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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32 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL as such, but they grow into a unity only when these im- pulses lead to reciprocal influencing. Only when an influ- ence is exerted by one upon another, whether immediately or through a third, has society come into existence out of the mere spatial proximity or the temporal contempora- neousness or succession of individuals.! The term “society” is, however, also used in a broader sense. In that case it stands for the sum of all individuals concurring in reciprocal relations, together with all the in- terests which unite them. In the more narrow sense, the term designates the process of socialization or association as such, the interaction itself in abstraction from these interests. These two meanings of the term can be dis- tinguished on the basis of a differentiation between the form and the content of socialization. Everything which is present in the individuals, the im- mediate bearers of the socialization, in the form of im- pulse, interest, or purpose, and which brings about the socialization, may be designated as its content. This con- tent is economic or religious, domestic or political, intel- lectual or volitional; but these materials with which the socialization is filled, these motives which impel it, are in and for themselves not sociological in nature. Neither hunger nor love, neither labor nor religiosity, as they are given immediately and in their strict sense, signify sociali- zation. They constitute socialization only if they shape the spatial proximity of individuals into some definite form of interaction which belongs under the general con- cept of reciprocity. These socializations. these processes of association, 1 Soz., p. 7. Simmel would therefore not consider an instinct of gregarious ness a sufficient explanation of group unity. It could at best explain that a group of individuals aggregate. But it does not account for the fact that out of that group of individuals there arises a unitary society, the essence of which is recip- rocal action of elements.

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