The concept of the fl\u00e2neur is important in academic discussions of the phenomenon of modernity<\/a>.
\nWhile Baudelaire’s aesthetic and critical visions helped open up the
\nmodern city as a space for investigation, theorists, such as Georg Simmel<\/a>,
\nbegan to codify the urban experience in more sociological and
\npsychological terms. In his essay “The Metropolis and Mental Life”,
\nSimmel theorizes that the complexities of the modern city create new
\nsocial bonds and new attitudes towards others. The modern city was
\ntransforming humans, giving them a new relationship to time and space,
\ninculcating in them a “blas\u00e9 attitude”, and altering fundamental
\nnotions of freedom and being:<\/p>\n
| \u201c<\/td>\n | The deepest problems of \nmodern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the \nautonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming \nsocial forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the \ntechnique of life. The fight with nature which primitive man has to \nwage for his bodily existence attains in this modern form its latest \ntransformation. The eighteenth century called upon man to free himself \nof all the historical bonds in the state and in religion, in morals and \nin economics. Man’s nature, originally good and common to all, should \ndevelop unhampered. In addition to more liberty, the nineteenth century \ndemanded the functional specialization of man and his work; this \nspecialization makes one individual incomparable to another, and each \nof them indispensable to the highest possible extent. However, this \nspecialization makes each man the more directly dependent upon the \nsupplementary activities of all others. Nietzsche sees the full \ndevelopment of the individual conditioned by the most ruthless struggle \nof individuals; socialism believes in the suppression of all \ncompetition for the same reason. Be that as it may, in all these \npositions the same basic motive is at work: the person resists to being \nleveled down and worn out by a social-technological mechanism. An \ninquiry into the inner meaning of specifically modern life and its \nproducts, into the soul of the cultural body, so to speak, must seek to \nsolve the equation which structures like the metropolis set up between \nthe individual and the super-individual contents of life. (“The \nMetropolis and Mental Life”)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The concept of the fl\u00e2neur is important in academic discussions of the phenomenon of modernity. While Baudelaire’s aesthetic and critical visions helped open up the modern city as a space for investigation, theorists, such as Georg Simmel, began to codify the urban experience in more sociological and psychological terms. In his essay “The Metropolis and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13,12,64],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-mind-menagement","tag-new-technologies","tag-urban"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gentlejunk.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gentlejunk.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gentlejunk.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gentlejunk.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gentlejunk.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/gentlejunk.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333,"href":"http:\/\/gentlejunk.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gentlejunk.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gentlejunk.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gentlejunk.net\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |