1st Edition
The Routledge International Handbook of Simmel Studies
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
Gregor Fitzi
PART I: Biography
1. Simmel’s life: an unexplored continent
Gregor Fitzi
PART II: Sociology
2. Simmel’s resonance with contemporary sociological debates
Olli Pyyhtinen
3. Relations, forms, and the representation of the social life: Georg Simmel and the challenge of relational sociology as Lebenssoziologie
Davide Ruggieri
4. Boundaries as relations: Georg Simmel’s relational theory of boundaries
Natàlia Cantó-Milà
5. The actuality of a sociological research programme
Gregor Fitzi
PART III: Philosophy
6. Relativism: a theoretical and practical philosophical programme
Matthieu Amat
7. The art of complicating things
Denis Thouard
8. Georg Simmel, Hans Blumenberg, and philosophical anthropology
Andrea Borsari
9. Simmel’s ‘late life metaphysics’
Gregor Fitzi
PART IV: Art and aesthetics
10. Art and knowledge in Simmel’s thought and writing style
Claudia Portioli
11. Social aesthetics
Barbara Carnevali and Andrea Pinotti
12. Philosophy of art
Ingo Meyer
13. Framing, painting, seeing: Simmel’s Rembrandt and the sense of modernity
Thomas Kemple
PART V: Literature and theatre
14. Literary practice and immanent literary theory
Monika Tokarzewska
15. The Goethean heritage in Simmel’s work
Paola Giacomoni
16. Simmel: the actor and his roles
François Thomas
PART VI: Essayism and critical theory
17. Georg Simmel and the ‘newspaper sociology’ of the 1920s and 1930s
Barbara Thériault
18. Georg Simmel and critical theory
Vincenzo Mele
PART VII: Topics of debate
19. Freedom: an open debate
Monica Martinelli
20. Georg Simmel’s theory of religion
Volkhard Krech
21. Georg Simmel: war, nation, and Europe
Patrick Watier
22. Simmel’s cosmopolitanism
Austin Harrington
23. Economic pathologies of life
Arthur Bueno
PART VIII: Lines of reception
24. Simmel’s American legacy revisited
Milos Brocic and Daniel Silver
25. Goffman, Schutz, and the ‘secret of the other’: on the American sociological reception of Simmel’s ‘das Geheimnis des Anderen’
Gary D. Jaworski
26. Traces of Simmel in Latin America: modernity, nation, and memory
Esteban Vernik
Biography
Gregor Fitzi is President of the Simmel Gesellschaft. He is the author of The Challenge of Modernity: Simmel’s Sociological Theory and the co-editor of the three-volume set Populism and the Crisis of Democracy. He is editor of the journal Simmel Studies.
