An internationally famous philosopher and best-selling author during his lifetime, Georg Simmel has been marginalized in contemporary intellectual and cultural history. This neglect belies his pathbreaking role in revealing the theoretical significance of phenomena—including money, gender, urban life, and technology—that subsequently became established arenas of inquiry in cultural theory. It further ignores his philosophical impact on thinkers as diverse as Benjamin, Musil, and Heidegger. Integrating intellectual biography, philosophical interpretation, and a critical examination of the history of academic disciplines, this book restores Simmel to his rightful place as a major figure and challenges the frameworks through which his contributions to modern thought have been at once remembered and forgotten.

This book draws upon the work of Georg Simmel to explore the limits, tensions and dynamism of social life through a close analysis of the works produced in the final years of his life and reveals what they might still offer some 100 years later. Focusing on the relationships between worlds, lives and fragments in these works, David Beer opens up a conceptual toolkit for understanding life as both an individual experience and as a deeply social phenomenon. Taking the reader through artistic and musical forms of inspiration, to the problems of culture and on to the conceptual understanding of lived experience, the book illuminates the richness of Simmel’s ideas and thinking. This sophisticated dialogue with Simmel’s lesser known later works will provide fresh insights for students and scholars of cultural and social theory and pave the way for a reinvigorated engagement with his ideas.

The complete collected works of Georg Simmel are now available. Yet, the standing of Simmel’s sociological theory is still a subject of controversy. Is Simmel only a brilliant impressionist, a flâneur in the territories of modernity? Providing an illuminating and coherent presentation of Simmel’s sociological theory, The Challenge of Modernity seeks to demonstrate how Simmel contributed a structured sociological theory that fits the criteria of a ‘sociological grand theory’. Indeed, starting by the theory of modernity and its dimensions of social differentiation, monetarisation, culture reification and urbanisation; it reconstructs the architecture of Simmel’s sociological epistemology. Particular attention is dedicated to the theory of ‘qualitative societal differentiation’ that Simmel develops within his cultural sociology, with the late work being presented as a double contribution to the foundation of sociological anthropology and to the social ethics of complex societies. Presenting the entirety of Simmel’s manifold oeuvre from the viewpoint of its relevance for sociology, this comprehensive volume will appeal to scholars and advanced students who wish to understand Simmel’s relevance for socio-political thought and become acquainted with his contribution to sociological theory. It will also be of interest to the wider public who seek a critical assessment of our age in theoretical terms.

Combines classic and cutting-edge scholarship on personal social networks. A must-have resource for both newcomers and seasoned experts.

The Routledge International Handbook of Simmel Studies documents the richness, variety, and creativity of contemporary international research on Georg Simmel’s work. Starting with the established role of Simmel as a classical author of sociology, and including the growing interest in his work in the domain of philosophy, this volume explores the research on Simmel in several further disciplines including art, social aesthetics, literature, theatre, essayism, and critical theory, as well as in the debates on cosmopolitanism, economic pathologies of life, freedom, modernity, religion, and nationalism. Bringing together contributions from leading specialists in research on Simmel, the book is thematically arranged in order to highlight the relevance of his oeuvre for different fields of recent research, with a further section tracing the most important paths that Simmel’s reception has taken in the world. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities, and to sociologists, philosophers, and social theorists in particular, with interest in Simmel’s thought.

Greg M. Nielsen brings Mikhail Bakhtin's ethics and aesthetics into a dialogue with social theory that responds to the sense of ambivalence and uncertainty at the core of modern societies. Nielsen situates a social theory between Bakhtin's norms of answerability and Jürgen Habermas's sociology, ethics, and discourse theory of democracy in a way that emphasizes the creative dimension in social action without reducing explanation to the emotional and volitional impulse of the individual or collective actor. Some of the classical sources that support this mediated position are traced to Alexander Vvedenskij's and Georg Simmel's critiques of Kant's ethics, Hermann Cohen's philosophy of fellowship, and Max Weber's and George Herbert Mead's theories of action. In the shift from Bakhtin's theory of interpersonal relations to a dialogic theory of societal events that defends the bold claim that law and politics should not be completely separated from the specificity of ethical and cultural communities, a study of citizenship and national identity is developed.

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.