Georg Simmel on the manifestation and restraint of emotions

Ganin Aleksandr Vladislavovich ORCID: 0000-0001-9446-8357 Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology and Cultural Studies, Bauman Moscow State Technical University 105005, Russia, Moscow, 2nd Baumanskaya str., 5, p. 1 avg_socio@mail.ru

In research on the sociology and philosophy of emotions, M. Weber, E. Durkheim, J. Mead and more modern authors more often come into the field of author's vision ^{[1, pp. 314-320]}. Georg Simmel's ideas often remain in the shadows. However, understanding emotions and strategies for containing them is becoming increasingly relevant and in demand today. In this regard, an appeal to the legacy of Simmel does not seem superfluous.

Let's try to understand his theory of the manifestation and restraint of emotions.

To begin with, let's note that for Simmel, public life has a dual character. This is an eternal struggle between the individual and society, content and form, and sometimes the forms themselves, when they "arise from the vital content of life and allow it to be expressed, but at the same time acquire their own logic" ^{[2, p. 22]}. Another example of duality can be found in Simmel's "sociological a priori". According to the latter, we see the people around us socially-typically, that is, generically. Any person is considered by us as a typical representative of a particular social circle. For example, a typical officer, a typical student, a typical doctor. Therefore, when we get to know each other, we are primarily interested in the profession and belonging to large social groups. And we "mentally bring the people around us under a certain universal category" ^{[3, p. 239]}. At the same time, one should not discount the individual aspect of the personality. No matter how we try to view others socially-typically, there remains something in every person that is not explained socially. According to Zimmel, "by some aspects, a person does not enter society as an element of it" ^{[3, p. 241]}. We know about a typical officer, student and doctor that they not only fulfill their social roles, but also live out-of-social unique (atypical) destinies.

This "non-social existence" is the world of emotions, affects and temperament. The most interesting emotional states for Zimmel are joyful sociability, modesty, shame, gratitude, anger ^[4]. Note that this almost coincides with the modern biomedical list of pure/basic emotions, among which there are: "longing, anxiety, fear, anger, bewilderment, joy, euphoria, ecstasy" ^{[5, p. 21]}. All of them are available, but is it possible to openly demonstrate them, being a participant in social interaction? "On the one hand, emotions allow a person to enter society, build social interactions, gain experience; on the other hand, they allow you to open yourself up, identify your own feelings in relationships with other people" ^{[6, p. 60]}. Once again, Simmel captures the dual nature of life: individual emotions are important, but social life requires self-control, restraint of emotions.

Let's look at the most common ways of such control.

Urban blasiness

The first strategy of restraining emotions is related to modern urban life. Nervous, tense and conflicted. To live in the city, we have to adapt. In the emotional sphere, this means restraining your impulses. Thus, according to Zimmel, a strategy of blasphemy or indifferent satiety arises. The essence of this process lies in the "blunted perception of differences between things", when "all things seem equally gray and dull to a person" ^{[7, p. 88]}. What is the reason for such a blasphemous emotional state?

Firstly, in the constant change of impressions. A flurry of events and phenomena descends on the citizen, especially those who have just moved from the countryside. What kind of reaction does this urban event diversity evoke? You can try to respond emotionally to each of the incidents. Try to find your own individual emotional response for all the people around you with their problems, sorrows and specific rhythm of life. However, how long will we be able to exist in this mode of emotional responsiveness? This mode seems to be excessively expensive for our emotional sphere. Moreover, in an extremely rational society of the modern era, he looks naive. Then the second response option comes to mind – moderately restrained, "cool". Simmel considers it the main thing for residents of large cities – it is the "self-defense" of our nervous system. A citizen hides feelings and emotions behind a facade of rationality. He shuts himself off from other people's problems. But this is not due to emotional callousness and callousness. But according to the calculation of common sense. He tells us that trying to help everyone around us, putting our time and emotions into it, and eventually coming into conflict with the whole society living differently is like fighting windmills. There's no point. It is easier to hide your emotions than to openly rejoice, be sad, angry, and afraid along with millions of other citizens. There are not enough emotions for all, as if our common sense says. Thus, blasphemy/satiety becomes a necessary strategy of a modern person. It is needed to protect against overwork by various external stimuli. Paradoxically, in order to preserve the ability to experience at least some emotions, according to Simmel's theory, it is necessary to "dull" emotionality. A kind of emotion-saving mode.

