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Georg Simmel

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Georg Simmel

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German sociologist, philosopher, and critic (1858–1918)

OverviewAI-generated

Georg Simmel was a German sociologist and philosopher born on March 1, 1858, and died on September 26, 1918. He is recognized as an author with 118 works listed in the Open Library. Among his notable publications are *Sociology of Religion*, *Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie. Eine erkenntnistheoretische Studie*, *Sobre el pesimismo*, *Soziologie*, and *Conflict and the Web of group-affliations*.

His academic output includes five works indexed by Crossref. Simmel has been referenced by 688 other encyclopedia articles. On the Last.fm platform, his name is associated with 24 listeners and a total playcount of 92.

Synthesized by Vinony from 14 facts across 6 sources: Wikidata, Last.fm, Crossref, MusicBrainz, Open Library, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Works
118

Top works

  • Sociology of Religion
  • Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie. Eine erkenntnistheoretische Studie
  • Sobre el pesimismo
  • Soziologie
  • Conflict and the Web of group-affliations

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type
Person
Active from
1858-03-01
Active to
1918-09-28

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
24
Total plays
92

Georg Simmel (March 1, 1858 – September 28, 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 <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Georg+Simmel"

via Last.fm · Georg Simmel

Quotes

  • The brutality of a man purely motivated by monetary considerations … often does not appear to him at all as a moral delinquency, since he is aware only of a rigorously logical behavior, which draws the objective consequences of the situation.
  • The individual who is subordinate to an objective law feels himself determined by it, while he, in turn, in no way determines the law, and has no possibility of reacting to it in a manner which could influence it&mdash;quite in contrast to even the most miserable slave, who, in some fashion at last, can still in this sense react to his master.
  • The social game has a deeper double meaning&mdash;that it is played not only in a society as its outward bearer but that with its help people actually "play" "society."
  • I understand the task of sociology to be description and determination of the historical-psychological origin of those forms in which interactions take place between human beings. The totality of these interactions, springing from the most diverse impulses, directed toward the most diverse objects, and aiming at the most diverse ends, constitutes "society."
  • Every social occurrence as such, consists of an interaction between individuals. In other words, each individual is at the same time an active and a passive agent in a transaction. In case of superiority and inferiority, however, the relation assumes the appearance of a one-sided operation ; the one party appears to exert, while the other seems merely to receive an influence.
  • Die tiefsten Probleme des modernen Lebens quellen aus dem Anspruch des Individuums, die Selbständigkeit und Eigenart seines Daseins gegen die Übermächte der Gesellschaft, des geschichtlich Ererbten, der äußerlichen Kultur und Technik des Lebens zu bewahren - die letzterreichte Umgestaltung des Kampfes mit der Natur, den der primitive Mensch um seine leibliche Existenz zu führen hat.

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

~26 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Georg Simmel (/ˈzɪməl/; German: [ˈzɪml̩]; 1 March 1858 – 26 September 1918) was a German sociologist, philosopher, and critic. A founding figure of sociology, his neo-Kantian approach helped establish sociological antipositivism, asking "What is society?" in analogy to Kant's "What is nature?". He pioneered analyses of individuality and social fragmentation.

Simmel discussed social and cultural phenomena in terms of "forms" and "contents" with a transient relationship, wherein form becomes content, and vice versa dependent on context. In this sense, Simmel was a forerunner to structuralist styles of reasoning in the social sciences.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Georg Simmel” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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