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Georg Simmel, a brilliant German philosopher and sociologist of the early twentieth century, sprinkles his pages with golden insights between layers of an arcane, idiosyncratic, muddy philosophical argot. Fortunately, Guy Oaks has provided us with a careful and spirited translation and with a lucid and elucidating introduction. His quarter of the volume not only relates these essays to Simmel's philosophy of
culture, but prepares and guides the reader through mazes of otherwise obscure conceptualizations.
The "woman question" and the defining features of the feminine character have been topics of philosophical interest to men throughout recorded history (i.e., male history). Their interest has led to many a quaint and curious theory, usually debasing and blaming women, while elevating and exonerating men. In his essay on Female Culture (1911), Simmel does not follow this custom. Although his often dazzling, hair-splitting, convoluted arguments are unconvincing as proofs, he arrives at remarkably contemporary insights. At a time when it was fashionable to believe that women remain "overgrown children for their entire lives" (Schopenhauer) or represent wanton sexuality and chaos undermining the rational and civilizing achievements of men (Weininger), Simmel saw women as different but not deficient. Simmel argues that "objective" culture is masculine culture, not simply neutral human culture. It is, in fact, an objectification of male interests and values. The first example he presents is "law," pointing out that the female sense of justice is not defective, but simply different from "male law"—thus adumbrating Roy Schafer's criticism of Freud's view of the female superego as defective. Since male law has been defined as the valid "body of law," a body of law that developed from the specifically female sense of justice would not be acknowledged. Here he seems close to Carol Gilligan's thesis. He sees female nature as estranged from this dominant (male) cul