SOURCE: "Some Key Problems in Simmel's Work," in Georg Simmel, edited by Lewis A. Coser, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965, pp. 97-115.

In the following excerpt from his 1957 doctoral dissertation, Levine delineates major themes in Simmel's work.

The Simmelian corps may be conveniently divided according to the three viewpoints Simmel mentioned for analyzing things human: the individual, the social, and the objective. Under objective culture are to be found his various contributions to ethics, epistemology, aesthetics, and metaphysics, comment on which lies beyond the scope of this study. Under the viewpoint of individual personality are to be found his studies of a few historic personalities—Michelangelo, Goethe, Rembrandt are the main ones—and occasional statements which reveal a rough working theory of personality. His aim in the study of the great personalities is always to disclose the inner unity, the form or essence, the "formula of the destiny of his soul...