Excluded thirds, included

on being-with

pp. 89-109

in: Olli Pyyhtinen, Simmel and "the social", Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Abstract

As we have seen, instead of being reducible to an overarching society, the social, in its most basic form, is for Simmel processual association of individuals. However, he does not go as far as to claim that the social is not at all objectifiable. Notwithstanding the precedence Simmel gives to the dynamic reciprocity between individuals, he does not deny the existence of supra-individual social wholes. In this chapter, I will discuss how the contrast between dynamic sociality and objectified social formations can be elaborated by looking at the number of persons involved in the interaction. In the second chapter of Soziologie, "Die quantitative Bestimmtheit der Gruppe", Simmel treats the quantitative determination of social formations. According to him, there exists an explicit correlation between social forms of interaction and the number of elements involved in the interaction. While a clear distinction can be detected also between the forms of small groups and those of large groups, he contends that it is only in the interaction between two elements — which he terms the "dyad" (Zweizahl), and that of three, the "triad" (Dreizahl) — that the quantitative determination can be specified in numerical terms.