Political theorists have traditionally grappled with laughter by posing a simple, normative question: ‘What role, if any, should laughter play in the polis?’ However, the outsized presence of laughter in contemporary politics has rendered this question increasingly obsolete. What good does determining laughter’s role in the polis do when the polis itself is to a large extent shaped by laughter? The present essay argues that Kant’s aesthetic investigations of laughter in the Critique of Judgment and Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point (...) of View offer a much needed alternative to the normative discourse. Kant theorizes laughter as an intensely dialectical experience — at once an aesthetic judgment and an affect. Laughter in Kant enacts dissensus: it disrupts and transforms sensus communis, or the ways subjects see and hear the world in common that organize and structure a political community. The essay illustrates the advantages of a Kantian conception of the politics of laughter over the normative discourse by examining Dave Chappelle’s controversial 2019 stand-up comedy special Sticks & Stones. It concludes that the dissensus enacted by laughter, while not necessarily democratic, provides a privileged opening for democratic politics. (shrink)

The complete translation of Simmel's classic work in which he provides us with a dazzling and wide-ranging discussion of the social, psychological and philosophical aspects of the money economy.

This article contends that Georg Simmel attempted a rehabilitation of the Jewish stereotype in a singular way: via his theory of modernity and the quintessential place held therein by money. The first part of the article, based almost entirely on Simmel's The Philosophy of Money, seeks to demonstrate that Simmel intended to overturn the negative Aristotelian and Marxist assessments of money and of those who deal with it. The second part of the article is based on Simmel's unique theory of (...) type. This part seeks to establish that what Simmel in fact rehabilitates is the Jewish type, rather than any actual historical entity, and that this type is in fact the stereotype of the Jew. Simmel's attempt is made in terms of existential authenticity and in direct relation to the project of modernity. (shrink)

Georg Simmel’s final work, The View of Life, concludes his lifelong engagement with Immanuel Kant by ‘inverting’ Kant’s Categorical Imperative to produce an ethics of authentic individuality. While Kant’s moral imperative is universal to all individuals but particular to their discrete acts, Simmel’s Law of the Individual is particular to each individual but universal to all the individual’s acts. We assess the significance of Simmel’s formulation of the Law of the Individual in three steps: First, as an articulation of an (...) ethical moment consonant with his relational approach to formal sociology, hinted at earlier in Sociology but not developed as such. Second, as a completion of the framework for Simmel’s formal sociology: the Law of the Individual conceptualizes a decisive but under-theorized relationship in Simmel’s vision of ‘society’ that is a woven fabric of social relationships, namely one’s relationship with oneself. We follow with a third proposal about how Simmel might have continued the line of thought he opens in The View of Life, suggesting that we can take the Law of the Individual as an invitation to fold the self-relation back into analysis of social relations, and to theorize how forms of association are shaped by forms of self-relation. We thus narrow the theoretical gulf between Simmel’s vitalism and his sociology, which commentators usually hold apart. And in so doing, we sketch a distinctively Simmelian approach to an ethics of individuality in sociological inquiry. (shrink)

The complete collected works of Georg Simmel are now available. Yet, the standing of Simmel¿s sociological theory is still a subject of controversy. Is Simmel only a brilliant impressionist, a fl¿ur in the territories of modernity? Providing an illuminating and coherent presentation of Simmel¿s sociological theory, The Challenge of Modernity seeks to demonstrate how Simmel contributed a structured sociological theory that fits the criteria of a ¿sociological grand theory¿. Indeed, starting by the theory of modernity and its dimensions of social (...) differentiation, monetarisation, culture reification and urbanisation; it reconstructs the architecture of Simmel¿s sociological epistemology. Particular attention is dedicated to the theory of ¿qualitative societal differentiation¿ that Simmel develops within his cultural sociology, with the late work being presented as a double contribution to the foundation of sociological anthropology and to the social ethics of complex societies. Presenting the entirety of Simmel¿s manifold oeuvre from the viewpoint of its relevance for sociology, this comprehensive volume will appeal to scholars and advanced students who wish to understand Simmel¿s relevance for socio-political thought and become acquainted with his contribution to sociological theory. It will also be of interest to the wider public who seek a critical assessment of our age in theoretical terms. (shrink)