SIMMEL, GEORG. – Philosopher, born on 1 March 1858 in Berlin, died on 26 September 1918 in Strasbourg. He was a professor at the universities of these two cities.
In his most significant writings (Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilos., Leipzig 1802; 5th ed. 1923; Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft, 2 vols., Berlin 1892–93; 3rd ed., Stuttgart 1911; Hauptprobleme der Philos., Leipzig 1910; 7th ed., 1949, Italian trans., Florence 1922; Der Krieg und die geistigen Entscheidungen, Munich 1917; Der Konflikt der modernen Kultur, ibid. 1918, 2nd ed. 1921), Kant (v.), S. sets forth his philosophy, which unfolds on two parallel and almost opposed planes: that of “values” (in the sense of the “philosophy of values” of Windelband [v.] and Rickert [v.]), eternal and independent of their empirical manifestation, and that of “life” and history, where everything is relative. The two planes do not meet and remain juxtaposed; there is no synthesis of “value” and “life,” of the “absolute” and the “historical.” This is, essentially, the problem or antinomy that characterizes almost the whole DILTHEY, WILHELM (v.) believed he had resolved with the theory of the Grundformen. S., for his part, decidedly relativism (v.) through the doctrine of “types,” which seeks to reconcile objectivity and subjectivity: the “type” is universal and personal at the same time. Philosophy reflects the “types” of the human spirit in particular circumstances; every philosophical system is “a point of view,” partial, which expresses the philosopher’s personality; it is an “individual reaction” in the face of the totality of being.
In his historical works (on Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, etc.), S. aims to characterize the types of philosophy or the personal reactions that betray the ineradicable human need to “reach unity.” Thus, absolute truths do not exist: life creates the truth in which it expresses itself, and life itself destroys II. There are no immutable categories, but ever-new categories can be created through historical becoming.