Arthur Bueno is going to presents a working paper on 'Rationality – Cultivation – Vitality: Simmel on the Pathologies of Modern Culture'

This paper reconstructs Georg Simmel’s writings on money and modernity with a view to outlining a multi-layered diagnosis of the pathologies of modern culture. The resulting framework allows for the distinction of three different perspectives, each of them based on a particular anthropological philosophy and presenting a distinctive assessment of the potentials and problematic features of modern life. In Simmel’s oeuvre, the pathologies of culture are respectively understood as (1) irrational (from the perspective of teleological action); (2) alienating (from the perspective of subjective cultivation); and (3) mechanistic (from the perspective of trans-subjective life).