Review: Arthur Frank on Simmel, The View of Life

Georg Simmel, The View of Life: Four Metaphysical Essays with Journal Aphorisms. Translated by John Andrews and Donald Levine, With an introduction by Donald Levine and Daniel Silver. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010, 240 pp. $US 35.00 hardcover (978-0-226-75783-4)

Not least among the editorial decisions for which readers of this seminal publication can be grateful are the quotations that serve as back-cover blurbs. The first quotes the critical theorist Max Horkheimer, in 1956: “Georg Simmel is the only sociologist one can read anymore.” The second quotes the University of Chicago urban sociologist, and Simmel’s student, Robert E. Park: “Although Simmel has written the most profound and stimulating book in sociology, in my opinion … Read more