Georg Simmel (1858-1918)

You could always get a very long and comprehensive biography of someone famous from the wikipedia or an encyclopedia, however, writing a biography in a blog is a much neater, faster, and sometimes more affective way of communicating information among individuals in a group. Georg Simmel is a very interesting character in the sense that he is was one of the first series of German sociologists or I should say he is one of the first people who where regarded as German sociologist.

As a result of his neo-kantian approach he laid the foundation for anitpositivism. This new Kantian approach is evident in his doctoral thesis titled "The Nature of Matter According to Kant's Physical Monadology." He presented pioneering analysis of social individuality, creativity and fragmentation as well as cultural forms and contents. He also helped to shape urban sociology as we know it today and had great influence on the works of many sociologists such as Lewis A. Coser. This is evident in Coser's "Sociological Theory" that treated the concept of social conflict. Many of his works are edited in works that group some or all of his works in one collection and make it available for the audience. However, his famous works today are :

1. The Philosophy of Money
2. The Stranger
3. The Web of Group Affiliation
4. The Metropolis and Mental Life

He was an adopted child from a family who owned an international music publishing house. This enabled him to become a scholar. His complicated religious ilfe and strange family background made Georg a very unique character. He studied philosophy, history, social psychology, and medieval Italian at the University of Berlin. After becoming a Privatdozent at the University of Berlin in 1885, he officially started lecturing in the areas of philosophy, ethics, logic, pessimissim, art, psychology, and sociology. He was a very popular lecturer and as a result attracted a great deal of scholars from all around the world! In 1901 he was elevated to the rank of full professorship where he was seen as a man of great eminence and intellect. He cofounded the German Society of Sociology with two of his friends; Max Weber and Ferdinand Tonnies. Some of his other friends where Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George, and Edmund Husserl. He married in 1890 to a woman named Gertrud Kinel, a philosopher who wrote in two pseudonym names, her family name of Gertrud Simmel and Marie-Luise Enckendorf. After the out break of World War I, Simmel lost hope in contemporary history and rarther shifted towards the ideas that where behind the interactions between art and philosophy. Shortly after the war in 1918, as he was finishing writing a book, he died from liver cancer.

A New Start

Dear writers, readers, and individuals and groups who are interested in a new and not so new methodology in the understanding of history. This new biographical view of how history works and accumulates overtime. How it changes from one scene to another is important and crucial to note. This biographical view tries to introduce one or two characters in this historical journey in each blog that it presents. This new way of writing is important since it captures a better understanding of how these views try to group themselves from various different points. Again this is a new journey and it takes time and diligence to develop that kind of methodology for better understanding these issues. Thanks.