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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PREFACE “ESTERN civilization has reached a crisis. It can- not survive in its present form. But if it is to sur- vive at all, man must find a solution for the urgent problems of internal and external relations. If the social forces which at present are spending themselves in ruthless conflict remain unchecked, there is nothing ahead but utter destruction. Society, the great superindividual structure of man’s own making, has become so large, so intricate, so complex, so independent of its maker that it threatens to overwhelm him and to make him the victim of his own creation. Forces beyond his control drive man to national and civil wars. Powers that he only vaguely comprehends draw him into conflicts that must end in self-destruction. Man cannot continue to trust blindly in social progress as he once trusted in a benevolent Providence. He has to control these forces or become further enslaved by them. He has to obtain a mastery over his social structure compa- rable to his mastery over nature, or his civilization will per- ish in suffering and bloodshed. The eighteenth century gave us an ideal, namely, indi- vidual liberty. The nineteenth century brought political liberation, democracy. But democracy did not bring indi- vidual liberty. It gave us the possibility of opposing per- sonal oppression, but it did not free us from the impersonal social forces. We are still the slaves of the great leviathan. Our knowledge and control of social life has never kept pace with its growing complexity, and we are farther be- hind than ever before. The liberation of the individual is

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