Georg Simmel’s Concluding Thoughts: Worlds, Lives, Fragments

Description

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. Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii Introduction: Contextualising Simmel’s Thinking (David Beer)....Pages 1-22 Front Matter ....Pages 23-23 Lowering a Plumb Line (David Beer)....Pages 25-52 The Emerging Figure (David Beer)....Pages 53-75 Front Matter ....Pages 77-77 Life as Transcendence (David Beer)....Pages 79-98 The Turn Towards Ideas (David Beer)....Pages 99-123 Death and Immortality (David Beer)....Pages 125-144 The Law of the Individual (David Beer)....Pages 145-170 Conclusion: Working with and Using Simmel’s Ideas (David Beer)....Pages 171-194 Back Matter ....Pages 195-197