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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I= ir- r@= ty ial he 1Q= nd n- he n- hy ry nd re- ‘ht ity +l if la ew sut id- 00 t= he ny te be 0 ict I] w= CONCLUSION 259 ning of the biological as of the psychological school. Like the holy books of the Christian and the Marxian gospels, the holy books of the positivist gospel are catholic enough to offer the most divergent sects a storehouse of infallible dogma. Luckily, however, it is not necessary for an under- standing of nineteenth-century social theory to trace all of it back to Comte, and so we can be satisfied with a brief sketch of its development. The history of Continental social theory in the nine- teenth century can be briefly summarized as the gradual change from a philosophy of society to a science of associa- tion. In that development certain well-defined steps can be traced without difficulty. During the first two phases, the old analogy between society and the individual con- tinued to shape social theory. Its influence is manifest both in the biological school and in the school of the folk psychologists. This influence led to a pronounced socio- logical realism. The first school saw society as an individ- ual organism in biological terms, as body; the second saw society as an individual organism in psychological terms, as mind. During the second two phases, the influence of the old analogy was absent. One of these phases was expressed in a school of sociological nominalism which finally found shelter among social psychologists. The other found ex- pression in a school of sociological relativism which laid the foundations for our modern science. The first tried to un- derstand society in terms of processes in the individual minds. It was based on a point of view which avoided the pitfalls of its predecessors, but it did not lead to a science of society, as it neglected the essential sociological cate- gory. The latter school, although fully admitting that in the last instance social life rests on processes in individual minds. turned its attention, not toward these processes, but

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