Sociability

Simmel's Sociological Theory

In Simmel's sociological thinking, the concept of sociability had a specific position, central to his whole program of formal sociology. He made a distinction between the form and the substance of social interaction. One and the same substance could appear in different forms and, correspondingly, one and the same form could serve different contents or purposes. It was namely a pure form: in sociability—and in sociability alone—the substance and the form of social interaction coincided. Unlike other social forms, sociability did not serve any external purpose. The social interaction occurred solely for its own sake. That the concept of sociability was central to Simmel's sociology was also related to the fact that his sociology was basically aesthetic by nature. Its main inspiration was philosophical aesthetics, and Immanuel Kant's third critique, the Critique of Judgment, in particular. Typical of the aesthetic reflection of beauty was that it, just like Simmel's sociability, had the form of purposefulness without serving any external purpose.

In his essay “The Sociology of Sociability,” Simmel wrote explicitly that in his sociology, the social forms resemble art and play. Therefore, his sociology comes close to aesthetics: “Within this constellation, called society, or out of it, there develops a special sociological structure corresponding to those of art and play, which draw their form from these realities but nevertheless leave their reality behind them” (Simmel 1949, 254).

When they are abstracted from their particular contents, a common element remains in both art and play: satisfaction. The same is true of sociability: even though social interaction always, or at least in most cases, serves some particular social purpose—like the satisfaction of needs or sexual pleasure or, say, the realization of economic interests—it has an element of satisfaction that stems from the pure fact that in all cases social interaction has taken place. Sociability—social interaction for the sake of social interaction—resembles, therefore, l'art pour l'art (art for art's sake), pure art that is abstracted from all contents that might otherwise disturb it: “Sociability is, then, the play-form of association and is related to the content-determined concreteness of association as art is related to reality” (Simmel 1949, 255).

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