Georg Simmel and the cultural dilemma of women

Suzanne Vromen

pp. 319-340

in: Michael Kaern, Bernard S. Phillips, Robert S. Cohen (eds), Georg Simmel and contemporary sociology, Berlin, Springer, 1990

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century, Georg Simmel (1858–1918) occupied an important place among prominent sociologists who, like Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, elaborated sociology as an independent discipline, a science of society, and who interpreted the consequences of growing social differentiation and new relationships in the contemporary world. They all saw men as facing alienation, dehuman- isation and fragmentation. Georg Simmel stands alone, however, as the one who also explicitly questioned the future of women in modern society. The world as he saw it was clearly populated by two sexes. He addressed the problem of the modalities of existence of women on two different levels, both as a theorist and as an active intellectual concerned with the debate over "the woman question" and the rise of the women's movement in Imperial Germany.

Cited authors

Simmel Georg

Weber Max

Durkheim Emile