Life is thus caught up in a contradiction, that it can only be accommodated in forms and yet cannot be accommodated in forms, that it passes beyond and destroys everything which it has formed. This, of course, appears as a contradiction only in logical reflection, which conceives the individual form as an intrinsically valid, real or ideal fixed structure, discontinuous with other forms, and in logical contrast to movement, streaming, reaching further. Life as immediately experienced is precisely the unity of being formed and that reaching out beyond form which manifests itself at any single moment as destruction of the given current form. Life is always more life than there is room for in the form allotted by and grown out of it.

XREF: Echoes Bergson's élan vital and the Heraclitean flux; connects to process philosophy and the form/life tension in Simmel's own sociology. FICTION: The idea that life cannot be contained in forms offers dramatic tension: characters straining against roles, institutions, or narratives into which they have been cast.

DEFINE: Distinguishes logical reflection's view of form (fixed, discontinuous) from lived experience's view (the unity of forming and surpassing form).

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 828