The second reason for being blasphemous is alienation. When the city pushes us to feel atomization, isolation, "loneliness in a crowd" of many strangers. Citizens live next to each other almost on the condition of anonymity, refusal of communication and interaction. This is the alienation that leads to blasphemy. As D. G. Podvoysky accurately notes: "The air of the city partially liberates, but the price of emancipation is the growth of alienation and the structurally conditioned weakening of the "social magnetism" of love, and globally (according to Zimmel) – the emptying of the "vessel" of social formation and the emasculation of its specifically human content" ^{[8, p. 53]}. All this leads to the fact that blasphemy becomes a strategy for restraining emotions, at the same time based on alienation and contributing to its growth. Moreover, modern researchers come to the conclusion that in these conditions a special "alienated emotion of distance, remoteness and indifference" is formed ^{[9, p. 55]}.

A sense of tact

The second strategy of restraining emotions is related to the development of a sense of tact and attention to the norms, rules and practices of living together. According to Zimmel, a sense of tact is an integral part of the process of communication and socialization. It allows us to set boundaries between the personal and the public, to restrain self-confidence and self-esteem, to look like a socially approved subject. A friendly smile, a polite compliment, a good joke – all these are social actions that maintain a pleasant and trusting atmosphere, and ways to contain negative emotions and affects. It can be noted that a sense of tact becomes a powerful tool for achieving social harmony.

The most interesting ideas of Simmel in this area can be found in the essay "Communication. An example of pure or formal sociology." In this work, we see a picture of tactful, verified communication, which gives pleasure in itself, but at the same time serves as a strategy for restraining emotions. Simmel writes: "the specific function of tact is to limit individual impulses, the protrusion of one's own self, internal and external pretentiousness, and to limit where the rights of others require it" ^{[10, p. 255]}. In other words, our emotions or mental states, no matter how vivid they may be and no matter how much we want to share them, must necessarily be limited in favor of comfortable socialization. But why should we follow this requirement?

According to Zimmel, the answer is sternly concise. Because we are involved in social interaction from the very first minutes of our lives. We simply cannot be completely alone. This means that axiomatically we have to recognize the primacy of norms and social expectations. Simmel writes that by bringing elements of our mental life into communication, we act inappropriately "tactlessly (since this contradicts the rule of interaction) to bring deeply personal communication – purely personal problems and disappointments, elation and depression, light and darkness of the depths of life" ^{[10, p. 255]}.

We have already seen that blasphemy is based on alienation, but it also generates it. In this case, the same applies to a sense of tact. It is both the goal and the condition of socialization. Restrained, civilized, in conflict with "life" due to the "hypertrophy of objective cultural forms" ^{[11, p. 113]}.

Money

Finally, the third strategy for pacifying emotions is related to money. According to Zimmel, money is involved in almost all social interactions and plays an extremely important role in exchange processes. Outside of interaction, money loses its value, as exchange becomes impossible. Simmel believes that money can even become useless if only one person possesses it. However, we do not see this in reality, on the contrary, money is distributed everywhere. And with the "growth of monetary abundance, the liveliness and intensity of trade increases" ^{[12, p. 161]}. In his main work on this topic, The Philosophy of Money, Simmel tries to go beyond just an economic analysis of the place of money in the market. He connects money with culture, society and emotions. The aim is to try to understand the deeper "psychological and even metaphysical prerequisites" for the existence of money ^{[12, p. 54]}.

What is the role of emotions in this?

