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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THE CONCEPT OF SOCIETY 27 “ly he 2y. ue LS. ns 1S 1d 31s of he 1al an Ty nal of os 1te ly ib- ‘ty ive an object for speculation, but not for scientific thought, which aims to investigate actuality. Society or the group could then be the subject-matter of a social science only in the same sense as the firmament is the subject-matter of as- tronomy. The concept of society has significance only when it stands in some kind of contrast to that of the sum of the individuals. This is no doubt the case. The group is more than a merely subjective synthesis. It is an objective unity, judged by the one valid objective criterion of unity, name- ly, reciprocal activity of parts. Unity in the empirical sense is nothing but reciprocity of elements. It is a func- tional, a dynamic, and a gradual concept. An organic body is a unity because its organs are in a more intimate interchange of energies with one another than with any outside agent. In the last analysis, even the unity of the individual mind is nothing but the dvnamic functional reciprocity of its energies. The group possesses a unity of the same nature. A social group consists, in the last analysis, in mental atti- tudes or psychological occurrences within the minds of the individuals; but the fact that these attitudes and occur- rences are the product of mutual determinations and recip- rocal influences creates a dynamic functional relationship between the individuals, and that dynamic functional re- lationship creates and is the unity of the group. The group is a unity because of this process or these processes of re- ciprocal influencing between the individuals. The state is a unity because between its citizens there is a more inti- mate exchange of reciprocal influences than between these citizens and those of other states. ' Sox. Diff., pp. 10-11. ' Soz., pp. 6-7; Soz. Diff., pp. 18-14. The group therefore does not consist of individuals, but only of so much of them as enters into the functional relation- ship. See also Book I, chapter vii, pp. 82-83. 103. and Book II. chapter vi.

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