David Beer 
Georg Simmel’s Concluding Thoughts 
Worlds, Lives, Fragments

This book draws upon the work of Georg Simmel to explore the limits, tensions and dynamism of social life through a close analysis of the works produced in the final years of his life and reveals what they might still offer some 100 years later. Focusing on the relationships between worlds, lives and fragments in these works, David Beer opens up a conceptual toolkit for understanding life as both an individual experience and as a deeply social phenomenon. Taking the reader through artistic and musical forms of inspiration, to the problems of culture and on to the conceptual understanding of lived experience, the book illuminates the richness of Simmel’s ideas and thinking. This sophisticated dialogue with Simmel’s lesser known later works will provide fresh insights for students and scholars of cultural and social theory and pave the way for a reinvigorated engagement with his ideas.

Зміст

Chapter 1. Introduction: Contextualising Simmel’s Thinking.- Part I: The Pursuit of Inspiration.- Chapter 2. Lowering a Plumb Line.- Chapter 3. The Emerging Figure.- Part II: The View of Life.- Chapter 4. Life as Transcendence.- Chapter 5. The Turn Toward Ideas.- Chapter 6. Death and Immortality.- Chapter 7. The Law of the Individual.- Chapter 8. Conclusion: Working with and Using Simmel’s Ideas.

Про автора

David Beer is Professor of Sociology at the University of York, UK. His previous books include
The Data Gaze (2018),
Metric Power (2016) and
Punk Sociology (2014).