disagreement here: given the social premises of modernity, I would say that we mustn’t overestimate the relation between work and personality, work and ethic …

What do you mean?

I am speaking of the fact that nowadays most professions are becoming rather ‘intellectualized’, in the negative sense of the word. If character – or personality, as you prefer to call it – means that people or things are definitively committed to an individual mode of existence as distinct from and excluding any other, then you must conclude that most professions today are absolutely lacking in character. The fetishism of ‘method’ in academic work is a consequence of this purely professional specialist attitude. I am sure you realize how many of our eminent colleagues in the social sciences remain trapped investigating the most inconsequential trivialities while, at the same time, understanding the intellectual nature of an epoch or an individual does not enter their field of focus at all. Other professions have become equally narrow-minded. In a nutshell, I’d say that in this regard the more character you have – the more original and creative your personality and ‘lived experience’ – the less you can express your individuality in your profession.

I actually wouldn’t counterpose ‘personality’ to ‘intellectualization’ in the field of science or elsewhere … you run the risk of throwing away the baby of the modern division of labour with the bathwater of its dysfunction! Nowadays, science is a ‘profession’ practised in specialist disciplines in the service of self-reflection and the understanding of interrelated facts, and not the gift of grace bestowed by visionaries and prophets offering revelation and the benefits of salvation. This is an undeniable fact of our historical situation, from which, if we are to remain true to ourselves, we cannot escape. If you feel a vocation for a scientific profession, you must then espouse the rationalistic worldview (Weltanschauung) that grounds your professional specialization.

Well, as you probably know, I’ve always had an ambivalent attitude towards academic work. On the one hand, I felt that spiritual life was my vocation (Beruf) and my destiny. On the other, I was quite resistant to the narrow-minded intellectualization of the academic profession. I believe that all elements of life in general must be active in all knowledge: artistic imagination as love, a sense of beauty as a wholly unrationalizable presentiment, the purely intellectual as the generally human in our disposition, no less than sensibility or intellect. We must push beyond Kant’s motto, ‘the whole mind knows’, to affirm that ‘the whole person knows’. I am sure you can agree on this!

You are overwhelmed by nostalgia here, Herr Simmel … Faced with the differentiation and the conflict between autonomous spheres of value, the humanistic ideal of an overall personality is an outdated utopia!

I am fully aware of our tragic condition: in The Philosophy of Money I showed clearly that in the modern world there is no possible conciliation between life and form: how can you accuse me of being a utopian?

Herr Simmel! In the realm of modern work and professions, the person who has ‘personality’ is not the romantic dreamer, but the one who is wholly devoted to his subject!

Do you mean I am not?

What I am trying to tell you here is that the contemporary fashion of living a life that is ‘new’ and ‘original’ at all costs cannot engender the rational, systematic life conduct necessary to exercise a modern profession, whether it be science, politics or business … I would say that even art is no exception to this iron law!

I disagree! Don’t get offended, but I think that you are projecting your cultural obsessions onto universal historical developments …

Which obsessions are you talking about?

As I’ve said before, I see an overestimation of the concept of methodical activity in the realm of science, as well as in the process of the construction of personality. If we look at the entire process of the evolution of life – perspicaciously investigated by Charles Darwin – we have to admit that ‘laziness’ and ‘energy savings’ are the principles that regulate nature as well as societies, much more so than work and activity. The greatest spiritual and technical invention of our times – money – makes possible not just the division of labour, but aesthetics and contemplation, as well. Only a moralistic perspective drives us to deny that the principle at the very origins of social evolution is laziness, and not activity!

So I have just become an obsessed moralist …

I didn’t mean that … but I know how important discipline, devotion and internal strength are in your life: sometimes I have the feeling you imagine that there is a ‘Max-Weber’ behind the entire Western civilization process …

Well, you are exaggerating a little bit here …

In sociology we traditionally overestimate action – especially goal-oriented action – over more playful, disinterested or even passive feelings and attitudes, like suffering and a pessimistic not acting at all: that means laziness!

I do not have a moral prejudice towards laziness and I admit that you are raising an important point here. However, I have quite an opposing opinion on the matter: laziness, aesthetics, disinterested pleasure play an only small or no part at all in shaping the self in Western culture, for the simple reason that they cannot provide the rational, systematic life conduct necessary to exercise today’s professions, whether in science, politics or business. In traditional pre-capitalist cultures, otium was the centre of the character building of the public man. As you know, in the Athenian culture of antiquity, free men were exempt from manual labour, which was reserved for slaves, and could thus dedicate themselves to the arts and politics as the highest forms of vita activa. A departure from this age of ‘full and beautiful humanity’ was needed in order to give rise to the spirit of capitalism. Nowadays, labour is at the very foundation of our societies. Therefore, I don’t believe that a return to the classical ideal of all-round creativity is possible.

