ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book analyses Georg Simmel Simmel's theory of modernity. It focuses on Simmel's sociological epistemology. The book deals with his research project for differentiating between social science, epistemology and social ethics, as he introduces it programmatically in the opening of The Philosophy of Money. It analyses the theoretical core of Simmel's pioneering theory of social validity and focuses on the specific meaning of his epistemological foundation of sociology based on the notion of the 'conditions a priori' of sociation. The book shows the limits, which Simmel's ethical conception revealed during World War I, and the way in which Simmel tried to overcome them thanks to a conception of the normative value of the idea of Europe. It presents the common theoretical structure of the different enquiries that Simmel developed in the field of culture sociology.
