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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28 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL The superindividual character of social structures and the objectivity and independence of social forces and or- ganizations are therefore only apparent. A further analy- sis resolves that appearance which seems to announce a new independent unity above the individuals into a reci- procity which plays between them. The latter view corresponds to the facts, the former is the result of a lim- ited analysis; the latter is the ideal of complete under- standing, the former the stage of understanding actually reached. In many cases this complete understanding cannot be reached. The relations of human beings are so complex, so ramified, and so compact that it is often a hopeless task to try to resolve them into the constituent elements. We are consequently compelled in certain instances to treat these reciprocal relationships as unities. But it remains a mere methodological device to speak of the essence and the development of the state, of law, and of institutions as if they were unified entities. It is a mere scientific interim to treat them as if they had an independent existence. This provisional convenience resembles the treatment of the life-process as though it were a proper entity instead of merely the synthesis of endlessly complicated reciproc- ities between the minutest parts of the organic body. In our knowledge of physical organisms we have succeeded in thinking beyond the idea of a vital power that seemed to hold sway over the separate organs and to compose a new entity in addition to them. We have in part at least sub- stituted the reciprocal activities of the organs. In like manner we must attempt in the social sciences to approach nearer and nearer to the individual operations which pro- duce the social structure, even if we have to stop short of complete analysis in many instances. Soz.. pp. 495-06: “Persistence of Social Groups,” 4. J. S., III, 665-66.

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