I don’t think that there is such a radical break between ancient classical individualism and modern individualism, even if I believe that there are some immense differences between Romanic and Germanic Individualism. In the Romanic way of life – not unlike classical Greek life – there lies a basic striving for the general, for the type, whereas Germanic culture seeks individuality only within the unique self, and is deeply indifferent as to whether this implies a type of some kind or whether individuals can exist more than ‘just once’ in the world in a numerical sense. In Romanic cultures, the public character of both life and the presentation of the self to others drives a particular kind of style to acquire an unmistakable intensity of style as such. What’s at work here is the classical Romanic impulse towards form and rational unity in the exterior realm of appearances. Even the most miserable personal conditions assume a certain dignity if they are presented as a general form of humanity. The individual, inconsolable desperation of northern life is not to be found at these latitudes. Therefore, in my eyes, even the drive to professional specialism is to be viewed as an issue that has been determined more in cultural than in historical terms.

That’s true, but your aesthetic analysis overlooks the radical break that was necessary to create the conditions favourable to the growth of the spirit of rational capitalism. You know that in my studies on the Protestant ethic I was also struck by the problem of what leads us to act in the world in a new way: that is, beyond our supposed natural drive to work to fulfil our basic needs. Abraham, like any peasant in ancient times, could reach the end of his day and say: ‘I’ve worked enough for today’. Once he had collected the necessary supplies for his family and put something away for unforeseen eventualities, he could be satisfied with his work, because he was still living in the organic cycle of life. In accordance with its purpose, in the evenings his work had afforded him what it had to offer, and he could therefore be ‘content’ and rest. The human being doesn’t naturally want to earn more and more money, but simply wishes to live as he has become accustomed to for generations and to earn only what is necessary to achieve this goal.

I really admire your knowledge of religious history. Nevertheless, I think that we have to explain modernity by focusing on its immanent differentiation process.

Sorry for giving you a lecture in biblical studies … but the topic has to be developed in its historical and comparative respects!

Go on with your reasoning dear Weber, if one wants to be a master at thinking, he has to be above all a master at listening to the other …

A disciplined capitalist professional, caught in the process of the continuous accumulation of wealth, and the enrichment of civilization with ideas, knowledge and problems, may become ‘weary of life’, but never ‘fulfilled by it’, for he can snatch only the tiniest part – and always only what is transient and never final – of what the life of the mind constantly gives birth to. Great self-domination was necessary to create this new kind of man, and the strength for such domination could come only from an internal religious force. The Christian ascetic was necessary for the birth of this rational life conduct – sober, devoted to work as an absolute goal. This new kind of human being is inimical to laziness, contemplation, and the peaceful enjoyment of life that could still have tempted Abraham. He holds God within, whereas for Abraham, God was still on the outside, in the form of a powerful Nature dictating the rhythm and pace of his life.

A very intriguing formulation, dear Weber! But it doesn’t contradict my thesis regarding the ‘metaphysics of laziness’. Salvation and the search for eternal rest can be viewed as a consequence of this principle, so, actually, the principle at the very origins of social evolution is not activity, but laziness! Individually, we must confront the tragic destiny of work, just because of laziness … Laziness is the ‘motor immobile’ of our society and culture!

Well, if you put it that way … Yet, it is important to emphasize that this original religious, metaphysical impulse created fertile ground for rationalization as an autonomous and self-perpetuating mechanism, whereby an ever-increasing number of social actions and interactions became based on considerations of efficiency or calculation, rather than motivated by custom, tradition, or emotion.

Do you mean that personal creativity doesn’t play any role at all? In your work you’ve always insisted on the exceptionality of charisma!

That’s not what I mean. I mean that an inertial moment is always necessary to stabilize social structures. This moment – as you well know – harbours the greatest danger of modernity, which is what I might call – using a suggestive, but hopefully unmistakable expression – the ‘stahlhartes Gehäuse’: the mechanized petrification of all life orders, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance.

