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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38 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL parts, into a unique historical sequence; or they may com- bine different parts into groupings of elements which con- tain a timeless correlation. Sociology as a special science might find its subject- matter in a similar fashion by drawing a new line through facts which, as such, are quite well known. It would need only the unifying concept which should co-ordinate into a new synthesis the similar aspects lying along that line. The new concept would therefore have to subject the socio- historical data to an abstraction and a co-ordination which should enable the recognition of the fact that certain pe- culiarities already observed in other relations can be grouped together. That new grouping will then be the subject-matter of the new science. The concept of society as the external aggregate of social phenomena cannot ful- fil that function. For that purpose it becomes necessary to distinguish between the content and the form of society and to use the latter as the unifying viewpoint. This concept of society as form, or rather of the form of the socialization, makes possible the formation and the delimitation of the new science and is therefore the category of cognition and the central concept of sociology.! Society in the wider and larger sense consists of both form and content. But if the subject-matter of sociology is to be society and nothing else, it can investigate only the processes of association, the kinds and the forms of sociali- zation. Everything else found within society and realized by means of it and within its framework is not socialization itself, but merely content. A special science of society as such can be founded only when these two elements, insep- arably united in actuality, are separated in scientific ab- straction. The socio-historical actuality can be really pro- jected on the plane of the purely social only if the forms of t Soz., pp. 4-7; Grundfr. der Soz., pp. 22-33.

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