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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CONCLUSION 263 view thought of sociology in terms of a general social psy- chology (Le Bon, Sighele), some in terms of a science of social interactions (Gumplowicz, Giddings), some in terms of a philosophy of history (Barth), some in terms of a social philosophy (Stein), and some in terms of a philosophy of the social sciences (Ratzenhofer, Small). Nor was there any more agreement regarding the fundamental category of this study of sociology; but here, at least, the funda- mental differences were not quite so great as the discrepan- cies in terminology would seem to indicate. The essentially social category was, for de Roberty, sociality; for de Greef and Fouillée, contract; for Gumplowicz, conflict; for Tarde. imitation; for Durkheim, coercion; for Giddings, con- sciousness of kind; for Ratzenhofer and Small, association; and for Stuckenberg, sociation. These different terms con- note very different concepts, but they indicate also the gradual realization that the aim should be not so much a philosophy of society as a whole as a study of the specific phenomena of social interaction. In this period of confusion appeared the work of Georg Simmel. The fundamental points in his theory were for- mulated well before the end of the century, and he there- fore definitely belongs to the nineties. His great contribu- tion is a methodological foundation for a science of soci- ology distinct and separate from social psychology, the social sciences, social philosophy, and the philosophy of history. He defined the subject-matter of that science as the forms of socialization, that is, as the purely social as- pect of socialization or association as such. The value of his work does not lie in its startling originality, but in the careful methodological justification of its essential con- cepts. He owed a great deal to his predecessors, perhaps more in particular to Gumplowicz, but his philosophic

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