The social Theory of Georg Simmel

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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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PREREQUISITES OF SOCIALIZATION 85 condition of harmony between the individual and the so- cial whole. Society as an objective structure viewed in abstraction from its individual bearers is a system of con- tents and functions. What holds good for a bureaucracy viewed as a system of correlated functions must hold good to a certain extent for the social system. Each individual entering a bureaucracy will have an assigned place await- ing him. But this place must none the less be in harmony with his individual energies. In the social system the posi- tions and functions are not consciously planned and as- signed, but they are created and found through and by the individual activities and experiments. The phenomenolog- ical structure of society appears, notwithstanding this dif- ference, as a system of functions in which each element has a specific individual place. The life of society runs its course, not psychologically but phenomenologically, as if the position of each individual within it had been prede- termined. The individual can therefore lead a social life only in so far as the position ideally belonging to him, that is, harmonizing with his individual tendencies. is actually available. If this condition were unrestrictedly fulfilled, the actual society would be a perfect society, not in an ethical or eudemonistic sense, but in the sense of conceptual perfec- tion. The group would be, not a perfect society, but a per- fect society, perfectly socialized. In so far as the individual does not find the fulfilment of this prerequisite of his social existence, the socialization is incomplete. Complete social- ization implies a thoroughgoing correlation between the individual and the surrounding circles, the full integration of his individual singularity with the life of the whole. This is most clearly evident in the case of a vocation. On the one hand, society creates within itself a vocation which, although differing from other vocations, can none

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