SIMMEL, GEORG. — Philosopher, b. March 1, 1858 in Berlin, d. Sept. 26, 1918 in Strasbourg. He was professor at the universities of these two cities.
In his most significant writings (*Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie*, Leipzig 1892; 5th ed. 1923; *Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft*, 2 vols., Berlin 1892–93; 3rd ed., Stuttgart 1911; *Hauptprobleme der Philosophie*, Leipzig 1910; 7th ed., 1949, Italian trans., Florence 1922; *Der Krieg und die geistigen Entscheidungen*, Munich 1917; *Der Konflikt der modernen Kultur*, 1918, 2nd ed. 1921), Kant (v.), Simmel expounds his philosophy, which unfolds on two parallel and almost opposing 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; the synthesis of “value” and “life,” of “absolute” and “historical,” is lacking. It is, in essence, the problem or antinomy that characterizes almost all German historicism, DILTHEY, WILHELM (v.) believed he had resolved with the theory of the *Grundformen*. Simmel, for his part, decisively leans toward a form of relativism (v.) with his doctrine of “types,” which seeks to reconcile objectivity and subjectivity: the “type” is both universal and personal. Philosophy reflects the “types” of the human spirit under specific circumstances; every philosophical system is a partial viewpoint that expresses the philosopher’s personality, an “individual reaction” to the totality of being.
In his historical works (on Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, etc.), Simmel aims to characterize the types of philosophy or the personal reactions that translate humanity’s insuppressible need to “achieve unity.” There are, therefore, no absolute truths: 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.