The Individual and Individualism in Georg Simmel Through Durkheimian and Weberian Prisms
Individualism was one of the central themes of the great works of sociology at the beginning of the 20th century. The density and complexity of Georg Simmel’s analyses of individuality offer ample justification for the view that he was among the most remarkable theoreticians of modernity. The present article highlights the originality of his analyses in contrast with those of Émile Durkheim and Max Weber. Simmel’s originality resides in his linking of individualism with the development of personality, which he saw, in opposition to Durkheim, as a distinctive singularity and as enabled by the eradication of personal dependence relationships that had been brought about by the proliferation of the money economy. While acknowledging the heuristic force of this interpretation of modern individualism in relation to a phenomenology of life, the article also points to its limitations, which stem from the confrontation with a sociology that accords, as did Max Weber, greater importance to analyses of institutional logics.