In comparison with this functional significance of coercion as such, its particular content is of only secondary importance. Senseless coercion may be replaced by sensible coercion, but even the latter has its significance, which is relevant here, only in that which it shares with the former. Moreover, not only the toleration of coercion, but also opposition to it—both to unjust and to justified coercion—has for the rhythm of our surface life this same function of inhibition and interruption: to make conscious and effective the deeper currents of the most intimate and substantial life, which cannot be inhibited by any external means.

DEFINE: Clarifies that the 'functional significance' of coercion refers to its inhibiting, interrupting role in the rhythm of surface life, regardless of whether the coercion is sensible or senseless, just or unjust.

XREF: Georg Simmel's insight about coercion's formal function rather than content mirrors broader sociological formalism — the same structuralist thinking found in his work on money and on forms of socialton.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 769