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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50 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL Sociology is the result of a similar differentiation. The socialization of individuals is the result of psychological processes within these individuals. But sociology is not interested in these processes as such. It is interested in the content of these processes, but from a special point of view, namely, with reference to the resulting relations between the individuals. It views the psychological occurrences within the individuals in their synopsis, that is, as a unity; and its interest is in the resulting association. Its subject- matter is not those processes, but the forms of socialization which are the result of those processes. With regard to the fact that the relation of primus infer pares tends to become a relation of superiority and subor- dination, the sociologist is interested, not in the primary psychological processes, but in questions such as the fol- lowing: How do the various stages of “superordination and subordination’ succeed one another? To what degree is subordination in one relationship compatible with equal- ity in others? Beginning with what degree of superordina- tion does the superiority wholly destroy the equality? Sociology abstracts the sociological form from the psy- chological actualities which are its bearers in the same way as geometry abstracts the spatial form from the ma- terial substance. Just as the study of geometry remains separate from physics or chemistry, just so the study of sociology remains separate from psychology. The data of sociology are psychological occurrences whose immediate actuality presents itself first to the psychological cate- gories. The latter, however, although indispensable for a rendering of the facts, remain outside the purpose of soci- ological investigation. This difference between sociology and psychology is the identical difference which exists between sociology and L Soz., pp. 21-24.

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