The ambivalence of religiosity and religion: a reading of Georg Simmel

The author discusses Georg Simmel's writings on religiosity and religion, which only cover a rather tiny part of his total oeuvre, in view of a possible illumination of the material object of the sociology of religion. The distinction between religiosity and religion, which is fundamental according to Simmel, is presented against the more general background of Simmel's so-called formal sociology and his overall "Lebensphilosophie" [philosophy of life]. Particular attention is given to the two basic social forms of religiosity, i.e. belief or trust and the experience of social unity. According to Simmel, religion is at once an externalization and purification of religiosity, resulting in the creation of an autonomous sphere of transcendence. It is argued that, in contradistinction to, for instance, Emile Durkheim, Simmel clearly wanted to avoid religion being reduced to a mere reflection of religiosity in general and to the discussed social manifestations of religiosity in particular. The author ends with a brief discussion of Simmel's pessimistic diagnosis of the fate of religion within modernity. In his view, modernity is in need of a religion that no longer situates transcendence in an autonomous sphere, cut off from mundane life. © 2006 Social Compass.status: publishe