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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CONCLUSION 273 the social sciences and take its place among them. In the new order of things its position is far less assuming. A large part of its new function will be the modest task of searching for a knowledge of the social forms, so as to enable the so- cial sciences to reach a full understanding of the social con- tent. The myth of a science of society has been exploded. What remains is a series of social sciences, of which sociol- ogy is merely one, even if it finds its subject-matter through a different abstraction. One may object to the term “sociology” or “formal sociology” which Simmel applies to the study of the forms of socialization, but that objection would involve only the necessity for searching for a new name. If one insists on applying the term “sociology” only to a synthesis of the social sciences or to the study of practical social problems involving a knowledge of all social sciences, there is no fundamental objection, provided one does not call it a science. But apart from all questions of terminology, Simmel’s contributions to social theory are of the utmost impor- tance, not so much for the amount of new factual knowl- edge they contain as for the new orientation and clarifica- tion which they have brought to the intricate problems of the methodology of the social sciences. His ideas may be partially accepted or wholly rejected; they cannot be ig- nored. Tt is for that reason that this study has been written, in the hope that it may serve as a starting-point for a re- newed discussion of social methodology, and in the hope also that it may contribute in some way to the finding of the common method which the social sciences will have to adopt if they are ever to advance to a point where they can effectively help man in his liberation from the despotic leviathan.

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