Simmel’s reading of Nietzsche: The promise of “philosophical sociology”

Partyga, Dominika

doi:10.1177/1468795x16656267

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 33 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“….] [and thus] does not derive from any single, ‘anti-social’, individual interest.” In this regard, his approach contrasts sharply with Schopenhauer’s and Nietzsche’s “antisociological” tendency to oppose the “will to life” or “power” and the sovereign development of individual ideals to socially shared principles, institutions, and cultural artifacts (Partyga, 2016). The tragedy of such insoluble conflict between the stubbornness of roles imposed to the individual parts of the whole, and the part, which strives to exist as whole, finds a third answer in the philosophical sociology of adventure.…”

Section: Creative Action and The “Advent” Of The Newmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adventure in the social world: Georg Simmel’s appeal to a theory of creative action

Lafontaine

2022

Journal of Classical Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Reconstructing the logic of everyday action between reproduction and invention of forms is a growing concern in contemporary debates on the praxeological foundation of sociology. This article argues for a renewed understanding of action in its contingency and creativity. Building on current developments on the role of projectivity and imagination in the emergence of the new and unexpected in action, it turns to Simmel’s undervalued essay “The Adventure” to examine a style of conduct characterized by deviation from predicable patterns and background assumptions in everyday life. To understand the emergent properties and intrinsic complexity of creative action, one must consider the philosophical discoveries of Simmel concerning the form of adventure in the subjective flow of time. The adventure is elaborated as an action involving curiosity, unfamiliar detours, and a sense of presentness as striking features that benefit insights from his later work on life’s transcendence.

show abstract

Section: Creative Action and The “Advent” Of The Newmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adventure in the social world: Georg Simmel’s appeal to a theory of creative action

Lafontaine

2022

Journal of Classical Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…‘Interim conclusion: Simmel was certainly not a Kant scholar’ (Röttgers, 2011: 71). On the Kant-Nietzsche relationship in Simmel, see the instructive essay by Partyga (2016: 423), who provides a very good overview of Simmel’s reception of Nietzsche.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Georg Simmel’s political thought: Socialism and Nietzschean aristocratism

Moebius

2021

Journal of Classical Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Georg Simmel’s political position has rarely been discussed explicitly – perhaps because many scholars have assumed that Simmel was ‘apolitical’ before 1914. The present article shows that even before 1914 Simmel held a distinct political position, to wit a peculiar kind of liberal-Nietzschean aristocratic individualism. This individualism is the result of a passage through ‘the hard school’ of egalitarian socialism in order to reach true individuality. It is closely related to Simmel’s central theorem of the so-called ‘individual law’. After a socio-historical contextualisation of Simmel’s political thought, the article follows this motif in detail through his diagnosis of the times, his theory of socio-cultural development, his engagement in cultural politics, his ideal of personality formation and his engagement in the bourgeois women’s movement. Simmel’s thought culminates in a conception of ‘dialectic aristocratism’. In this respect, the normative core of Simmel’s political standpoint is very close to Max Weber’s position. The last section argues that Simmel’s war writings do not mark a break in his political thinking, but rather apply the same theorem of the ‘individual law’ to the German state. Through its various stages, the article shows that Simmel’s political orientation, linked to key theoretical concepts, is deeply rooted in the educated bourgeoisie’s worldview and habitus.

show abstract

“…On Simmel's interpretation of Nietzsche as "moral philosopher" seePartyga, 2016 and Ferruccio Andolfi's introduction to the Italian translations of Simmel's essays on Nietzsche(Andolfi, 2008: 7-28).5 On postmodernity in social sciences seeSusen, 2015 andMele, 2017. …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Blasé and the Flâneur. Simmel and Benjamin on Modern and Postmodern Forms of Individualization

Mele¹

2021

sst

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Simmel’s blasé and Benjamin’s flâneur as symbols of their models of metropolitan subjectivity can be the necessary reference points for delineating two models, sometimes converging, other times diverging, regarding the representation of the individual and its possible autonomy in the context of the “aestheticization” of contemporary daily life. Simmel does not stop looking – albeit with an accent on the tragic that grew ever stronger in last stages of his reflections – at the individual and the process of individualization from the perspective of the ever more marked differentiation and growth of the vital possibilities of the individual. Simmel’s conception of life as Adventure expresses an irreversible trend of contemporary subjectivity, which is towards the realization of its peculiarity and uniqueness. Benjamin, on the contrary, criticizes the conception of the adventure as the very search for true “lived experience” (Erlebnis), because it would lead directly to the aestheticization of politics, the exaltation of the noble gesture, the search for the authentic − all the forms of cultural expression that led to fascism and war. He seems rather prefer going beyond − in the utopian and/or ideological sense − the individualistic structure of contemporary society. His hope was that the void created by the disappearance of the western individual could be filled by new forms and figures of subjectivity and intellectuality made possible through the means offered by the technical reproducibility of artwork. From an exquisitely theoretical point of view, nothing can guarantee a priori that the search for authenticity does not head in this regressive direction, instead of establishing a point of departure towards new ethical and political paths.

show abstract

Simmel’s reading of Nietzsche: The promise of “philosophical sociology”

Cited by 9 publications

References 33 publications

Adventure in the social world: Georg Simmel’s appeal to a theory of creative action

Adventure in the social world: Georg Simmel’s appeal to a theory of creative action

Georg Simmel’s political thought: Socialism and Nietzschean aristocratism

The Blasé and the Flâneur. Simmel and Benjamin on Modern and Postmodern Forms of Individualization

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About