Georg Simmel
Society is made of countless small interactions, and modern things like money and big cities change how people feel and relate to one another.
Placement
Co-founder of sociology and essayist of modernity: money, the metropolis and fashion as forms in which social life takes shape.
Key ideas
- Forms of sociation
- Philosophy of money
- Mental life of the metropolis
Students: Martin Buber, Georg Lukács, Alain Locke
Influence
Influenced by 3
Immanuel Kant
influenced by
Simmel recast Kant’s ‘How is nature possible?’ as ‘How is society possible?’, answering with a priori forms through which individuals experience themselves as members of society (Soziologie, 1908). G. Simmel, Soziologie (1908), “Exkurs über das Problem: Wie ist Gesellschaft möglich?”; Kant. Sechzehn Vorlesungen (1904); D. Frisby, Georg Simmel (1984)
Evidence: AI draft
Immanuel Kant › 1724–1804
Karl Marx
influenced by
Simmel wanted to build ‘a storey beneath historical materialism’, tracing economic forms themselves to psychological and metaphysical preconditions (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900, preface). G. Simmel, Philosophie des Geldes (1900), preface; D. Frisby, Georg Simmel (1984)
Evidence: AI draft
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Friedrich Nietzsche
influenced by
In Schopenhauer und Nietzsche (1907) Simmel read Nietzsche’s ethics as aiming at the elevation of the human type, not at egoism. G. Simmel, Schopenhauer und Nietzsche (1907); “Friedrich Nietzsche. Eine moralphilosophische Silhouette” (1896); SEP “Friedrich Nietzsche”
Evidence: AI draft
Friedrich Nietzsche › 1844–1900
Influenced 11
Max Weber
influenced
Weber drew on Simmel’s Problems of the Philosophy of History (1892) for interpretive understanding and on The Philosophy of Money (1900), but criticised his method (fragment, c. 1908). M. Weber, “Georg Simmel als Soziologe und Theoretiker der Geldwirtschaft” (fragment, c. 1908, printed 1972); “Roscher und Knies” (1903–06); Die protestantische Ethik (1904–05); SEP “Max Weber”
Evidence: AI draft
Max Weber › 1864–1920
Martin Buber taught
taught
Buber attended Simmel’s lectures in Berlin; when he edited the series Die Gesellschaft he first tried to win his ‘former teacher’ as editor, and Simmel contributed Die Religion (1906). SEP “Martin Buber”
Evidence: AI draft
Martin Buber › 1878–1965
Alain Locke taught
taught
Between Oxford and his Harvard doctorate, Locke studied at the University of Berlin in 1910–11 under Simmel and deepened his interest in the value theory of Meinong, Ehrenfels and Brentano. SEP “Alain LeRoy Locke”
Evidence: AI draft
Alain Locke › 1885–1954
Georg Lukács taught
taught
Lukács attended Simmel’s private seminar in Berlin (1906–07 and 1909–10); in History and Class Consciousness (1923) he still drew on Simmel’s Philosophie des Geldes while criticising it. SEP “Georg [György] Lukács”; G. Lukács, “Georg Simmel” (1918)
Evidence: AI draft
Georg Lukács › 1885–1971
Walter Benjamin
influenced
Benjamin noted for the Arcades Project that his concept of origin (1928) transposed Goethe’s concept of truth, as Simmel presented it (Goethe, 1913), from nature to history. W. Benjamin, Das Passagen-Werk (written 1927–40, publ. 1982), convolute N; G. Simmel, Goethe (1913)
Evidence: AI draft
Walter Benjamin › 1892–1940
Karl Mannheim
influenced ✓
Mannheim heard Simmel in Berlin and took up his tragedy of culture, the gulf between soul and objective culture, in his Budapest lecture ‘Soul and Culture’ (1917/18). K. Mannheim, “Lélek és kultúra” (lecture 1917, printed 1918); D. Kettler, V. Meja and N. Stehr, Karl Mannheim (1984)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Karl Mannheim › 1893–1947
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Erving Goffman
influenced
Goffman took Simmel’s ‘ideal sphere’ around every person as the basis of avoidance rituals that keep a respectful distance from others (‘The Nature of Deference and Demeanor’, 1956). E. Goffman, “The Nature of Deference and Demeanor” (1956), in Interaction Ritual (1967); G. Simmel, Soziologie (1908), “Das Geheimnis und die geheime Gesellschaft”
Evidence: AI draft
Erving Goffman › 1922–1982
Zygmunt Bauman
influenced
Bauman drew on Simmel’s figure of the stranger, near and remote at once, to analyse modernity’s fear of what defies classification (Modernity and Ambivalence, 1991). Z. Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence (1991); G. Simmel, “Exkurs über den Fremden”, in Soziologie (1908)
