A Reexamination of Simmel's “The Secret and the Secret Society”: Nine Propositions

This paper examines Simmel's analysis of the secret society as a source of rich insight into the role of secrecy in social organization. Some of the central attributes of the secret society as a constructed type are reviewed, and the principal instance of an attempt to empirically test Simmel's analysis is evaluated. Then, Nine Propositions extracted from Simmel's essay are presented and discussed. The major contention of this paper is that if Simmel's insights are to be fruitfully utilized, the deliberate generation of sound propositions must be the first step.