In the article, I analyze Georg Simmel’s essay on individual law and summarize his criticism of the concept of a universal moral law, which was developed by Immanuel Kant. Simmel identifies two ways of conceptualizing the concept of a moral law: as universal, referring to the regulation of the actions of all rational beings, and as individual, including a specific acting person in his integrity and connection with the world, which is, at the same time, absolute only for him. Kant (...) became the personification of the first method for Simmel; Simmel put forward the second method as an alternative to the first. The central characteristic of law for Simmel is its integrity and individuality, not rationality and universality. If Kant understands the moral law through a distraction from personal characteristics and inclinations in favor of impersonal norms that operate for all rational beings, then, for Simmel, the moral law manifests itself as an integral and individual human act, in which the flow of life manifests itself in the whole. Simmel insists that the idea of Kant’s universal law overlooks the very es-sence of moral obligation, which can only be individual, since only in an individual form life manifests itself – a single source of both the real and the proper. The article ends with a criticism of Simmel’s example of an individual law, which, as I show, not only contradicts a number of Simmel’s statements made earlier, but also demonstrates the undeveloped nature of his concept as a whole, namely: Simmel’s insensitivity to the distinction between integrity and totality as well as disregard for the figure of the Other. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, the work of Georg Simmel (1858–1918) has again become of interest. Its reception, however, has been fairly one-sided and selective, mostly because Simmel’s philosophy has been bypassed in favor of his sociological contributions. This article examines Simmel’s explicit reflections on the nature of philosophy. Simmel defines philosophy through three aspects which, according to him, are common to all philosophical schools. First, philosophical reasoning implies the effort to think without preconditions. Second, Simmel maintains that in contrast (...) to other sciences, only philosophy is oriented toward constructing a general view of the world. Third, Simmel claims that philosophical work worthy of the name creates a sphere of a typical way of being in relation to world, a third sphere that is between the personal and the objective. According to Simmel, what has made philosophy’s eminent figures great is that they have advanced a type of thinking and developed it into a particularly interesting form, and this type can still correspond with the way we experience the world. It is significant that these three aspects through which Simmel defines philosophical activity emphasize the forms of questioning, not the contents or objects of thought. Still, he thinks that an interaction with concrete examples is always required in order to make philosophy a meaningful activity. This stance is reflected in the wide variety of topics studied by Simmel himself. In his last works Simmel began to emphasize another aspect of philosophy, its nature as a living movement of thought related to fundamental human limitedness: just as life itself ceaselessly reaches beyond its present form, so philosophy constantly strives to overcome the preconditions of thinking. (shrink)