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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52 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL logical significance of a judgment something psychological, although only within and through a psychological process can it obtain reality in consciousness. As unities, there- fore, they are conceptual unities, and, as such, they may be content for the individual consciousness, but they have no actual historical origin as unities. The psychological ac- tuality creates only parts of them or carries them on or thinks of these contents as concepts. There is a psycholog- ical bearer of the totality only when they are conceived as content in the individual mind. The empirical origin of the single elements and forms of language and their practical application in individual cases is a problem of individual psychology. In this same field belongs the problem of the transmission of cultural elements or the effectiveness of law as a psychological element in the merchant, the crimi- nal, and the judge. In actuality, therefore, the origin is of an individual psychological nature, not of a superindividual psycholog- ical nature. But there is not merely a single origin. The formation and development result from the contributions of a plurality of individual minds interacting with one an- other. As entities they have no origin at all. but are merely a conceptual content. Another similar suggestion about the existence of a superindividual mind arises from the fact that, in case of collective activity, not only the activity itself but also the result appears as a unity. When a crowd destroys a house or passes judgment, the sum of the individual ac- tions appears as a single unitary occurrence, as the realiza- tion of a single concept. The unitary external occurrence resulting from manifold subjective mental occurrences is conceived as the result of a single mental process, that of the collective mind. The unity of the objective appearance is reflected in the assumed unity of its psychic cause, but

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