Georg Simmel’s final work, The View of Life, concludes his lifelong engagement with Immanuel Kant by ‘inverting’ Kant’s Categorical Imperative to produce an ethics of authentic individuality. While Kant’s moral imperative is universal to all individuals but particular to their discrete acts, Simmel’s Law of the Individual is particular to each individual but universal to all the individual’s acts. We assess the significance of Simmel’s formulation of the Law of the Individual in three steps: First, as an articulation of an (...) ethical moment consonant with his relational approach to formal sociology, hinted at earlier in Sociology but not developed as such. Second, as a completion of the framework for Simmel’s formal sociology: the Law of the Individual conceptualizes a decisive but under-theorized relationship in Simmel’s vision of ‘society’ that is a woven fabric of social relationships, namely one’s relationship with oneself. We follow with a third proposal about how Simmel might have continued the line of thought he opens in The View of Life, suggesting that we can take the Law of the Individual as an invitation to fold the self-relation back into analysis of social relations, and to theorize how forms of association are shaped by forms of self-relation. We thus narrow the theoretical gulf between Simmel’s vitalism and his sociology, which commentators usually hold apart. And in so doing, we sketch a distinctively Simmelian approach to an ethics of individuality in sociological inquiry. (shrink)

Contrary to common perceptions of Simmel’s work as dividing into three stages of Darwinism, Kantianism, and Goethean/Bergsonian Life-Philosophy, consideration of the full scope of the Georg Simmel Gesamtausgabe demonstrates Simmel’s concern with both Kant and Goethe as life-long, just as was his engagement with core principles respectively associated with them: Form and Life. What changed in his mind over time was how those two principles were construed and related. In this view, Simmel’s Soziologie can be read as a treatise on (...) the properties of social forms that emerge out of vital processes – following a dynamic akin to Blumenbach’s Bildungstrieb, whereas the Lebensanschauung puts more emphasis on the ways in which forms channel, constrain, and inspire the streams of life. This opens the door for creative work pursuing lines of connection between the two disciplines – a sociology of authentic individuality and a kind of existentialized sociology – and, beyond that, to a unified theory of action and evolution. (shrink)

Les sciences sociales contemporaines se caractérisent par un abandon de la quête d’une véritable connaissance a priori non-relativiste. D’une part, les méthodes quantitatives et le positivisme méthodologique rejettent en général la possibilité de l’acquisition de ce type de savoir. D’autre part, les méthodes qualitatives et les approches herméneutiques, lorsqu’elles ne cherchent pas explicitement à obtenir des connaissances a posteriori, se caractérisent généralement par un apriorisme sceptique selon lequel l’adoption de n’importe quelle perspective ou cadre théorique est considérée valable. Cet article (...) propose d’évaluer trois perspectives différentes sur la possibilité de la connaissance a priori en sciences sociales, c’est-à-dire celles de François Simiand (critique de l’apriorisme), Ludwig von Mises (partisan de l’apriorisme praxéologique) et de Georg Simmel (initiateur d’un apriorisme formaliste). Cette évaluation comparative permet de mettre en évidence la portée et les limites de l’apriorisme en ce qui a trait à l’acquisition de connaissances en sciences sociales. Elle permet, en dernière analyse, de rendre à l’apriorisme ses lettres de noblesse et d’ainsi faciliter son éventuel retour sous une forme qui échapperait au relativisme actuel. (shrink)

Social network research is widely considered atheoretical. In contrast, in this article I argue that network analysis often mixes two distinct theoretical frameworks, creating a logically inconsistent foundation. Relationalism rejects essentialism and a priori categories and insists upon the intersubjectivity of experience and meaning as well as the importance of the content of interactions and their historical setting. Formalism is based on a structuralist interpretation of the theoretical works of Georg Simmel. Simmel laid out a neo-Kantian program of identifying a (...) priori categories of relational types and patterns that operate independently of cultural content or historical setting. Formalism and relationalism are internally consistent theoretical perspectives, but there are tensions between them. To pave the way for stronger middle-range theoretical development, I disaggregate the two approaches and highlight the contradictions that must be addressed or resolved for the construction of any general and inclusive theory. (shrink)

The present work is immersed in the context of the contemporary philosophy of science, especially of the semanticist philosophy of the structuralist metatheory. Objectively, the work aims to reestablish the dialogue between the general philosophy of science and the special philosophy developed by scientists concerned with the fundamentals of their discipline, in this case, with sociologists. After presenting the Mertonian notion of middle range theory, the conception of theory that offers ME and, from that conception, a way of conceiving both (...) global intertheoretical relations and intertheoretical change will be presented. Finally, the analysis of the use of the notion of middle range theory in scientific practice will be made, analyzing the specific case of sociological research about organizations. (shrink)