Suurlinn ja vaimuelu
The Metropolis and Mental Life

Summary/Abstract: The deepest problem of modern life is the individual's desire to preserve the independence and uniqueness of his existence in opposition to the supremacy of society, historical heritage, external manifestations of culture and technology in life - a transformed form of the struggle that primitive man had to have with nature for the sake of his physical existence. After all, the 18th century could have called for liberation from all the national and religious, moral and economic shackles formed throughout history, so that the originally good nature, which is the same in all people, could develop unhindered; In addition to mere freedom, the 19th century could also emphasize the uniqueness of a person and his work contribution, which results from the division of labor and makes the individual unique and inevitably necessary, but places him in a stronger dependence on the additional contribution of everyone else; Nietzsche could consider the ruthless struggle of the individual as a condition for the perfect development of the individual, socialism, on the other hand, keeping all competition at a low level, but one basic motive runs through all of this: the subject's opposition to the leveling and exhaustion of his person by social and technical mechanisms. If we ask the characteristic products of today about their inner world (Innerlichkeit), so to speak, about the body of culture about its soul - which I consider obligatory today in the case of our big cities - one would have to look into the equation that such formations create about the relationship between the individual and supra-individual contents of life, in order to find the answer. those personality adaptations by which the individual reconciles himself with external forces.

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