Georg Simmel’s Theory of Culture

Abstract

Among the classical sociologists Georg Simmel is the major figure who can be said not only to have contributed to particular aspects of a new sociology and philosophy of culture, but to have self-consciously developed an explicit, general theory of culture and modern life. The theory consisted of an interconnected conceptual language and a perspective for ordering, understanding, explaining and judging our experience of culture. Simmel’s achievement was recognized by some of his colleagues in the universities and the new German Sociological Association, among students who flocked to his popular Berlin lectures, and by those who participated in his private seminar. In the words of one member of these audiences, the young Georg LukFács, “a sociology of culture, as it was taken over by Max Weber, Troeltsch, Sombart and others [including Lukács himself] surely became possible only on the basis established by Simmel”.¹ Today the originality, comprehensive¬ness and deep attraction of Simmels theoretical purpose still recom¬mend him as one of the truly significant primary thinkers on questions of culture.