ABSTRACT
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.
General introduction PART I: Biography 1. Simmel’s life: an unexplored continent PART II: Sociology 2. Simmel’s resonance with contemporary sociological debates 3. Relations, forms, and the representation of the social life: Georg Simmel and the challenge of relational sociology as Lebenssoziologie 4. Boundaries as relations: Georg Simmel’s relational theory of boundaries 5. The actuality of a sociological research programme PART III: Philosophy 6. Relativism: a theoretical and practical philosophical programme 7. The art of complicating things 8. Georg Simmel, Hans Blumenberg, and philosophical anthropology 9. Simmel’s ‘late life metaphysics’ PART IV: Art and aesthetics 10. Art and knowledge in Simmel’s thought and writing style 11. Social aesthetics 12. Philosophy of art 13. Framing, painting, seeing: Simmel’s Rembrandt and the sense of modernity PART V: Literature and theatre 14. Literary practice and immanent literary theory 15. The Goethean heritage in Simmel’s work 16. Simmel: the actor and his roles PART VI: Essayism and critical theory 17. Georg Simmel and the ‘newspaper sociology’ of the 1920s and 1930s 18. Georg Simmel and critical theory PART VII: Topics of debate 19. Freedom: an open debate 20. Georg Simmel’s theory of religion 21. Georg Simmel: war, nation, and Europe 22. Simmel’s cosmopolitanism 23. Economic pathologies of life PART VIII: Lines of reception 24. Simmel’s American legacy revisited 25. Goffman, Schutz, and the ‘secret of the other’: on the American sociological reception of Simmel’s ‘das Geheimnis des Anderen’ 26. Traces of Simmel in Latin America: modernity, nation, and memory
