This chapter provides a general contextual setting for the subsequent analysis of Simmel’s work. It discusses the emergence and significance of a particular perception of modernity that became very common among German intellectuals in the last third of the nineteenth century. They believed that the central conflict of modernity lay in the tension between two polar imperatives: those of general culture and specialisation, or universality and particularity. In Germany, this particular tension acquired a high degree of significance and was often accompanied by strong feelings of urgency and even despair. The chapter offers a brief history of this issue as well as a genealogy of the related conceptual apparatus that included notions such as Bildung, Cultur, Beruf and Civilisation. The final section of the chapter introduces the central aspects of Simmel’s philosophy of culture that may elucidate this general context and are in turn elucidated by it.