Abstract

How can social phenomena in the modern era be defined and studied? A brilliant German scholar’s work longtime ignored and forgotten by the Western academics returns to the relevance for it’s particular way of considering the complex relationship between the social and the individual through an ingenious concept, i.e., formism. By this concept Georg Simmel offered a new epistemological legitimacy through which diverse social forms make a clear distinction with what is contained within the container. This methodological approach aims to uncover what invariant elements remain in any circumstances exist in the social life. Heavily criticized by Emil Durkheim regarded as a founder of modern sociology and his followers, the german sociologist born in Berlin into a jewish family becomes one of the most important sociologists who tried to change the way of how the social and individual are articulated in the modern society. Therefore Georg Simmel has often been thought of a great contributor to establish an unusual, ‘unorthodox’ sociology putting an importance on the act of observing and of perceiving through senses as a prime role in the recherches of social studies. His main concern was to conduct in a deeper manner an inquiry into what are called the crevices(anfractuaosités) of the social and the intimate as well. In the modern society in which the perceiving through the eyes overshadows the other senses like the smelling. Indeed, the olfaction was a privileged sense in the traditional communities like small villages. In conjunction with the predominant visuality, the aspects of everyday life(la quotidienneté) such as the superficial, frivolous or fleeting have become an authentic subject matter for the study of sociology thanks to G. Simmel’s academic contribution.