Dimensions of conflict

Georg Simmel on modern life

Deena Weinstein

Michael Weinstein

pp. 341-355

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

Abstract

Among the founders of sociology as a distinctive discipline at the turn of the twentieth century Georg Simmel is distinguished from other major figures such as Emile Durkheim, Vilfredo Pareto, Ferdinand Tonnies, and Max Weber by his breadth of intellectual interests and contributions. In continental Europe sociology ordinarily arose as an outgrowth of the generalization of more specialized concerns about social relations into comprehensive accounts of social organization. Durkheim's use of anthropology to ground his visions of society, Tonnies's expansion of modern classical political thought to interpret the social bond, Pareto's synthesis of economic rationality and non- logical motives in a general sociology, and Max Weber's amplification of economic history into the study of types of social organization are all exemplary of the emergence of sociology as a coherent discursive formation. Simmel, too, constituted sociology through its relation to other fields of knowledge, but alone among the founders his primal discourse was philosophy, which provided him with a totalizing viewpoint from which he could enter a wide variety of areas and place them in dialectical reciprocity with each other.

Cited authors

Simmel Georg

Weber Max

Durkheim Emile

Pareto Vilfredo