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Social Compass
DOI: 10.1177/0037768606070413
2006; 53; 479 Social Compass
Rudi Laermans
Simmel
The Ambivalence of Religiosity and Religion: A Reading of Georg
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53(4), 2006, 479489
Rudi LAERMANS
The Ambivalence of Religiosity and Religion:
A Reading of Georg Simmel
The author discusses Georg Simmels writings on religiosity and religion, which
only cover a rather tiny part of his total oeuvre, in view of a possible illumination
of the material object of the sociology of religion. The distinction between reli-
giosity and religion, which is fundamental according to Simmel, is presented
against the more general background of Simmels so-called formal sociology
and his overall Lebensphilosophie [philosophy of life]. Particular attention
is given to the two basic social forms of religiosity, i.e. belief or trust and the
experience of social unity.
According to Simmel, religion is at once an externalization and purication
of religiosity, resulting in the creation of an autonomous sphere of transcen-
dence. It is argued that, in contradistinction to, for instance, Emile Durkheim,
Simmel clearly wanted to avoid religion being reduced to a mere reection of
religiosity in general and to the discussed social manifestations of religiosity
in particular. The author ends with a brief discussion of Simmels pessimistic
diagnosis of the fate of religion within modernity. In his view, modernity is in
need of a religion that no longer situates transcendence in an autonomous
sphere, cut o from mundane life.
Key words: modernity
.
social theory
.
theoretical sociology of religion
Lauteur discute les ecrits de Georg Simmel sur la religiosite et la religion, qui
constituent seulement une fraction de son uvre, en vue declaircir lobjet
materiel de la sociologie de la religion. La distinction entre religiosite et reli-
gion, qui est fondamentale selon Simmel, est presentee sur larrie`re-fond plus
general de la sociologie formelle simmelienne et de sa Lebensphilosophie
[philosophie de vie]. Une attention particulie`re est portee aux deux formes
sociales les plus elementaires de religiosite, la croyance ou la conance et
lexperience de lunite sociale.
Selon Simmel, la religion est simultanement une externalisation et une puri-
cation de la religiosite, resultant en la creation dune sphe`re autonome de
transcendance. Il est soutenu que, contrairement a` Emile Durkheim, par exem-
ple, Simmel souhaitait clairement eviter que la religion soit reduite a` un simple
reet de la religiosite en general et, plus particulie`rement, a` des manifestations
sociales de la religiosite. Lauteur conclut par une bre`ve discussion a` propos du
diagnostic pessimiste du destin de la religion dans la modernite pose par Simmel.
Selon lui, la modernite a besoin dune religion qui ne situe plus la transcendance
dans une sphe`re autonome, separee de la vie quotidienne.
Mots-cles: modernite
.
sociologie theorique de la religion
.
theorie sociale
DOI: 10.1177/0037768606070413
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Introduction
As in every subeld within the social sciences, the sociology of religion has its
classics and its minor authors, a hard core of regularly quoted books or
scholarsindeed its canon: E. Durkheim, M. Weber, P. Berger and T. Luck-
mann . . . and a much wider periphery of publications with a more limited
impact in time or scope. For a long time, notwithstanding its overall classical
status, the work of Georg Simmel (18581918) lived on only in the margins of
academic sociology in general and the sociology of religion in particular (on
the reception of Simmels work, see Dahme, 1981; Frisby, 1994; Kaern et al.,
1990). Although Simmel was one of the co-founders of German sociology,
for several decades the overviews of the intellectual history of sociology
did not extensively discuss his main ideas. In more specic areas, such as
the sociology of religion, the reception of his work was even rarer (cf.
Hervieu-Le ger and Willaime, 2001). Things only started to change in the
1980s, when Simmels sociological impressionism (Frisby, 1992a) was
rediscovered and hailed as a prophetic anticipation of the spirit of post-
modern culture. More generally, the then cultural turn within the
human scienceswitness the breakthrough of cultural studies and the
renewed interest in cultural sociologycreated an intellectual climate that
was conducive to the reception of an oeuvre marked by an outspoken interest
in cultural themes.
