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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16 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL The philosophic thought form may serve as a first ori- entation in the manifoldness of the phenomenal world, but if it serves only as forerunner of and preliminary to science, it is to be succeeded by a further analysis which will bring recognition of the actual elements and the actually effec- tive forces. The goal of the inquiry is then science and not metaphysics. The aim is then a scientific picture of the world, not a metaphysical picture. Science also creates a picture of the world according to its own laws, with its own methods, and by its own technique; but these are different from those of metaphysics. Metaphysics is a thought form which aims at an inclusive view of the total- ity of existence. Science is a thought form which aims at an understanding of the individual elements of the exter- nal world in their primary interrelations and interactions. It aims to construct an objective world-picture that shall have the form of empirical actuality, that shall make pos- sible practical, purposeful activity. But the metaphysical truth and the so-called empirical actuality are not the only forms in which the mental life shapes the contents of the world. They can also be formed artistically and religiously. Art also is a category or a world which cannot be de- duced from any other category. Art also works with the elementary contents of reality, but it becomes art only by giving them forms which derive from its own artistic needs of perception and feeling. These forms are separate and distinct from the categories which shape the world of actuality, and even the space of a picture is different from the space which the world of actuality manifests. Art has its own logic, its own concept of truth, its own causality, and with these it builds out of the same contents as meta- physics and science a new world which is equivalent to both.

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