Firstly, money and emotions are connected according to Zimmel through a sense of desire. Money attracts, causes a desire to possess it. They become a symbol of status, power and opportunity, which is directly related to human emotions. The desire for money generates feelings of passion, joy, but sometimes envy, anger and resentment, especially in the context of unfairly created inequality. Simmel goes even further in his analysis of desires, saying that "the significance of an object for an individual is always determined by the desire to possess it" ^{[12, p. 98]}.

The question arises, are our individual desires limited "from within"? Does a person have an internal mechanism for retaining or suppressing their desires? According to Zimmel, no, "human desires know no boundaries" ^{[12, p. 213]}. It is worth clarifying that our desires do not know internal boundaries. But often they come across external borders. Objective reality is resisting. This creates a complex configuration of individual and social spheres of life: we are unlimited in our desires, but limited in public life, which requires payment for significant/valuable things and services.

This implies the second aspect of the relationship between money and emotions – objectification. According to Simmel, today we live under the domination of the monetary-rational-calculative approach. And if we can argue endlessly about the quality of our lives, and even more so about the quality of social relations, then there is a strict inexorability of numbers in the matter of money. There can be no special disputes and "ambiguity" characteristic of issues of feelings. Money has an objective quantitative character. They can and should be counted. According to Zimmel, the same relentlessness of numbers is slowly spreading to all social relations. Moreover, the prevailing rational relations today "turn people into numbers" ^{[7, p.80]}. This creates a special technique or strategy that forces us to dull our emotions in favor of objective calculation, in parallel with which we can acquire a touch of cynicism. As Simmel writes: "The more money becomes the sole center of interest, the more a person discovers that honor and beliefs, talent and virtue, beauty and salvation of the soul are exchanged for money, and therefore the more mocking and frivolous attitude will develop towards these higher values" ^{[12, p. 257]}. Here we see a similarity with the previously mentioned blassification. But unlike the latter, there is no indifference to money.

As an additional confirmation, let us recall a number of common aphorisms on the topic of money: "money does not smell", "time is money", "if you are so smart, then why are you so poor?" "nothing personal, just business" and many others. How are they notable and common? Of course, the fact that they are emphatically cynical and aimed at depersonalizing the process of monetary enrichment, and at the same time at gradual depersonalization, objectification of the individual. The latter is most often manifested in the form of restraining emotions. "The humility of passions and the representation of the objective as such in its existence and meaning are only two sides of the same basic process" ^{[13, p. 179]}. We can say that this is the process of legitimizing the social order.

Money has an objective character, which contributes to the objectification and depersonalization of social relations. In this regard, emotions, feelings and affects have almost no place left. The pacification of emotions becomes a strategy based on calculation, and is generally mandatory.

Above, we were talking exclusively about strategies for restraining emotions. However, the analysis of Simmel's theory is incomplete if we do not turn to the study of affects themselves and their manifestation. What emotions does Simmel consider the most significant? What is the reason for this? Finally, it is necessary to find out what place Georg Simmel's theory of emotions occupies in the field of socio-philosophical discussions of those years.

Simmel was not alone in assessing emotions and their role in public life. The point of view of another classic of German sociology, Max Weber, is very indicative in this matter. Both thinkers see rationalization as a key aspect of modern society, opposed to irrationally reactive emotions that capture us. At the same time, Weber identifies such emotions or affects as "fear, anger, ambition, envy, jealousy, love, inspiration, pride, thirst for revenge, reverence, devotion and dedication, attraction of any kind" ^{[14, p. 69]}. Their irrationality becomes especially noticeable when compared with the opposite, that is, a rational way of reacting and acting. Emotion in this approach is considered as a "deviation from the norm", and, therefore, is a violation of the "correct" interaction of individuals. Weber considers irrational phenomena not only emotional, but also "mystical, prophetic, pneumatic" ^{[14, p. 80]}. And the words "affect" and "delusion" are often separated by commas, which in itself is indicative.

