Individual, Society, City: The Sociology of Work and the Experience of the Metropolis through the Thought of Georg Simmel

The paper examines the concept of the Blazé person in the modern metropolis, as formulated by Georg Simmel, through a theoretical prism of the microsociological approach of the Sociology of Labor. Simmel, founding the sociology of the individual, considers that social forms and everyday interaction constitute the concept of society and labor. He focuses on the modern city, where the overabundance of stimuli, the dominance of money and rationality shape a new psychological type: the Blazé person, that is, the person who is emotionally saturated and reacts with apathy to stimuli. In the transition to the postmodern "city of the image", the Blazé type reappears with new characteristics, as a subject who no longer distinguishes the qualitative differences between the stimuli he receives, as the world of images equates values and experiences. The study concludes that the Blazé phenomenon continues to be relevant, constituting a subjective reflection of either the monetary or the icon-centric postmodern economy, and highlights the timeless importance of Simmel's thought.