While victimization is as old as human history, the notion of victimhood as currently understood is a relatively recent phenomenon. Over the last several decades, the notion of victimhood has been increasing discussed both within academia and the wider public, a trend that has intensified in recent years. In order to gain a clearer vision of this social phenomenon, the current piece follows the lead of Georg Simmel, and identifies a new Simmelian social type—the Victim. After discussing Simmel’s understanding of social types and tracing the origins of the Victim, we examine some of the characteristics of this new social type. While the Victim is best understood on a high level of abstraction—as are all social types—a richer appreciation of the emergence and nature of the Victim will help us to better understand current discussions around victimhood in both academia and the wider public. These philosophical and sociological reflections on the nature of the Victim can thus be of help for better understanding a social phenomenon of considerable importance in today’s world.

虽然受害与人类历史一样古老，但目前所理解的受害概念是一个相对较新的现象。在过去的几十年里，受害人的概念在学术界和广大公众中的讨论越来越多，这一趋势在最近几年愈演愈烈。为了更清楚地了解这种社会现象，本文跟随乔治·齐美尔 (Georg Simmel) 的脚步，确定了一种新的齐美尔社会类型——受害者. 在讨论了齐美尔对社会类型的理解并追溯了受害者的起源之后，我们研究了这种新社会类型的一些特征。虽然受害者在较高的抽象层次上得到最好的理解——就像所有社会类型一样——但对受害者的出现和本质的更丰富的理解将有助于我们更好地理解学术界和更广泛的公众当前关于受害者的讨论。因此，这些对受害者性质的哲学和社会学反思有助于更好地理解当今世界相当重要的社会现象。