Besides the overt cultural orientation of his work, several other reasons
may be invoked to explain Simmels long-term absence in the canon of
sociology, such as his associative literary style and essayistic mode of argu-
mentation, his interest in seemingly marginal sociological topics (e.g.
fashion, money . . .) and the overall philosophical character of his oeuvre
(cf. Dahme, 1981). For that matter, Simmel contributed to the new eld of
sociology only during the middle period of his productive career. After his
summa, the voluminous Soziologie, was published in 1908, his restless mind
turned back to aesthetical and philosophical questions (Frisby, 1992a,
1992b). This change also colours Simmels writings on religiosity and reli-
gion, which only cover a rather tiny part of his total oeuvre. His Gesammelte
Schriften zur Religionssoziologie [Collected Writings on the Sociology of
Religion; hereafter I use the abbreviation GSR], edited and published in
1989 by Horst Ju rgen Helle, do not count more than 140 pages and contain
several speculative essays and paragraphs that go against the grain of empiri-
cal sociology as it is practised today. The most important text is beyond any
doubt the lengthy essay Die Religion [Religion] (Simmel, 1989a: 110171).
Actually, there are two versions of this core text, the original one published in
1906, and the expanded denitive version published in 1912 and written at
the request of the famous Martin Buber.
1
Notwithstanding the modest scope of Simmels writings on religion, they
do deserve attention, not least because they may illuminate the material
object of the sociology of religion. As is well known, there is a marked ten-
dency among sociologists to dene religion on the basis of a leading binary
distinction, such as profane versus sacred (the Durkheimian tradition;
see Durkheim, 1985 and Prades, 1987) or immanence versus transcendence
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(e.g. Luhmann, 2000; cf. Laermans and Verschraegen, 2001). Simmel also
starts from a basic opposition, yet his distinction religiosity versus religion
posits the existence of non-institutionalized modes of religiosity in the pro-
fane or immanent realm. Moreover, some of these modes have a genuinely
social character. Simmel even argues that social life as such is impossible
without particular types of religiosity. Society can, however, do without reli-
gion, in the sense of an autonomous domain of transcendence. In Simmels
view, the notion of religion indeed refers to the outcome of a process of
separation and institutionalization that goes hand in hand with the purica-
tion of an always already existing religiosity.
Hereafter, I will discuss the distinction between religiosity and religion
against the more general background of Simmels so-called formal sociology
and his overall Lebensphilosophie [philosophy of life]. Particularly towards
the end of his life, Simmel more and more contrasted lifes creative vitality
with its condensation into always particular and therefore restraining
forms. As will become clear later on, this tension also informed Simmels
view on the fate of religiosity vis-a-vis religion in modernity. Once again,
that view is embedded in a small series of writings that at times, because of
Simmels often elliptic formulations, are anything but clear. Evidently, this
implies the necessity for taking interpretative decisions and, consequently,
a strong awareness of the contingency of my reading of Simmels sociology
of religion. Also, Simmels approach to both religiosity and religion, and
especially his notion of God, are clearly marked by his Protestant back-
ground. This personal context also accounts for Simmels questionable evo-
lutionary view in the afore-mentioned core essay Die Religion and in the
speculative article on Die Perso nlichkeit Gottes [The Personality of God].
According to Simmel, Christianity was not only the rst universal world reli-
gion but also had to be regarded as the purest form of religion, as exemplied
by its absolute notion of God. Here I will neither discuss these all too
evidently biased and therefore debatable statements, nor disentangle the
nexus that links Simmels sociology of religion to his personal religious con-
victions. I will, rather, focus on the basic conceptual design that supports
Simmels collected writings on the sociology of religion and therefore
negate their ethnocentric, or, rather, religiocentric, bias.
