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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62 THE SOCIAL THEORY OF GEORG SIMMEL whether the historical movement is a self-sufficient unity or of value and significance only in relation to cosmic move- ments. It deals with the transcendental purpose and the transcendental reality which lie behind the historical actu- ality as the noumena behind the phenomena. These and similar questions may leave the historical investigation itself largely untouched. They can be an- swered differently for the same historical facts. The ac- ceptance of a personal God who guides the historical de- velopment for a purpose unknown or revealed would only change the causal into a teleological series without chang- ing its content or the relations between its elements. The metaphysics of history takes the theoretic historical knowl- edge for granted. In so far as it deals with value judgments it is a non-theoretic accentuation of the historical series crystallized into a special structure.! Historical Inquiry and the Search for Historical Laws The essential characteristic of the exact historical in- quiry is an interest in the historical actuality as such direct- ed toward the factualness of its content and free from all metaphysical sublimation. But the distinction between the exact and the meta- physical thought form, which are conceived as separate and distinct concepts in a methodological inquiry, is not maintained in the actual historical investigation. Histori- cal interpretations, especially those which are formulated in terms of historical laws, are the result of both forms of inquiry. The reason for this is that an inquiry into the existence of historical laws is guided by a thought form which bears a much closer resemblance to philosophic spec- ulation than to the method of exact science. L Probl. der Gesch., pp. 126-32.

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