Florence

In this piece, Simmel claims that one of the central problems of modernity is the problem of restoring a lost unity to mind and nature. He observes that in Florence a feeling awakens that the opposition between nature and mind, past and present, has been eradicated and exists as in a single point. Here, he claims, nature has become mind without surrendering itself, and as the tension between nature and mind is thereby resolved, an aesthetic mood emerges - the feeling of standing before an art work. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd