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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SOCIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 63 The historical account is not only the result of the fune- tioning of certain a priori categories which make history as such, as a theoretical structure, possible, but also of the functioning of certain a priori judgments about the sig- nificance and importance of the elements of history. The presuppositions of historical investigation are not only cer- tain a priori categories of an epistemological character, but also certain existential judgments and value judgments of a metaphysical nature. These reflections which the non- theoretic and speculative interest projects into the histor- ical data are elements of the metaphysics of history. The latter is orientated in a direction different from that of the exact historical inquiry, which aims at a purely the- oretic picture of the historical actuality free from all meta- physical sublimation. But speculation about history, the metaphysics of history, is in practice usually not much more than a combination and co-ordination into one uni- tary system of the assumptions and presuppositions al- ready at work within the historical inquiry. Therefore, while speculation about nature remains entirely outside of the field of the natural sciences, speculation about his- tory becomes interwoven with historical inquiry. It is man- ifest both in the historical narrative and in the interpreta- tion in terms of historical laws. This analogy between the historical inquiry directed toward the finding of historical laws and philosophical speculation does not signify that history has become a part of philosophy. It merely shows that similar requirements and categories of cognition bring the material of both fields of inquiry into similar form. The conceptual forms which history creates, the historical laws, are similar to those of philosophic speculation, but they are not philosophic con- cepts.! 1 Ibid. pp. 185-55, 121-24.

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