Evidence: AI draft
Zygmunt Bauman › 1925–2017
Ulrich Beck
influenced
Commentators trace Beck’s individualisation thesis to Simmel’s individuality arising from intersecting social circles; Beck diagnosed a new surge of it in post-war West Germany (Risikogesellschaft, 1986). U. Beck, Risikogesellschaft (1986); G. Simmel, Über sociale Differenzierung (1890); Soziologie (1908), “Die Kreuzung sozialer Kreise”
Evidence: AI draft
Ulrich Beck › 1944–2015
Patricia Hill Collins
influenced
Collins modelled Black women’s ‘outsider within’ status partly on Simmel’s stranger, near and far at once, whose marginality brings objectivity (‘Learning from the Outsider Within’, 1986). P. H. Collins, “Learning from the Outsider Within”, Social Problems 33 (1986); G. Simmel, “Exkurs über den Fremden”, in Soziologie (1908)
Evidence: AI draft
Patricia Hill Collins › b. 1948
Andreas Reckwitz
influenced
Reckwitz took up Simmel’s ‘qualitative individualism’, the valuing of the individual as unique, and made singularity the guiding logic of late-modern society (Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten, 2017). A. Reckwitz, Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten (2017); reply to critics, Analyse & Kritik (2022); G. Simmel, “Die beiden Formen des Individualismus” (1901)
Evidence: AI draft
Andreas Reckwitz › b. 1970
Criticism
Criticized by 2
Émile Durkheim
criticised by
Durkheim objected that Simmel’s formal sociology separates the forms of association from their content too vaguely to found a science (‘La sociologie et son domaine scientifique’, 1900). É. Durkheim, “La sociologia ed il suo dominio scientifico”, Rivista italiana di sociologia 4 (1900)
Evidence: AI draft
Émile Durkheim › 1858–1917
Marianne Weber
criticised by
In ‘Die Frau und die objektive Kultur’ (1913) Marianne Weber answered Simmel’s claim that objective culture is male and women’s being self-contained, defending women’s share in culture-creating work. Marianne Weber, “Die Frau und die objektive Kultur”, Logos 4 (1913); G. Simmel, “Weibliche Kultur” (1911), in Philosophische Kultur
Evidence: AI draft
Marianne Weber › 1870–1954
Works
Money as the pure form of exchange – and how it shapes freedom, distance and the style of modern life.
The metropolis breeds the blasé attitude: intellect as protection against an overload of stimuli.
Society exists wherever individuals affect one another; sociology studies the forms of these interactions – conflict, secrecy, the poor, the stranger.
Position
Simmel asked “How is society possible?” and answered that society is not a thing but a web of interactions (Wechselwirkungen). A new sociology, he argued in Sociology (1908), should study the forms of these interactions – competition, conflict, secrecy, superiority and subordination – apart from their changing contents, and the way the number of participants shapes them: a dyad dies with either member, a triad allows mediation or the “laughing third” who profits from the quarrel of two. His excursus on the stranger describes the one “who comes today and stays tomorrow”, near and distant at once. The Philosophy of Money (1900) shows how money turns qualities into quantities: it frees individuals from personal dependence but makes relationships more distant and calculating. In the metropolis, he observed in 1903, the flood of stimuli breeds a reserved, blasé attitude. He also described a “tragedy of culture”, in which the objective creations of the mind outgrow the individuals who make them. Lukács, Bloch and Kracauer heard his lectures, and Benjamin and the Chicago School drew on his work.
Life & context
Georg Simmel was born in Berlin in 1858; his father had converted from Judaism to Christianity, and Simmel was baptised a Protestant. He taught for three decades at the University of Berlin, where his lectures drew large audiences, among them the young Robert E. Park, later of the Chicago School. Antisemitism and distrust of his essayistic style kept him for most of his career a Privatdozent and unsalaried extraordinary professor; a chair in Heidelberg, for which Max Weber had proposed him in 1908, was refused after a hostile report. In 1909 he co-founded the German Sociological Association with Weber, Ferdinand Tönnies and others. He gained a chair in Strasbourg only in 1914 and died there in 1918.
Further main works
- On Social Differentiation (1890)
- Philosophical Culture (1911)
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