Simmel and Extra-Theoretical Interests in History

Some sociologists see their discipline very broadly, essentially as the study of everything human, and Simmel definitely had very broad interests. It is easy to see the how this big picture conception of human institutions inevitably would touch on philosophy of history. Simmel published the first edition of his The Problems of the Philosophy of History: An Epistemological Essay in 1892. A second revised edition was published in 1904, and another slight revision was published in 1907. Simmel started planning a fourth edition in 1913, and wrote about it to Heinrich Rickert, himself a philosopher of history, in 1916. Simmel was at work on an entirely re-written fourth edition in 1918 when he received the news that he had terminal liver cancer, and he used the remainder of his life to work on his final metaphysical testament. Simmel, then, had been working on philosophy of history for decades, and in his letter to Rickert, Simmel wrote: <a href="https://jnnielsen.medium.com/simmel-and-extra-theoretical-interests-in-history-c55a5828c624">Visit Now</a>