Religiosity as an Existential and Social Form
Simmels sociology of religion is, with a willingly paradoxical formulation,
rst and foremost a sociology of religiosity. Religiosity is indeed the primary
term, since there exists no particular religion without the dierent modes of
religiosity that are coterminous with life in general, Simmel argues (in pass-
ing he once proposed the notion religoid as a possible equivalent for reli-
giosity, but dropped it because it was a monstrous word [Simmel, 1989a:
126]). In his writings, Simmel is more than once very outspoken about the
primacy of religiosity. Thus, in Die Religion he remarks that just as
knowledge does not create causality but causality knowledge, religion
[does not create] religiosity but religiosity religion (Simmel, 1989a: 120).
2
Laermans: Religiosity and Religion Georg Simmel 481
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But what is religiosity? In Simmels view, religiosity is a basic form in which
the entire existence [Dasein] expresses itself in a particular tonality
(Simmel, 1989a: 113). Actually, this characterization points to Simmels pro-
ject of a pure sociology that combines Kants idea that knowledge pre-
supposes a priori categories or forms, with a Lebensphilosophie inspired
by Nietzsche and Bergson (see Frisby, 1992a; Rammstedt and Watier, 1994;
Vandenberghe, 2001; for a possible elaboration, see Maesoli, 1985).
Inspired by 19th-century German neo-Kantian historicism, Simmel gives a
very particular twist to Kants notion of the a priori category. Not only every
kind of knowledge of individual or social life, including knowledge used in
ordinary life, but also life itself crystallizes into a limited range of a priori
forms in which it can reach an always specic apex. As Vandenberghe
(2001: 33) aptly remarks, by substituting Kants transcendental subject
for life as the agent of unication of contents, Simmels vitalizes neo-
Kantianism. The net result is a sociology that focuses on the a priori forms
of social life. Thus, in Soziologie, Simmel gives a lengthy discussion of several
basic forms of sociation [Vergesellschaftung], such as conict and compe-
tition, hierarchy, division of labour, imitation . . . or, in the sphere of face-
to-face interaction, the dyadic bond versus the relation in which a third
party or external observer intervenes (Simmel, 1992). The participating indi-
viduals may have various motives or interests, but this material content is
only of secondary importance for the autonomous dynamic implied by a par-
ticular social form. Sociology, Simmel argues in Das Gebiet der Soziologie
[The Domain of Sociology](originally published in 1917), must therefore
make abstraction of the always specic empirical contents of social relations
and concentrate on the basic forms of social life, in the same way as gram-
mar isolates the pure forms of language from the contents through which
they are active (Simmel, 1983: 47).
In his statements on religiosity, Simmel time and again switches between
an individual or psychological and a social or sociological point of view.
As a basic form of lifehere one may also think of Wittgenstein of the
Philosophical Investigationsreligiosity is indeed both an existential and a
social a priori. In both cases, it involves a specic but comparable way of
being, of relating to the world (to reality) in general and to the social world
(to others) in particular. Simmel does not explicitly distinguish between reli-
giosity as a subjective and an inter-subjective form. One may therefore speak
of an ambivalent or double-coded a priori in which both individual and
social life nd a particular expression. Hereafter, for the sake of clarity,
I will distinguish the primarily individual from the predominantly social
manifestations of religiosity.
As an existential or subjective form, religiosity has everything to do with
a specic unitary mood of the soul (Simmel, 1989a: 53), a way of the
soul to live and experience the world [. . .] one of the deep forms of movement
of the soul (Simmel, 1989a: 133). This particular aectivity is double-edged,
since it is a hybrid combination of, on the one hand, seless surrender and
the personal feeling of belonging to a higher order and, on the other hand,
the experience that this belonging has an abstract nature and therefore
does not completely annihilate ones individuality (Simmel, 1989a: 36, 129).
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According to Simmel, the clearest expression of this kind of ambivalent aec-
tivity is piety, which he explicitly notes is marked by a specic degree of ten-
sion (Simmel, 1989a: 38). Thus one may have the feeling of an unmediated,
sensuous link with ones nation and therefore worship it, but one will simul-
taneously experience a certain distance towards this abstract social entity,
since it does not completely dene ones particular personality.
