Simmel

Georg Simmel (1858–1918) was a German sociologist and philosopher who helped establish sociology as a formal discipline. He emphasized form over content in social life, arguing that patterns of interaction—rather than what people do—shape social reality. His work laid the groundwork for formal sociology, analyzing recurring social forms such as exchange, conflict, and affiliation, and showing how dyads differ from triads.

His Metropolis and Mental Life (1903) analyzes how modern urban life conditions perception, time, and individuality. He describes the blasé attitude as a psychological defense to sensory overload and rapid social turnover in cities.

In The Philosophy of Money (1900) Simmel argues that money, as a universal value form, reframes social relations by monetizing value, reducing personal ties to calculable exchanges, and reorganizing social distance and time.

As a social type, the Stranger embodies proximity and distance, illustrating how new social positions emerge in mixed relations. He also studied fashion and style as forms of social expression and differentiation, showing how diffusion and individual signaling occur within social networks.

Simmel’s work influenced later sociologists including Weber and Durkheim and helped inaugurate urban sociology and micro-sociology. Though his writings were varied and sometimes diffuse, his ideas fostered approaches that persist in contemporary analyses of social forms, urban life, and modernity. Major works include Die Philosophie des Geldes (1900); Die Großstädte und das Geistesleben (1903); and Soziologie: Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung (1908), which includes the essay Der Fremde. He died in Strasbourg in 1918.