An Archetypal Blasé? Justin Martyr and the Segmentation of Christians’ Urban Life

In this article I argue that, unlike small towns and more radically than other large centers, a megacity like the 2nd-century Rome was liable to produce what Georg Simmel famously called the ‘psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individuality’. Following Simmel’s heuristic track, I will examine the way Justin Martyr’s personality made it to accommodate to the external forces of the city of Rome, as well as how the metropolis shaped the way his intellectuality branched out in three intertwined directions: namely that of a (1) Christ believer, (2) a teacher, and a (3) heresiologist. How did Justin’s personality, understood as the unifying social surface that provided him with the capacity of existing in different fields as an agent drawing on heterogeneous socializing experiences, cope with a megacity that was replete with Christ groups, supplied a multitude of potential students, and sprouted several heresies-to-be? In the conclusion I will push my arguments to the very limits of the sociological imagination of Justin’s metropolitan psychic life and urban experience.