As an existential or soul-related form, religiosity refers to the ambiva-
lent feeling that one simultaneously is and is not (entirely) an element of
an Other. As such, individual religiosity has a paradoxical nature, since
this form synthesizes two opposite poles. It is, to speak in a Hegelian fashion,
the unity of the dierence between personal belonging and not belonging,
complete participation and individual distance, surrender and reserve.
3
Actually, Simmel consistently denes forms in a dualist or contrastive way.
Thus, in Soziologie, he describes subordination as the synthesis of submission
and resistance, and analyses social conict as a form uniting the contrasting
tendencies towards inter-group opposition and intra-group integration (see
Simmel, 1992: 160283, 284382). Many more examples could be given,
and they all point to the overall, Nietzsche-inspired assumption in Simmels
work that life, and therefore also its basic forms such as religiosity, is an
endless and never resolved struggle between opposite tendencies or forces.
Indeed, Simmels Lebensphilosophie thinks of life as an ongoing clash of
dual polarities within the framework of always specic forms. This, of
course, is immediately reminiscent of the philosophy of Hegel. Yet, there is
one decisive dierence, for in Simmels view it is not possible to pacify the
struggling opposites that dene life. His is, according to the happy formula-
tion of Michael Landmann in his 1968 foreword to the re-edition of the essay
collection Das individuelle Gesetz, a dialectics without reconciliation
(Simmel, 1987: 16). Therefore, Simmels theory of life forms repeatedly
points to irresolvable paradoxes in which opposite tendencies meet without
the possibility of denitive pacication. Yet, precisely for this reason,
human life is also the subject of a thorough desire for unity or reconciliation.
We will see that this longing nds an expression not only in the aesthetic
realm, but also in the domain of religion.
In his examples of religiosity, Simmel mostly refers to the social sphere.
Thus the ambiguous combination of belonging and separation, surrender
and distance, characterizes the attitude of the child towards his or her
parents, of the enthusiastic patriot vis-a-vis his country or nation, of the
worker towards his class, or of the aristocrat vis-a-vis his estate (Simmel,
1989a: 38). This inevitably raises the question whether religiosity does
indeed exist as an existential or individual form in the strict sense, or whether
it is always interwoven with social relations. Indeed, in his earlier writings,
particularly the seminal Zur Soziologie der Religion [On the Sociology
of Religion] (originally published in 1898), Simmel at times suggests that
inter-individual interaction is the seedbed of religiosity (Simmel, 1989a:
42). But in the expanded version of Die Religion, he stresses the autonomy
of individual religiosity and speaks of three domains in which the trans-
position in a religious key is quite outspoken, namely the contact with
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outer nature, the experience of fate and certain manifestations of social life
(Simmel, 1989a: 116).
All in all, and again particularly in the early essay on the sociology of
religion, as well as in the denitive version of Die Religion, Simmel recur-
rently points out two basic social forms of religiosity. The rst is belief, in the
broad sense of social trust. In social relations, we time and again believe in
the validity of someones judgment or in another persons sincerity, in the
authority of an ocial, or in the signs of a partners love. This belief implies
that one relies on someone without further questions, convincing reasons or
proofs of evidence. Without it, Simmel argues, society would fall apart
(1989a: 42), society as we know it would not exist (1989a: 136).
4
The
second essential manifestation of religiosity within the social sphere is the
experience of social unity (of which the relevance for religion was, of
course, also explored by Durkheim [1985]). The ambivalent feeling of belong-
ing and not-belonging saturates ones relation with primary and secondary
social groups, such as ones family or ones nation. Decisive in this respect,
Simmel argues, is the feeling of dependency, The individual feels con-
nected to something general, higher, from which he ees and in which he
ees, [. . .] from which he diers and that yet he is also identical with
(Simmel, 1989a: 125). This double-edged, once again highly ambiguous
bond also involves the experience of moral obligation vis-a-vis other group
members, not because of specic others, but because of the group as an
autonomous, unied entity.
