*** Welcome to piglix ***

George Simmel

Georg Simmel
Simmel 01.JPG
Georg Simmel
Born 1 March 1858
Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia
Died 28 September 1918(1918-09-28) (aged 60)
Strassburg, German Empire
Nationality German
Alma mater University of Berlin
Era 19th-century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Neo-Kantianism
Lebensphilosophie
Institutions University of Berlin
University of Strasbourg
Main interests
Philosophy, Sociology
Notable ideas
Formal sociology, social forms and contents, the metropolis of modern life, the tragedy of culture, web of group affiliation

Georg Simmel (German: [ˈzɪməl]; 1 March 1858 – 28 September 1918) was a German sociologist, philosopher, and critic.

Simmel was one of the first generation of German sociologists: his neo-Kantian approach laid the foundations for sociological antipositivism, asking 'What is society?' in a direct allusion to Kant's question 'What is nature?', presenting pioneering analyses of social individuality and fragmentation. For Simmel, culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history". Simmel discussed social and cultural phenomena in terms of "forms" and "contents" with a transient relationship; form becoming content, and vice versa, dependent on the context. In this sense he was a forerunner to structuralist styles of reasoning in the social sciences. With his work on the metropolis, Simmel was a precursor of urban sociology, symbolic interactionism and social network analysis.

An acquaintance of Max Weber, Simmel wrote on the topic of personal character in a manner reminiscent of the sociological 'ideal type'. He broadly rejected academic standards, however, philosophically covering topics such as emotion and romantic love. Both Simmel and Weber's nonpositivist theory would inform the eclectic critical theory of the Frankfurt School.

Simmel's most famous works today are The Problems of the Philosophy of History (1892), The Philosophy of Money (1907), The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903), Soziologie (1908, inc. The Stranger, The Social Boundary, The Sociology of the Senses, The Sociology of Space, and On The Spatial Projections of Social Forms), and Fundamental Questions of Sociology (1917). He also wrote extensively on the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, as well on art, most notably his book Rembrandt: An Essay in the Philosophy of Art (1916).


...
Wikipedia

...