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

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

v1 0 PREFACE gation of social phenomena can be placed on a really scien- tific basis. Only when this is accomplished can we under- take the liberation of the individual from the clutches of the great leviathan. Only then will a knowledge become available which will make possible a mastery over the social environment comparable to the mastery over na- ture obtained through progress in the natural sciences. It is for the purpose of reopening the discussion of methodological problems that this study on Simmel has been written. Georg Simmel more than any other philoso- pher occupied himself with the methodology of the social sciences. During the first part of his career he set himself the task of doing for the social sciences what Kant had done for science in general, of giving, that is, a critical ex- position of their presuppositions. He fiercely attacked in the critical writings of his first period the conceptual realism that is still rampant in the social sciences, and thereby rendered a service which can hardly be overestimated. His critical work reached completion, however, only after the interest in methodological problems had waned in this country, and for that reason it has not had the attention which it deserves. A number of his articles have been translated in the American Journal of Sociology, but his larger works have not been read as widely by English and American sociologists as his contributions justify. If the discussion of methodological problems is to be resumed, as the writer thinks necessary, Simmel’s work is the best starting-point. In the original it cannot serve that purpose, and it is for that reason that this exposition of his work has been written. If a more or less general agreement can be reached regarding Simmel’s fundamental proposi- tions, this study may eventually serve as a methodologi- cal orientation for the social sciences. Whether it can ful- fil that function can only be judged from the study as a whe scie follc rela obt: ing soci stuc logis affo thre ogy mel ject pro of a an | an i ture in F But ac mot con’ tow his diff tori Sim bal: cha first

Access restriction

Copyright

fullscreen: The social Theory of Georg Simmel

Monograph

Table of contents

Download

Monograph

This page

Image fragment

Citation links

Citation recommendation