Another aspect of Max Weber's theory of emotions is the connection with the concept of community. Thus, "Community can be based on any kind of affective, emotional or traditional basis, whether it is a spiritual brotherhood, a love affair, an attitude of piety, a united nation or an army united by comradeship" ^{[14, p. 99]}. From the above quote, it becomes clear that Weber contrasts the "warm" emotionality of community with the "cold" rationality of society. It is easy to see that in this he is close to Simmel, who believed that moving to a large city was associated with blocking emotions, and to Ferdinand Tennis, another German social philosopher who devoted many pages to the relationship between the pre–modern community and modern society. Ultimately, according to Weber, society will displace community through two-dimensional rationalization. He writes: "Rationalization can also develop both positively, in the sense of conscious rationalization taking into account accepted values, and negatively, due to the rejection not only of custom, but also of affective and even value-rational action in favor of non-value-bound, purely purposeful behavior" ^{[14, p. 89]}. It turns out that the modern individual faces a difficult choice: at best, to independently accept modernity and rationalization, at worst – to be forced to discard emotions-affects, traditions and even values that contradict rationality.

Although Simmel agrees with the growing rationalization of life as an attack on the sphere of emotions and affects, he believes that there is no "either-or" choice in this matter. For him, the rationalization of modernity does not displace emotions, but forces him to restrain himself and take action on self-regulation. Moreover, in his work The Philosophy of Money, Simmel makes it clear that emotions not only do not disappear, giving way to rationality, but also begin to play a more significant role. After all, if modernity requires the "rationalization" of the social sphere in order to strengthen economic life and objectify exchange processes, and these processes, as has been shown, require "desires", then emotions become almost the main fuel of economic activity.

Another difference between Simmel's theory of emotions and Weber's views is the rejection of the idea of emotional coercion. While Weber believes that there is "coercion to work through fear of losing one's livelihood," that is, through influencing the sphere of emotions, Simmel considers such coercion an illusion. And in the spirit of modern opponents of manipulation, he writes: "... I can be forced to sign only if someone stronger takes my hand and writes with it" ^{[12, p. 400]}. That is, external influence can be primarily physical, turning an individual into a puppet, but not emotional. It is impossible to cause fear, anger, envy and other emotions from the outside. However, our hero immediately leaves a loophole for a slightly more metaphysical position, adding "or if I do it with the help of hypnotic suggestion" ^{[12, p. 400]}. To Zimmel himself, this addition seems quite natural, but it is not so easy to imagine "hypnotic suggestion", which is not a variant of emotional coercion.

On the topic of emotions, the arguments of the already mentioned Ferdinand Tennis are noteworthy. Although Tennis has not developed a clear theory of emotions, his ideas provide a framework for understanding emotional dynamics in various social structures. In his most significant book, Community and Society, published in 1887 and apparently influenced Simmel, Tennis distinguishes between community (sometimes the German word gemeinschaft is translated as "community"), characterized by cohesive social relations based on common values and emotional bonds, and society (German gesellschaft) representing the more impersonal, contractual relationships typical of modern urban societies. From the point of view of emotion theory, community is associated with warm, personal emotions and relationships deeply rooted in tradition. Conversely, in a society where social relations are determined by individual interests and contractual agreements, emotions fade into the background, giving way to rational and instrumental considerations of benefit, calculation and contract. Tennis noted that the transition from traditional rural communities to modern urban societies can lead to a weakening of emotional bonds, as social structures become impersonal. In this, one can see the influence of Tennis on Zimmel's interpretation of urban emotional alienation, as discussed earlier.

Another topic that interested Tennis and Simmel was fear. For Tennis, fear is twofold, as it is quite easily replaced by hope and the promise of future pleasure. He writes: "... each such feeling is strengthened and stimulated by example and teaching, the awakening of fear and hope, the education of respect and trust" ^{[15, p. 234]}. And now let's compare this with Simmel's opinion that money has the same dual effect, "thanks to hope and fear, desire and anxiety that are associated with them" ^{[12, p. 170]}. From the above quote, it becomes clear why a number of researchers consider Simmel's social philosophy to be "pulsating" ^[16]. This is a dual pulse of suffering and pleasure, in which the hope of a better life and the satisfaction of material well-being are combined with the fear of losing everything.

