Overview

In this ground-breaking work, Frederick Beiser argues that Georg Simmel was one of the foremost yet overlooked philosophers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Whilst Simmel’s work was crucial in laying foundations for sociology, his several books, including The Philosophy of Money, were deeply philosophical. Simmel's doctorate was on Kant's philosophy and that his intellectual outlook was greatly influenced by his lifelong love of philosophy. It is this philosophical Simmel that Frederick C. Beiser, a renowned scholar of German philosophy, explores in this fascinating and important book. Beginning with a helpful overview of Simmel's early intellectual life, Beiser considers the formation of Simmel's sociology and his views on ethics, before examining his theories of historical knowledge; the arguments contained in his most important work, The Philosophy of Money; the role of Kant's philosophy in his thinking; his critique of pessimism and his philosophy of religion. The second part of the book explores the deeper philosophical importance of Simmel's work, by considering his theories of the method and essence of philosophy, the philosophy of life and his important work on aesthetics. An outstanding and pathbreaking book, The Philosophy of Georg Simmel will be of interest to students and researchers in philosophy and sociology alike, particularly those studying 19th-century philosophy and the history of sociology.

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9781041112105

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Reviews

'Frederick Beiser is one of the most competent and fertile intellectual historians of Germany and German philosophy. His erudition is unsurpassable. He writes with great force, confidence and clarity, and is remarkable for his ability to transmit and translate a very intricate world of German philosophical ideas to the Anglophone reader in a lucid and accessible way. In this respect his new book on Georg Simmel is no exception, and it was a pleasure to read and learn from it.' - Efraim Podoksik, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Author Information

Frederick C. Beiser is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Syracuse University, United States. A renowned scholar of German philosophy and German idealism, his work has garnered many prizes and awards. He has been a Thyssen and Humboldt research fellow, a 1994 Guggenheim fellow, an NEH faculty fellow, and won the 2015 Journal of the History of Philosophy Book Prize for The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism 1796–1880. He received the German Order of Merit for his teaching on German philosophy. His many books include The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte, The Romantic Imperative. Two of his books, Hegel and The Berlin Antisemitism Controversy, are both published by Routledge.

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