From Religiosity to Religion
Whereas religiosity is a free-oating form in the social realm, religion is the
outcome of a process of institutionalization. Simmel employs the notion of
religion in a twofold way. On the one hand, he discusses particular historical
manifestations of institutionalized religion, especially Christianity. On the
other hand, he predominantly speaks of religion in terms of an autonomous
sphere or cultural form. In line with the axioms of this formal sociology,
Simmel regards the latter as the more basic meaning (e.g. 1989a: 165166).
As a cultural form, religion is synonymous with the existence of a separate
world or province of meaning that is populated by historically various con-
tents. Also, just like any other cultural form, religion is the result of a process
of externalization in which a more primary form becomes autonomous and,
because of this very same autonomy, is simultaneously transformed into
something else (for that matter, in GSR [1989a: 166], Simmel himself
points out the similarity with Hegels dialectics of the Spirit). Thus, the
general tendency to appreciate beauty gains autonomy within the realm of
art; and in a comparable way, science is at once a becoming autonomous
and a thorough transformation of cognition and the mundane desire to
know.
Religion is of course an externalization of religiosity. Once it has reached
a certain apex, religiosity, a way for the soul to live and experience the
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world . . . has the possibility to confront a concretely existing [gegen-
standliche] world, created by itself the world of religion vis-a-vis the world
of religiosity, which is in itself a state or rhythm of interiority without an
object [gegenstandslos] (Simmel, 1989a: 133). In short, religion is at once
a dierentiation and objectivation of religiosity (Simmel, 1989a: 132).
Yet, as said, this process of externalization also transforms the concerned
primary form. More particularly, a new object is created, namely absolute
transcendence, which nds its purest expression and completionat least
according to Simmelin the idea of one God for all (see Simmel, 1989a:
137, 145, 165). Once created, this transcendence hovers above life: witness
the notion of a commanding God.
Notwithstanding his early writings on the relationship between dieren-
tiation and modernity (Simmel, 1983: 53130), Simmel does not regard the
creation of an autonomous religious sphere of transcendence as a genuinely
modern phenomenon. On the contrary, in Die Religion he stresses that
animism already posits a distinct transcendental realm. His interest is rst
and foremost directed to religion showing religiosity in its purest and there-
fore most complete form. In this sense, one may even speak of an evolution-
ary process, or a logic of progression, in which religion becomes ever more
purely only religion (Simmel, 1989a: 166). This logic of purication vis-a-vis
completion clearly has an essentialist underpinning: in the wake of historical
evolution, the basic form of religiosity, including its various mundane mani-
festations, nds an ever purer expression within the separate realm of
religion. This very same logic also frames Simmels remarks on the religious
believer (1989a: 106108). Whereas the average believer needs dogmas, the
religious virtuoso realizes a purer mode of believing, consisting of nothing
but an inner state of being.
Two other prime examples of Simmels essentialist outlook can be found in
the essays Vom Heil der Seele [On the Salvation of the Soul] (originally
published in 1903) and Die Perso nlichkeit Gottes [The Personality of
God] (originally published in 1911). The notion of the saved soul implies
that the potential unity of a human being at last nds expression. As such, it
is the purest symbolization of the mundane desire for, and of the philo-
sophical idea of, genuine self-identity and complete self-expression. Once
again Simmel takes up this line of reasoning in his speculative musings on
the personality of God. In his view, the religious (read: the Christian)
gure of God is a pure and complete expression of the idea that fully realized
subjectivity equals self-consciousness identical to and at the same time
separated from the objective world out there.
In Die Religion, Simmel more than once stresses the autonomy of reli-
gion vis-a-vis the dierent social forms of religiosity. He clearly wants to
avoid religion being reduced to a mere reection of religiosity in general
and to the discussed social manifestations of religiosity in particular, that
is to the belief in others and the feeling of group belonging (such a reductive
sociologism can be found in Durkheim, 1985; cf. Hervieu-Le ger and
Willaime, 2001; on Simmel and Durkheim, see also Rammstedt, 1988). It is
indeed the quintessence of Simmels approach that religion is an autonomous
Laermans: Religiosity and Religion Georg Simmel 485
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and therefore non-reducible expression of personal and social religiosity.
