E lizabeth S. G oodstein . Georg Simmel and the Disciplinary Imaginary

What is the worst fate that can befall a famous intellectual—to be forgotten by posterity, or to be celebrated but misunderstood? According to Elizabeth S. Goodstein in Georg Simmel and the Disciplinary Imaginary, the German philosopher Georg Simmel has suffered a double indignity. Once hailed for his pioneering efforts to define sociology as the study of associational forms, Simmel was canonized by social scientists who expressed little understanding of his philosophical sensibility; his ideas were “absorbed and transformed in ways that not only rendered their origins illegible but also squandered their full theoretical and practical potential for reflection on modern life” (8). The structuralist varieties of sociology that dominated the discipline after the Second World War were eager to appropriate his ideas and anthologize his writings, but they proved unable to fully assimilate him into their research programs. As a consequence, Simmel has become a “shadowy presence” (296) who haunts the pages of course syllabi and textbooks, a “(mostly forgotten) founding father of sociology” (4). His magnum opus, The Philosophy of Money (1900), remains “the most important mostly unread theoretical work of the twentieth century” (145). His fate has been to be both forgotten and misunderstood by the few who think they remember him.

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