ABSTRACT
Georg Simmel’s writings are read for their unusual theoretical insight into the inner workings of life in the modern world. The following selection illustrates Simmel’s simple style and disarming ability to describe an important character in all social groups: the stranger—a character who became all the more important in the modern world, especially when viewed from the perspective of Europe’s stranger within, the Jew. In 1845 Margaret Fuller published a revision of The Great Lawsuit as Woman in the Nineteenth Century—which now is recognized as the first social theory of women’s issues written by an American. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. The sense of personal identity is not, then, this mere synthetic form essential to all thought.
