Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: N ot least among the editorial decisions for which readers of this sem- inal publication can be grateful are the quotations that serve as backcover blurbs.The first quotes the critical theorist Max Horkheimer, in 1956: "Georg Simmel is the only sociologist one can read anymore."The second quotes the University of Chicago urban sociologist, and Simmel's student, Robert E. Park: "Although Simmel has written the most profound and stimulating book in sociology, in my opinion ... he was not in the first instance a sociologist but a philosopher."This translation of The View of Life affirms both judgments, although both raise more questions than they settle.For what reader is Simmel the "only" sociologist to read, and how do Simmel's philosophical writings relate to his sociology?Horkheimer's assertion will seem least hyperbolic to readers who look to sociology for wisdom about how to live a fully human life.Simmel's Journal Aphorisms may number only 166, requiring 28 pages of text, but they establish his place in the tradition from Marcus Aurelius through Pascal.Here are two samples, chosen for their brevity: "One can assert but not prove the ultimate, highest, objective values -one must prove but not assert one's own value" (p.170), and "What better thing can a man wish himself than a great task and a fortitude for it that no longer depends on the hope of its solution?"(p.171).This volume would be worth purchasing for the aphorisms alone.But their scope and style raises Park's issue: are these writings part of the sociological canon?Not the least academic question raised by The View of Life is that of the book itself: do sociologists want their discipline to be able to embrace all of Simmel's writing, not splitting his work as Park implies?Does sociology aspire to wisdom on how to live?The four essays that fill the first 154 pages of this volume -following an incisive critical introduction -were published in German (Lebensanchuung) in 1918, just before Simmel's death.The aphorisms were published posthumously the next year.Donald N. Levine's earlier 222 © Canadian Journal of SoCiology/CahierS CanadienS de SoCiologie 36(2) 2011 book with the Journal Aphorisms.There, most clearly, is Simmel's imagination of how the old academic disciplinary forms can transcend their present limits, that something new might emerge.
DOI: 10.29173/cjs10557
Author: Arthur Frank
Institution: University of Calgary
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W1893626688