The social Theory of Georg Simmel

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1024612627

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-166627

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Spykman, Nicholas J. http://d-nb.info/gnd/124229867

Title:: The social Theory of Georg Simmel

Place of publication:: Chicago

Publisher:: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Year of publication:: 1925

Scope:: XXIX, 297 S

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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70 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL ality. In that case the demand for knowledge asks a type of question which can be answered in terms of such abstract and phenomenological categories. The answer does not have to be more exact and does not have to go down to single factors and causes. It may be changed if it is found to be erroneous, but it will then be replaced by an answer which consists merely of other contents of knowledge in a similar form. The new answer will remain methodologically at the same distance from causality as an ideal of exact sci- ence as the answer which it replaced. History, whether in the form of a narrative or in the form of historical laws, builds out of that which is given of the historical actuality a theoretic structure on the ba- sis of categories which have no place in an investigation which aims at exact knowledge. But these categories spring from fully autonomous needs of organization and create a self-sufficient picture of the historical actuality. That this picture is not a pure reproduction of the actual- ity is not a shortcoming, but its essence. It has dimensions and a style of its own which bear no relation to the re- quirements for a scientific picture of the socio-historical actuality.! From the foregoing considerations it may be seen that neither the philosophy of history nor the search for histor- ical laws is identical and synonymous with sociology. Whether one considers the historical law as a forerunner of exact knowledge or as a self-sufficient interpretation of his- torical development does not influence the fact that it does not reach objective validity. Sociology is an exact science and has to apply the meth- od of science. The philosophy of history and the search for historical laws are forms of inquiry which result from different and independent needs of cognition and produce a type of knowledge that is speculative and not exact. 1 Probl. der Gesch., pp. 108-20.

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