ABSTRACT
I I would like to draw attention to the diversity of Simmel’s conceptions of what was once viewed as a foundational question in sociology, without whose satisfactory answer it was often claimed the discipline could not exist: namely, the concept of society. Simmel is one of the first sociologists who sought to secure grounds for the new discipline of sociology without having recourse to the then-and often subsequently-seemingly unproblematical answer: sociology is the study of society. Indeed, Simmel maintained that only by abandoning society as a hypostatized and totalized object could sociology develop successfully as an independent academic discipline.
