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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GENERAL INTRODUCTION n of nost Son -eta- has .0S0- shy. an a .y in ural rerse own tion isive dis- slop- his and the says liza- ure. ota- mel rical that r ob- non- the the scl ences against metaphysical encroachments. On the other hand, he pointed out that no social science is purely em- pirical, that it differentiates its subject-matter from the actuality on the basis of a specific category of cognition and shapes its data in forms which are themselves not em- pirically obtained from investigations within that science. It was out of these critical inquiries into the presup- positions of the social sciences that he developed his formu- lation of the task and the scope of a study of sociology and its legitimation as an empirical science, If it may be said that Kant’s critical philosophy is a conciliation between rationalism and empiricism, then Simmel’s critical philosophy is a similar conciliation be- tween two divergent tendencies in his own special field. The divergent tendencies existing in Simmel’s time in the field of the social sciences were the tendency to claim ex- clusive validity for the historical method and the tendency to claim exclusive validity for the naturalistic method. Simmel’s philosophy is a conciliation. He points out that a complete understanding of the socio-historical actuality requires both methods of approach, that they are mutu- ally supporting and presuppose each other. Simmel started from Kant. Like Kant’s, his philosophy is relativistic. Like Kant, he distinguishes sharply be- tween subject and object, between knowing mind and known world, between the organizing functions of the mind and the data of experience, between form and mat- ter. But Simmel’s relativism is much less rigid than the Kantian formalism. It is less purely intellectualistic, is more elastic and flexible, and therefore wider in scope and more comprehensive. It is a functional, a dynamic, a ge- netic relativism. His epistemological relativism is not pri- marily in terms of form and content, but in terms of pro- cess and raw material. The product, knowledge, is a func-

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