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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PREFACE Cn d Nn Te qa g. 1s st 1. le xy re at q- ch he yt 1g iQ a. mental desire for unity and simplicity. Humanity has al- ways been in search of the mystic simple formula which would explain the whole universe, and that search will be continued as long as man shall live. It springs from a fun- damental motive operative in all of us, but it will never pro- duce scientific knowledge. There is a beauty of form, an aesthetic value, in a well-constructed metaphysical system which no mere science can ever possess. There is something esoteric about an interpretation of society in terms of a single category as its essence and symbol. It has an emo- tional appeal with which no scientific analysis can com- pete. But, whatever the beauty and the value of these products of the human mind, they do not give us a type of knowledge on which an applied science can be built. The same motives mentioned above have been the fun- damental motives in the development of sociology. Soci- ology was born partly of a dissatisfaction with the frag- mentary character of the knowledge obtained in the social sciences, of a desire, that is, to see social life whole, and partly of a desire to find a technique of social improvement. But neither of these two needs can be satisfied by a science. The first can only be satisfied by a social philosophy, the second by an integration and co-ordination of the knowl- edge obtained in all the social sciences. When there also arose a science of sociology, the confusion was complete. The term came to be applied indiscriminately to three dis- tinct types of knowledge: to social philosophy, to a specific social science, and to a body of knowledge that purported to be social engineering. Sociology was anything that had to do with social life, from a social metaphysics to public sanitation. This confusion with regard to sociology is indicative of the lack of a clear understanding of the fundamental presuppositions and of the mutual relations of the social

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