Transcendence nds its primary locus and origin in the immanent mani-
festations of religiosity, yet it only arises after the form of religiosity realizes
itself in a more or less pure way via the creation of a separate cultural
province (see especially Simmel, 1989a: 145146, 165166). In short, religion
is the purest externalization of the form called religiosity and precisely for
this reason a dierent (i.e. cultural) form.
This double logic of expression and autonomyof the autonomy of
expressionalso informs Simmels discussion of the notion of God (1989a:
159165). God symbolizes the unity of everything, and this specic sym-
bolization refers back to the unity of the social group that one experiences
as a member of a family, a class or a nation. Yet God is not just another
word for, let alone a mistaken representation of, social unity. The unity
implied by the religious concept of God diers from social unity, Simmel
argues, because the former is a purication of the latter: The divine is
the transcendent locus of group forces, but in God they have become
an autonomous essence: through the pendulum of religious aect, the
dynamic of group life is carried into the transcendent and approaches from
out of here, as being the absolute, all particularities as relative (1989a:
165). In an analogous way, Simmel argues that in (Christian) religion the
idea of social equality is manifested in its purest mode and, therefore, in a
supra-social way.
Religion not only puries religiosity, it also oers the possibility of recon-
ciliation in and between human beings (Simmel, 1989a: 114). In the light of
Simmels dualist view on life, this is of course an important claim. Towards
the end of the essay on Die Gegensa tze des Lebens und die Religion [The
Opposites of Life and Religion] (originally published in 1904), he even argues
that man needs religion, in order to reconcile the discord between his needs
and their satisfaction, between his willing and his doing, between his ideal
image of the world and reality (1989a: 72). This thesis is not really substan-
tiated and shows that Simmel now and then crosses the border that separates
sociology from philosophy of religion. Or to phrase this in yet another way:
Simmels sociology of religion sometimes turns into a religious sociology.
More particularly, in the religious realm of transcendence he detects the
possibility for pacifying the eternal struggle between opposing forces and
drives that characterizes human life in general and social life in particular.
Coda: The Fate of Religion in Modernity
Although Simmel has been praised as an astute observer of modernity
(Dahme and Rammstedt, 1984; Frisby, 1992a), one will look in vain in his
writings on religion for statements on secularization, in the ongoing sense
of the declining impact of religion in society. Not that Simmel refrains
from an overall diagnosis of religion in modern culture. But as the essay
Das Problemder religio sen Lage [The Problemof the Situation of Religion]
(originally published in 1911) aptly demonstrates, he is only interested in the
possible meaning of (institutionalized) religion for modern man. Actually,
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this individual-oriented point of view is taken up in a twofold way. On the
one hand, Simmel observes that an undoubtedly existing religious need
goes hand in hand with a thorough scepticism towards the transcendent
content of belief (1989a: 101). On the other hand, he discerns the still
vague contours of a new idea of transcendence.
Already, in the closing sentence of his essay on the opposites of life and
religion, Simmel points out that the sheer pace and velocity of modern life
contradict the idea that one can nd reconciliation within the stable realm of
(a) religion. The restlessness of modern life, he argues, gives the future the
task to nd within this endless inconsistency and motility the redemption and
reconciliation that until now only the ight out of them seemed to preserve
(1989a: 73). This idea is rehearsed and sharpened in the essay on the fate of
religion in modernity. According to Simmel, religion has to reinvent itself in
the light of the growing implausibility of all the existing institutionalized
framings of the absolute and transcendence. More particularly, modernity
is in need of a religion that does not situate transcendence in an autonomous
sphere, cut o from mundane life. Since Simmel identies religion with the
existence of a separate domain in which the form of religiosity is puried,
this seems to come down to the highly paradoxical renewal of religion via
its destruction.
