Objectivity can also be defined as freedom. The objective man is not bound by ties which could prejudice his perception, his understanding, and his assessment of data. This freedom, which permits the stranger to experience and treat even his close relationships as though from a bird's-eye view, contains many dangerous possibilities. … From earliest times, in uprisings of all sorts the attacked party has claimed that there has been incitement from the outside, by foreign emissaries and agitators. Insofar as this has happened, it represents an exaggeration of the specific role of the stranger: he is the freer man, practically and theoretically; he examines conditions with less prejudice; he assesses them against standards that are more general and more objective; and his actions are not confined by custom, piety, or precedent.

QUESTION: Simmel frames the stranger's objectivity as dangerous freedom — worth examining how this inverts common assumptions that objectivity equals detachment from harm. XREF: Connects to the sociological concept of the marginal observer and the outsider's advantage in analysis, echoed in later work on situated knowledge.

DEFINE: Defines objectivity as freedom from binding ties that prejudice perception, connecting the concept to the stranger's social position. FICTION: The stranger as objective agitator is a rich character archetype — an outsider whose freedom of perception makes them both scapegoat and truth-teller in a community.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 395