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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CHAPTER I THE CONCEPT OF SOCIETY SOCIETY AS FORM AND SOCIETY AS CONTENT HE fact that society has an existence apparently independent of the single individuals gives it the - appearance of a structure of independent reality. It seems to lead a life according to specific laws, by virtue of special forces, independent of its individual components. These laws and forces appear as products and functions of an impersonal structure. The social group appears as something objective over and above the individual and absolved from the limitation of personal life.! On the other hand, it is certain that in the last analysis only individuals really exist. The group is not a unity of independent reality, is not the unitary subject of the group spirit or of the group mind. Apart from material objects, there are no human products except within human beings themselves, except within personal minds. Every attempt to think of psychic entities outside of personal minds, outside of the mental life of individuals, is a form of mysticism similar to the conceptual realism which makes independent substantial entities of human ideas.? But if society were nothing more than an aggregate of individuals who were the actual realities, then only these individuals and their relationships could be the sub- ject-matter of a social science. The concept of society would then dissolve. Society would be merely a subjective mental synthesis, not an objective unity. It might be an - “Persistence of Social Groups,” 4. J. S., IIL, 665. 2 Ibid. /

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