Abstract: Georg Simmel's essay The Stranger has inspired a variety of sociological studies, especially as a classic example to dissect Simmel's overall thought, and as a theoretical foundation for the development of the sociology of stranger, spatial sociology and other topics. However, there are few studies that focus on the concept of stranger itself and place it strictly under the form of socialisation advocated by Simmel. This paper aims to revisit the comprehensive connotation of the Stranger starting from Simmel's sociological setting and his cultural outlook. The Stranger, as a form, transcends individual experience and emerges as a distinct relationship formed within social interactions between subjects. But its own existence and development require the support of three a priori conditions, which run through all social levels from the micro to the macro, and ultimately form a comprehensive picture of savoir as a cultural carrier in social life. Within the framework of pure sociology, the three a priori conditions of the stranger form are expressed in the social space, existed also in Simmel's view of culture, as an objective culture constructed through interactions among individuals who are non-specific subjects. These prerequisites, however, can not be expressible in the stranger form alone. This paper attempts to describe them using the concept of Strangeness and construct a relational network within the social space factors discussed by Simmel. More crucially, Stranger and Strangeness do not exist separately, nor are they mechanical structural combinations. They ultimately need to be organically interconnected within a related yet more integrated form of socialization, which this paper refers to as the form of Strange. Only in so doing can the individual transcendence under the form of Stranger be fully understood and experienced.

Key words: G. Simmel, Stranger, Strangeness, Strange, Formal Sociology