D’accord, dear Herr Weber! I am fully aware of this tragic moment in modern life. However, I still think that some individuals possess the inner strength to recreate harmony between subjective and objective culture, the universal and the individual, even in the conflict of modern culture. If we look at the biographies of the great artistic figures of the past – Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Goethe – we can see that tertium datur: they, through their own existence, were able to create an ‘individual law’, unifying the universality of social recognition and the individuality of their own paths. They were able – to put it in other words – to create their own type, without denying their own absolute unique nature. The question is: can we learn from them and act accordingly? Is it possible to overcome the fragmentation of modern personality through creativity?

Dear Herr Simmel, I understand your view of life (Lebensanschauung), but I remain rather sceptical about the possibility of aesthetics becoming once again the central ethical and normative source of our times, as it was for the classics. Art is just one cultural sphere among many others in the modern polytheism of values, and it follows its own logic. It doesn’t represent an exception to the law of Beruf, of specialization and division of labour. No great artist has ever been known to do anything other than devote himself to his art and to his art alone. Even a personality of Goethe’s stature, who knew nothing of the division of labour, and who you always mention and offer as the greatest example of your concept of individualism, had to pay a price, as far as his art was concerned, for having taken the liberty of trying to turn his ‘life’ into a work of art.

Notwithstanding, dear Weber, you must admit that Beruf, laziness and character are much more related than we currently believe. We are all fragments of ourselves, and objective culture reflects this fragmentation due to the division of labour. To accept this situation and become alienated is thus also a matter of laziness. Nevertheless, every moment of life contains the entire life, and a subjective culture is possible only if we are able to distance ourselves from metropolitan life and live life as an adventure, as a work of art, as artistic play. The freeing and lightening that the more thoughtful person finds in artistic leisure is this: that association and exchange of stimuli, in which all the tasks and the whole weight of life are realized, here is consumed in artistic play, in that simultaneous sublimation and dilution, in which the heavily burdened forces of reality are felt only as from a distance, their weight fleetingly in a charm.

I do not want to minimize the importance of such effects, but I believe that this form of experience is something we can only observe from afar, like the aesthetic experience described by Kant regarding the concept of beauty as disinterested pleasure. It is something that either belongs to the past of our culture and civilization or something that we experience in our journey south, to Italy, Greece, or the Mediterranean. Even if we are fully immersed in it, it remains somewhat external to our life: as an adventure or a vacation, it is an episode of life that has a beginning and an end.

Dear Weber, I can understand your point: especially when I visit Venice, I feel this way. Everything seems to be merely apparent and not lasting in time. Nevertheless, if you reside for a longer period in Florence, or in Rome as you told me that you did, you understand that a durable rearrangement of work and life rhythms is also possible in our times.

I am not sure if I can completely agree with you. Constraints to carry out only specialized work, which involve renunciation of the associated Faustian universality of man, are some of the main conditions for any valuable work in the modern world; hence, nowadays deeds and renunciation inevitably influence each other. This fundamentally ascetic trait of bourgeois life, if it can be construed a way of life at all and not simply the absence of one, was what Goethe, at the height of his wisdom, sought to teach in the Wanderjahren and, in the end, precisely that which he bestowed upon the life of his Faust. For Goethe, realization involved renunciation, a departure from the age of full and beautiful humanity that we can still sometimes observe in the south or in Rome, but which can no longer be repeated in the course of our cultural development.

What a tragic view! But I cannot say it’s so far from what I myself feel in my most despondent days. Actually, it reflects my present condition quite well: I am trying to secure an official post in an academic discipline, and not by chance, in Heidelberg! I am struggling for recognition of my social role, though I believe that the only path to individual self-realization consists in individual law, which combines social roles with the imponderables of our personality, or, in other words, with personal charisma, as you would put it. However, the creative ‘vital impetus’, as some French philosophers used to call it, is not enough for individual self-realization. Personality requires work to form a character, and vice versa. As I intend to write in a forthcoming book: life requires form, and such form cannot be achieved without society and objective culture.

My dearest Simmel, I absolutely agree with you on this. We find ourselves on the opposite poles of a dichotomy between life and form, to use your terminology, or between charisma and ordainment, to use mine. You theorize life, but in practice you are seeking form. I devote myself to form, in terms of commitment to Beruf, professional life, but actually I am trying to escape my role as university professor. After the nervous breakdown I had 10 years ago due to overwork, I am now struggling to reconstruct my personality and overcome my excessive, irrational work ethic. I support the ordainment of modern professional life, but actually I am escaping from it in search of the creative charisma of southern life. And I can in fact find it – my dear Simmel – but only when I’m in Rome, in the midst of a traditional life conduct which is the very opposite of Germanic metropolitan life!