Saturday, March 28, 2009

I love you because you are you

I love this quote of Simmel on individuality, "Individuality - this unanalyzable unity, which is not to be derived from anything else, not subsumable under any higher concept, set within a world otherwise infinitely analyzable, calculable and governed by general laws - this individuality [which] stands for us [moderns] as the actual focal point of love."
I love his expression of the idea that individuality is something that can't be broken down into its component parts, or swallowed up by some general rule (for example, "every individual x, has the components y, z, and h"). As one who has been studying much dry and rule-bound material lately, it's lovely to think of something that science cannot capture, and it is one of the reasons why we love things... because they are themselves.

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