Simmel, Georg (1858—1918)
German philosopher and one of the founding figures of social research and critical theory. Simmel was a prolific author of more than twenty-five books, and a direct influence on one of the most important schools of thought of the twentieth century, namely the Frankfurt School. Habermas, Jürgen acknowledged him as an important diagnostician of contemporary society, but Talcott Parsons thought his work lacked a clear methodology so he excluded him from his canon of great thinkers of the twentieth century. Simmel was born in Berlin and lived most of his life there, witnessing the city’s growth from provincial capital to an industrialized metropolis. Berlin was a touchstone for much of Simmel’s writing, particularly his most famous essay ‘Die Großstädte und das Geistesleben’ (1903), translated as ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’ (1948). In spite of his international renown and an illustrious group of friends and correspondents---Stefan George, Rainer Maria Rilke, Auguste Rodin, Husserl, Edmund, and Weber, Max---Simmel was, for most of his professional life, a somewhat marginal figure. However, his failure to advance professionally was cushioned to a great degree by the fact that he was able to support himself with an inheritance. Simmel commenced his studies at Berlin University in 1876, first in history, then psychology (where he was taught by Moritz Lazarus, who also taught Dilthey, Wilhelm), and finally philosophy. In 1885 he was given a post at Berlin University, which he held until 1900. He remained untenured for fifteen years, partly because of his Jewishness, partly because he failed to secure the support needed from powerful colleagues to advance, but mostly because sociology did not then have the recognition and legitimacy it does today. Simmel was, however, very popular with students (among them Bloch, Ernst) and was one of the first to admit women into his classes (long before this became officially possible in 1908). Simmel finally succeeded in obtaining a full chair in philosophy at Strasbourg University shortly before the outbreak of World War I in 1914. He remained there until his death in 1918. The essential structure of Simmel’s system of thought is set out in two books generally referred to as the ‘major’ and the ‘minor’ sociologies: the first, consisting of essays begun in the 1890s and completed in 1908, totalling over 1,000 pages (hence the designation ‘major’), is Soziologie: Untersuchungen über die Formen Vergesellschaftung (1908), partially translated as Sociology: Inquiries into the Construction of Social Forms (2009); the second, completed a decade later, is Grundfragen der Soziologie (Individuum und Gesellschaft) (1917), translated as Fundamental Problems of Sociology (Individual and Society) (1950). These two works map out three broad areas of inquiry: sociology’s presuppositions; the relation between individual and society viewed from the standpoint of either the individual or society; and the development of social forms. At first glance, Simmel’s work appears to cover an utterly eclectic range of topics, but there is a clear undercurrent of interest in the singular problematic he referred to as the ‘double relationship’ between the individual and society: on the one hand, the individual belongs to society as a whole and is part of that, but on the other hand as an individual he or she stands opposed to it. At the centre of Simmel’s conception of society is the concept of ‘interaction’, specifically the interaction between individuals and society. But for Simmel this should not be understood as the interaction between pre-existing entities (as in Durkheim, Émile’s work); on the contrary, the interaction is itself productive. He goes so far as to say that one should not really speak of society, as such, because that just refers to a collection of individuals. Instead one should speak of ‘sociation’ (Vergesellschaftung), i.e. a society-producing process. Simmel’s work hinges on the distinction he develops between form in the abstract and content in the particular in a cultural setting. By form, Simmel meant the patterned ways people interact with each other and structure their everyday life, which provides the material for what he considered to be content. For Simmel, content is essentially unavailable to us except through the lens of forms, which are the functional equivalent of Immanuel Kant’s categories. Forms give content a determinate and determining existence. For instance, music is a cultural form that has evolved from an actual set of practices into a virtual entity by which we judge sound to be either sheer noise or something aesthetically interesting. The four basic principles underpinning Simmel’s method are: (i) the world consists of a bewildering variety of contents given shape by a limited number of forms; (ii) the meaning of events and objects only emerges through their interaction with other events and objects; (iii) the properties of forms and the meanings of objects are a function of the distance we are able to interpose between ourselves and the respective forms and objects; (iv) the world is best understood as a series of conflicts between contrasting categories. These principles are vividly evident in Simmel’s best-known and arguably most important work Philosophie des Geldes (1900), translated as The Philosophy of Money (1978). This work divided his contemporaries: it was greatly admired by Lukács, György and roundly criticized by Durkheim, Émile. Kracauer, Siegfried wrote (but never published in full) an appreciative study of it after Simmel’s death. Further Reading: D. Frisby Georg Simmel (1984). D. Frisby Fragments of Modernity (1985).