Georg Simmel has long been appreciated as a major theorist of the arts in society, and of artistic and aesthetic phenomena in general in social life. Yet Simmel’s writings in the area have remained dispersed for many years across disparate parts of his corpus and have not often been clear to survey in their full thematic cohesion and interconnection. Building on the achievements of the German collected edition, the 24-volumed Georg-Simmel-Gesamtausgabe, completed in 2015, a comprehensive anthology of these writings in English by Austin Harrington assembles virtually all the relevant titles – some of them previously translated, many others translated for the first time in English by Harrington – and precedes the presentation with a detailed introduction devoted to the question of Simmel’s central ideas in aesthetic theory and analysis (Simmel 2020). Harrington’s volume is the subject of three critical commentaries in this article by Elizabeth Goodstein, Thomas Kemple and Nicola Marcucci, with a reply by the editor. Elizabeth Goodstein’s comments begin the discussion with some questions about the disciplinary and methodological framing that has been used to parse a body of work so inherently fluid and unorthodox in style and voice. Thomas Kemple’s contribution reflects on the significance of Simmel’s thinking about representation, reality and realism in art, with a focus on this theme as it appears simultaneously in Simmel’s other key opus in the field, his philosophical monograph of 1916 on Rembrandt (Simmel 2005). A third intervention by Nicola Marcucci considers parallels between Simmel’s and Durkheim’s visions of art and religion, together with the sense of “critique” for Simmel and the question of the philosophical status of Simmel’s vision of art between holistic vitalism on the one hand and neo-Kantian theorizing on the other.

Goodstein, E.S., Harrington, A., Kemple, T., Marcucci, N. (2022). A symposium on Georg Simmel: Essays on art and aesthetics. THESIS ELEVEN [10.1177/07255136221121707].

A symposium on Georg Simmel: Essays on art and aesthetics

Nicola Marcucci
2022-01-01

Abstract

Georg Simmel has long been appreciated as a major theorist of the arts in society, and of artistic and aesthetic phenomena in general in social life. Yet Simmel’s writings in the area have remained dispersed for many years across disparate parts of his corpus and have not often been clear to survey in their full thematic cohesion and interconnection. Building on the achievements of the German collected edition, the 24-volumed Georg-Simmel-Gesamtausgabe, completed in 2015, a comprehensive anthology of these writings in English by Austin Harrington assembles virtually all the relevant titles – some of them previously translated, many others translated for the first time in English by Harrington – and precedes the presentation with a detailed introduction devoted to the question of Simmel’s central ideas in aesthetic theory and analysis (Simmel 2020). Harrington’s volume is the subject of three critical commentaries in this article by Elizabeth Goodstein, Thomas Kemple and Nicola Marcucci, with a reply by the editor. Elizabeth Goodstein’s comments begin the discussion with some questions about the disciplinary and methodological framing that has been used to parse a body of work so inherently fluid and unorthodox in style and voice. Thomas Kemple’s contribution reflects on the significance of Simmel’s thinking about representation, reality and realism in art, with a focus on this theme as it appears simultaneously in Simmel’s other key opus in the field, his philosophical monograph of 1916 on Rembrandt (Simmel 2005). A third intervention by Nicola Marcucci considers parallels between Simmel’s and Durkheim’s visions of art and religion, together with the sense of “critique” for Simmel and the question of the philosophical status of Simmel’s vision of art between holistic vitalism on the one hand and neo-Kantian theorizing on the other.
2022
Goodstein, E.S., Harrington, A., Kemple, T., Marcucci, N. (2022). A symposium on Georg Simmel: Essays on art and aesthetics. THESIS ELEVEN [10.1177/07255136221121707].
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11590/463468
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