Abstract
To Simmel it is neither realistic nor desirable to strive for a utopia of eternal peace. Humans can only collaborate and develop if some form of conflict among them prevails. Accordingly, they should invent and institutionalize the most humane type of conflict. Rather than subduing each other in war and submit the defeated partner to death or slavery, they ought to compete peacefully and thus provoke each other to higher levels of culture and performance. This Simmel applies to three levels: 1) The worldviews created by religion, art, and scholarship each depict the universe as a whole; they cannot replace each other, they cannot reasonably be in conflict, but they can and should compete. 2) Human groups alien to each other cannot enforce unification but should communicate via an exchange of strangers, reduce differences by competing, and eventually become more and more similar. 3) Businesses, offering goods and services on a market, should compete to gain the approval of the customer and thus perform a non-violent type of conflict in commerce to the advantage of those who pay them money. A summary at the end shows what the three levels have in common.
Keywords
Simmel most humane type of conflict higher levels of culture world views exchange of strangers competition as non-violent type of conflict