Simmel, G. (1971). The Problem of Sociology. En Levine, D. (ed.), Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Form (pp. 23-35).

Chicago, EE.
UU.: The University of Chicago Press.

THE PROBLEM OF SOCIOLOGY

1908

SOCIETY EXIST where a number of individual eneter into interaction. This interaction always
arises on the basis of certanin drives or for the sake of certain purposes. Erotic, religious or
merely associative impulses; and the purposes of defense, attack, play, gain, aid or instruction —
this and countless others cause man to live with other men, to act for them, with them,
against them, and thus to correlate his condition with their. In brief, he influences and is
influenced by them. The significance of these interactions among men lies in the fact
that it is because of them that the individuals, in whom this driving impulses and
purposes are lodged, form a unity, that is, a society. For unity in the empirical sense of
the word is nothing but the interaction of elements. An organic body is a unity because
its organs maintain a more intimate exchange of their energies with each other than with
any other organism; a state is a unity because its citizens show similar mutual effects,
however indirect it may be, were cut off.
This unity, or sociation, may be of very different degrees, ac- [p. 23] cording to the
kind and the intimacy of the

Reprinted from “The Problem of Sociology.” traslated by Kurt H. Wolff,  in Georg Simmel, 1858–1918: A
Collection of Essays, with Translations and Bibliography, edited by Kurt H. Wolff. Copyright 1959 by the Ohio
State University Press. All rights reserved. Originally published in German as “Das Problem der Soziologie” in
Soziologie (Munich and Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1908).