The Dehumanizing Dimension of Strangeness and Its Ethical Indispensability in G. Simmel’s The Stranger

Abstract

The concept of „strangeness”, as presented by Georg Simmel, is discussed in the text in the light of the ethical implication of strangeness as a social form. The notion of „strangeness” as such is analysed, thereafter the aspects of objectivity and generic perception of a stranger by integrated social groups (referred to as ‘settled’ groups) are presented along with the stranger’s vulnerability to instrumental use. Thereupon follows a short discussion of the ethical dimension of ‘we–stranger’ relation, after which Simmel’s sociology of the metropolis is analysed as an attempt to envisage a situation in which strangeness as a form is deprived of its mediation through settledness.