Possible Times and Worlds: Art, Adventure, and the Stranger in Georg Simmel

In: Simmel studies, Band 23, Heft 2, S. 17-36

Abstract

Simmel discovers the essential in the unessential, and sets the centre of our affairs on the periphery of normal life. Temporary gratification, an ubi consistam, can in fact only be obtained in the ulteriority to which we are referred and in which we temporarily linger in marginal experiences, in the eccentric, in the as yet not saturated possibilities that come to meet us, as a gift, or as the result of an activity not entirely our own – the adventure, dreams, artworks. Simmel's fundamental question is how not to remain below one's own unexpressed possibilities. Through social or individual levers, men should be put in the position to exploit the richness of their own subjectivity and the objectivity of the modern world, to force an opening into the possible, while at the same time reducing the inevitable exposure to disappointment.