Dingsuche. Der Essayist Georg Simmel.

In my contribution I will focus on the specific essayistic style in Georg Simmel's philosophy Judged by the younger generation (e.g. by Lukàcs and Benjamin) an 'impressionistic' thinker Simmel does correspond to such definition, provided we assume 'impressionism' as a philosophical theory of the surface of reality intimately linked with its profoundest depth. His micrological attention devoted to the most inapparent things, his 'relativism' (based on the extension of the category of reciprocal action, so that no human phenomenon can be reduced to a deterministic doctrine of cause-effect nexus) make his essays (at the same time psychological, sociological and philosophical) paradigmatic of the dialectical exercise of separating and connecting, which since Plato is the core of philosophy itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]