Georg Simmel

Life and Career

Georg Simmel (1858–1918) was a German philosopher and one of the founding figures of classical sociology, alongside Émile Durkheim and Max Weber. Born in Berlin to a middle-class family of Jewish origin that had converted to Christianity, Simmel studied philosophy and history at the University of Berlin, earning his doctorate in 1881 with a thesis on Kant’s philosophy of matter.

Despite his intellectual prominence, Simmel’s academic trajectory was marginal and often precarious. For many years he lived as a Privatdozent (unsalaried lecturer) in Berlin, financing himself through public lectures, journalism, and publishing. His lectures attracted large cross-disciplinary audiences and made him a well-known intellectual figure in the city, yet anti-Jewish prejudice and disciplinary conservatism impeded his access to a full professorship.

In 1901 he became an extraordinary (associate) professor in Berlin, still without a regular chair. Only in 1914 did Simmel receive a full professorship in philosophy at the University of Strasbourg, where he taught until his death in 1918 from liver cancer. His major works include Über sociale Differenzierung (1890), Soziologie (1908), Philosophie des Geldes (The Philosophy of Money, 1900; 2nd ed. 1907), and essays such as “Die Großstädte und das Geistesleben” (“The Metropolis and Mental Life,” 1903).

Formal Sociology and Social Forms

Simmel is best known for his development of formal sociology, a program that aimed to analyze the forms of social interaction independently of their concrete historical and cultural content. For Simmel, social reality consists of countless interactions among individuals; sociology should isolate the recurring patterns or social forms that these interactions take.

Examples of such forms include conflict, cooperation, exchange, domination and subordination, the secret, the stranger, and sociability. Simmel argued that very different groups—families, religious communities, economic organizations—may share the same underlying forms of interaction. A conflict within a political party and a conflict between siblings differ in content but exhibit structurally similar patterns of opposition and reconciliation.

His analyses of dyads and triads—groups of two and three members—became especially influential. In a dyad, each member is directly and intensely bound to the other; if one member leaves, the group ceases to exist. In a triad, new possibilities arise: coalitions, mediation, and majority rule. Simmel used such micro-structural distinctions to show how the number of participants changes the dynamics of loyalty, secrecy, and power.

This attention to relational patterns led Simmel to treat society not as a substance or collective entity, but as an ongoing process of “Vergesellschaftung” (association). Society, in this view, is nothing over and above the web of interactions that continually bind individuals together. Proponents see this as a precursor to later interactionist and network approaches in sociology, while critics argue that Simmel’s focus on form can underplay material inequalities and institutional structures.

Money, the Metropolis, and Modern Culture

Beyond formal sociology, Simmel made pioneering contributions to the analysis of modernity. In The Philosophy of Money, he examined money not just as an economic tool but as a cultural and psychological force. Money, as a universal means of exchange, facilitates unprecedented social differentiation, mobility, and individual freedom. At the same time, it encourages impersonal, calculative relations, what Simmel called the “objectification” of value.

Simmel’s account highlights several tensions: money allows individuals to pursue diverse life-projects, yet it also subjects them to an abstract economic logic that can erode qualitative, personal values. This ambivalence—freedom through impersonal mechanisms—became central to later debates on capitalism and modern life.

In his famous essay “The Metropolis and Mental Life”, Simmel explored how large modern cities shape perception and personality. The metropolis, characterized by rapid stimuli and dense social interactions, produces what he called the “blasé attitude”: a stance of reserve and emotional distance as a defense against sensory and social overload. City dwellers respond by emphasizing intellectualization, punctuality, and calculability, traits reinforced by money-based economies.

Simmel did not simply condemn urban life; he saw the city as both a site of individualization and alienation. The weakening of traditional bonds creates space for personal autonomy and creative experimentation—manifest in fashion, art, and subcultures—yet also for loneliness and fragmentation. His shorter essays on fashion, the poor, the stranger, and sociability develop this theme of how individuals negotiate belonging and difference in complex societies.

Legacy and Reception

Simmel’s work was dispersed across books, essays, and occasional pieces, which contributed to an image of him as a “brilliant essayist” rather than a system-builder. During his lifetime he influenced contemporaries such as Max Weber, Robert Michels, and early cultural sociologists, but institutional recognition lagged behind his public reputation.

In the mid-20th century, Simmel’s ideas were rediscovered by various traditions. Symbolic interactionism, phenomenological sociology, and network theory drew on his focus on micro-interaction and social forms. The Chicago School of urban sociology cited his work on cities and marginality; philosophers and cultural theorists engaged with his reflections on tragedy of culture, the process by which objective cultural products (institutions, artworks, systems of thought) outgrow and constrain subjective life.

Proponents regard Simmel as a foundational theorist of modernity, whose analyses anticipate concerns about consumer culture, globalization, and identity. Critics, however, point to the relatively fragmentary and sometimes aphoristic character of his oeuvre, and to a perceived neglect of class, gender, and colonial structures in his accounts of social differentiation.

Nevertheless, Simmel is widely seen as a central figure in bridging philosophy and sociology, offering a nuanced account of how the seemingly abstract structures of money, the city, and culture penetrate the intimate textures of everyday life. His work continues to be revisited for its subtle analyses of how individuals form, maintain, and resist social bonds under the conditions of modern society.