Finally, the third point of intersection between Tennis and Simmel in matters of emotions is understanding the social nature of shame. "Like dislike or disgust, shame is related to fear, like discontent or resentment to temper, and these two affects are always mixed in it, regardless of the order in which they manifest themselves. But above all, shame is veiling, concealment, concealment; aversion to the naked, the outspoken, the known" ^{[15, p. 235]}. Simmel dedicates several works to shame at once. So, in the article "On the psychology of Shame", he examines and questions the study of shame conducted by one of his contemporaries, the doctor and sexologist Havelock Ellis (1859-1939). Simmel enters into the discussion and writes that shame is associated not only with the sphere of intimacy, but with the special attention of another person focused on us. Moreover, Simmel believes that through shame, a "representation of a social group" arises within us ^[17]. In other words, we seem to be divided into two parts - the real and the ideal, and shame arises from the discrepancy between these parts. Consequently, shame arises not for natural/biological reasons, but for social ones, when there is a discrepancy between that generalized part of our personality that should "look different". However, Simmel immediately notes that in a travel situation, a sense of shame may be absent due to the fact that there is no full-fledged social interaction. Relatively speaking, with a random traveling companion, we do not feel so constrained and ashamed as in a situation of full and prolonged communication. Simmel proceeds from the idea of alienation. It is no coincidence that in the "Excursion about an Outsider" he writes that an outsider, due to the fact that he does not belong to a group, can be a bearer of special objectivity, which "does not mean only distance and non-involvement, but is a special formation composed of remoteness and proximity, indifference and engagement" ^{[18, p. 230]}. 

The emotion of shame also plays a significant role in the article "Fashion". Here, shame is considered as one of the sources of fashionable transformations. On the one hand, people strive for diversity and change, on the other – a sense of shame acts as a deterrent when deviating from established norms of behavior and appearance. Simmel suggests that fashion serves as a solution to this dilemma. However, this decision, as always with Simmel, is creative and ambiguous. The fact is, fashion can reduce the inner sense of shame. What does Simmel come from? He believes that "some fashions require shamelessness, which an individual would indignantly refuse if such a thing were offered to him, but as the law of fashion he unquestioningly accepts such a requirement. The sense of shame in fashion, since it is a mass action, is as completely absent as the sense of responsibility among participants in a mass crime" ^{[19, p. 284]}.  Common sense tells us that fashion and mass crime don't have many similarities, but Simmel thinks otherwise. It is important for him that fashion becomes a collective action, and it in turn helps to cope with unpleasant internal emotions. What is called "on the world", activities performed in a group or passive form can lower the threshold of embarrassment and shame. It turns out that social groups can contribute to the development of shame through the process of internalization (as previously shown), but they can also contribute to the elimination of shame mechanisms.

It is easy to see that Georg Simmel's views on the nature of emotions outlined above contain a number of contradictions and difficulties. Let's briefly consider them.

The main difficulty in analyzing Simmel's theory of emotions is related to how he understands the division into "primary emotions", or pre-social states, for example, love-passion, hostility, religiosity, and "secondary emotions", for example, jealousy, shame. Primary emotions should be considered universal, physiological, of evolutionary significance, biologically and neurologically innate, while secondary emotions are rather the result of a combination of primary emotions and social life. Primary emotions lead us to interact with other people. Then this interaction continues, but with the support of "secondary emotions", which are of a social nature, as they arise in the process of exchange inherent in groups and communities. However, in Simmel's texts it is not so easy to understand where the boundary between the biological and the social lies.