The whole question, Simmel writes, is whether religious man can nd
in life itself . . . such a metaphysical value that he can situate it, as through a
rotation of the axis, in the position of the transcendent religious contents
(1989a: 106107). In short, the task is no longer to live with religion but
to live ones life as religious. But is this possible, since life always externa-
lizes and xes itself in particular cultural forms? In his nal considerations
on religion, which can be found in the closing paragraph of his essay Der
Konikt der modernen Kultur [The Conict of Modern Culture] (originally
published in 1918), Simmel vents his personal doubts about the modern quest
for a transcendence that has an immanent, life-bound character (Simmel,
1987: 148173). In Simmels view, this quest is just one of modernitys mani-
fold manifestations of the longing for an immediate expression of life that is
running against the unavoidable but undesired creation of cultural forms and
objects. Already in the long closing part of his treatise on money, published
in 1900, Simmel (1989b) pointed out that modern culture shows a marked
predominance of so-called objective culture (the external condensations of
life) over subjective culture (the individual renement of ones character
and personality). Thus the sheer quantity of objective cultural possibilities
vastly exceeds the subjective capacity of their assimilation in view of indi-
vidual self-development. In a later essay, Simmel therefore speaks of the
tragedy of (modern) culture (Simmel, 1987:116147). His considerations
on the conict of modern culture radicalize this diagnosis. In modernity,
individual life is not only estranged from objective culture, but radically con-
tests the possibility of genuine cultural forms or tting cultural objects.
More particularly, within the religious eld, life wants to express itself as
religious in a direct way, not in a language with a given vocabulary and a pre-
scribed syntax (1989a: 174). According to Simmel, this kind of immediacy is
Laermans: Religiosity and Religion Georg Simmel 487
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indeed a sheer impossibility, since vital expression necessarily implies the
creation and/or use of external forms.
I leave it open whether or not Simmels nal considerations on culture in
general and religion in particular are truly convincing. Indeed, there is at
least a striking connection between his observations and the thesis advanced
by Heelas et al. (2004) that in Western societies, religion is giving way to a
highly individualized, self-centred spirituality (see also Heelas, 1996 on the
new age movement). The weak point in Simmels sociology of religion may
therefore not be his probing forecasts on the fate of religion within
modernity but the distinction between religion and religiosity. For although
it may seem plausible to posit the existence of dierent immanent forms of
religiosity, in Simmels sense, one always runs the risk of reading back-
wards from institutionalized religion to religiosity. If religion is the purest
form of religiosity, the latter is perhaps rst and foremost a sociologists
projection of the former into individual and social life.
NOTES
1.
GSR contains the latter text, but with clear indications of the dierences with
the rst version.
2.
All translations of quotations from GSR are by the author.
3.
Inspired by George Spencer-Browns logic of forms, the sociologist Niklas
Luhmann (1997, 2000) also denes a form as a two-sided unity of a dierence.
4.
One is, of course, immediately reminded here of Webers well-known distinc-
tion between power and authority. There are also interesting similarities between
Simmels approach to belief in terms of a quasi-transcendental form that makes
social life possible and the analysis of doxa by Bourdieu (1979) or of thrust by
Luhmann (1985). Probably the most pertinent anity with Simmels view can be
found in the explicitly religion-inspired writings of the late Michel de Certeau on
the social role of belief (e.g. de Certeau, 1985).
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Rudi LAERMANS is professor of theoretical sociology at the Catholic
University of Leuven (Belgium), Faculty of Social Sciences, where he
also directs the Centre for the Sociology of Culture. His present research
includes the history of the social sciences, social systems theory, and
cultural participation and cultural policy. ADDRESS: Centrum voor
Sociologisch Onderzoek, Centrum voor Cultuursociologie, Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven, Van Evenstraat 2b, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium.
[email: Rudi.Laermans@soc.kuleuven.be]
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