Conclusion: Working with and Using Simmel’s Ideas

Abstract

This concluding chapter looks across the key ideas that Simmel sought to develop in the final years of his work—which I call his concluding thoughts. This chapter looks at how Simmel produced questions and insights of various types and asks how we might work-with his late writings instead of simply applying them. This chapter looks at the questions that Simmel asks and picks out some of the many concepts and ideas discussed in the previous chapters for further attention. The chapter looks in particular at how life and form relate, at the limits and boundaries that Simmel was interested in and at the relations between worlds, lives and fragments.