For example, Simmel believes that a person has a special emotion of gratitude. But he explores this phenomenon both as an individual emotion and as part of the process of socialization. It turns out that gratitude occupies a conditionally intermediate position among primary and secondary emotions. It follows from this passage: "... gratitude is a purely personal affect. This is a fertile emotional soil... if all the feelings of gratitude left in the souls after previous actions were destroyed in one fell swoop, society, at least as we know it, would collapse" ^[20]. Simmel emphasizes the duality of the feeling of gratitude: being an individual manifestation, it serves as the basis for interpersonal relationships, for interaction and cooperation. Gratitude in this case is a way of recognizing and appreciating other people's efforts and goodwill. At the same time, it is important for Simmel that gratitude cannot be considered purely instrumentally, as a way of mutually beneficial exchange. First of all, gratitude is a pure form, a "bridge" (a typical metaphor of social relations in Simmel's writings) along which social processes move. And only then does gratitude refer to market mechanisms, acquiring a specific monetary, commodity content. However, the main thing remains unclear – whether Simmel considers gratitude to be the result of the functioning of public life, or, conversely, public life becomes the result of a feeling of gratitude. And in the end, is the feeling of gratitude primary or secondary?

Another difficulty lies in Simmel's contradictory assessment of the duality of positive and negative emotions. For example, the mentioned alienness acts both as a negative characteristic of capitalist society (which certainly brings Simmel's assessment of capitalism closer to the ideas of early Marx) and as a positive objectivity inaccessible to long-existing and friendly social groups. Simmel considers the mentioned shame both as a positive emotion and as a means of enslavement. Dialectical contradictions in Simmel's views, as Ionin once correctly noted, have no resolution, but "acquire the character of threatening constancy" ^{[21, p. 82]}.

 Conclusion

Although emotions are an integral part of an individual, they also act as a reflection of social life. However, until the early 1980s, the ideas of early sociologists about the social and philosophical significance of affects, impressions and emotions did not influence social theory. In recent decades, the situation has begun to change, and emotions have been rediscovered as a subject area of social sciences. In this regard, an appeal to the Simmel theory of emotions looks relevant.

In this article, three strategies of self-censorship or restraint of emotions were considered.

First, the strategy of urban blasiveness. This method of dulling emotions develops in the conditions of cognitive overload of large cities. The multiplicity of events causes a citizen to experience emotional overload, which in turn leads to emotional indifference, satiety. This is what Simmel calls blasiness. This strategy is most vividly described in the work "Big Cities and Spiritual Life", but excerpts from the "Philosophy of Money" served as additional sources for research.

Secondly, the strategy of developing a sense of tact. Basically, this strategy is outlined in Simmel's work "Communication. An example of pure or formal sociology."

Thirdly, special attention is paid to the strategy of monetary objectification of the emotional sphere. This issue has been raised by Simmel in works from different years, but especially in the Philosophy of Money. It has been shown that we are forced to subordinate emotions to the demands of society, which teaches us to restrain ourselves through money. Secondly, it has been demonstrated that modern society itself, being an example of objective monetary calculation, leaves no room for untamed emotions. Thus, if the whole social life is based on reason, calculations and light cynicism, then the pacification of emotions and feelings becomes a forced behavior.

Additionally, it is worth noting that Georg Simmel's theory of emotions was considered in comparison with the views of his contemporaries, Max Weber and Ferdinand Tennis. It was shown that for Weber and Simmel, the key aspect of modern society is rationalization, which opposes emotions and affects. However, if Weber, highlighting a number of emotions and affects, considers them completely irrational and opposed to modernity, then Simmel adheres to a less strict point of view. And he believes that there is no need to "choose" between rationality and emotions, and both aspects of social life can coexist.

In comparison with Tennis, it was shown how Simmel interprets the emotion of fear.

The article also examines Simmel's understanding of the social nature of shame. Such works as "Towards the Psychology of Shame" and "Fashion" were studied. On their basis, conclusions are drawn that shame is the result of a discrepancy between the real and ideal parts of the personality. And there are also cases when the severity of shame, on the contrary, decreases.

Finally, the article notes the difficulty in interpreting Simmel's theory of primary and secondary emotions. This fact becomes especially noticeable when analyzing the feeling of gratitude, which plays an important role in Simmel's social philosophy.

A number of emotional control strategies remained outside the scope of this study (the world of emotions related to issues of life and death, existential choice was not reflected). However, even this small "digression" allows us to assess the scale of Georg Simmel's social philosophy of emotions.