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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xiv THE LIFE OF GEORG SIMMEL much that was specifically his own, to be a mere follower. He was original in the sense that he combined in his own characteristic way elements which were borrowed from the most divergent sources. Yet his college studies as a whole had a profound influence on his thought and greatly strengthened his natural inclinations. A great deal of purely historical study reinforced his predisposition to a historical point of view. And his work with Bastian, Laz- arus, and Zeller, all of whom had a historical approach toward their subject, fortified this tendency still more. The general character of his university studies may then perhaps be a partial explanation of his characteristic phi- losophy, which has a genetic, functional relativism as its main theme. It may perhaps partly account for a view- point from which all existence is seen as a phase in a proc- ess of becoming and all phenomena in relation to an ever changing environment, as functions of numerous variables. His philosophy is the philosophy of a man who sees the present as the product of the past. It is the philosophical expression of a historical point of view. For that reason it approaches in one important aspect the philosophy of Hegel. It is genetic and dialectic, but while for Hegel the absolute was the self-unfolding Idea, for Simmel the ab- solute was Life itself. Apart from his immediate teachers, the other forma- tive influences were Kant, Cohen, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Hegel, and Heracleitus. To Cohen’s interpreta- tion of Kant he owed a great deal, even if he did not fully accept it. Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, and the whole of the anti-intellectualistic movement of the nine- teenth century, strongly affected his thinking. Heraclei- tus, for whom he had the most profound admiration, un- doubtedly had a great influence on the formulation of his relativism, and there is too much similarity in Simmel’s

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