ABSTRACT
The debate about modernity gained new impetus during the 1980s. David Frisby is credited with making Georg Simmel accessible for the debate on modernity and its crisis during the 1980s. Modernity is the stage of history when the differentiation process progressed the most. The theory of the parallel differentiation process of social structure and, accordingly, the individual personality, is at the core of Simmel's first sociological work, On Social Differentiation. The means of social action become goals, while the process of social differentiation leads to the reification of the social structure. Society holds together as long as it can afford the accelerated rhythm of sociation required by the monetary mediation of complex social differentiation. The mature monetary economy, which relies on the advanced reciprocal relativity of economic values, establishes the function of money as a universal equivalent and elevates it to its meaning for modern societies.
