Simmel was one of the first generation of German sociologists: his neo-Kantian approach laid the foundations for sociological antipositivism, asking "what is society?

Through "The Metropolis and Mental Life" Simmel was a precursor of urban sociology, symbolic interactionism, and social network analysis.

An acquaintance of Max Weber, Simmel wrote on the topic of personal character in a manner reminiscent of the sociological ideal type.

His father, Eduard Simmel (1810–1874), a prosperous businessman and convert to Roman Catholicism, had founded a confectionery store called "Felix & Sarotti" that would later be taken over by a chocolate manufacturer.

[2] Georg was then adopted by Julius Friedländer, the founder of an international music publishing house known as Peters Verlag, who endowed him with the large fortune that enabled him to become a scholar.

[3] Beginning in 1876, Simmel studied philosophy and history at the Humboldt University of Berlin,[4] going on to receive his doctorate in 1881 for his thesis on Kantian philosophy of matter, titled "Das Wesen der Materie nach Kants Physischer Monadologie" ("The Nature of Matter According to Kant's Physical Monadology").

[4] In 1885, Simmel became a privatdozent at the University of Berlin, officially lecturing in philosophy but also in ethics, logic, pessimism, art, psychology and sociology.

Although his applications for vacant chairs at German universities were supported by Max Weber, Simmel remained an academic outsider.

[6] Simmel had a hard time gaining acceptance in the academic community despite the support of well known associates, such as Max Weber, Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George and Edmund Husserl.

[citation needed] In 1890, Georg married Gertrud Kinel, a philosopher who published under the pseudonym Marie-Luise Enckendorf, and under her own name.

[11] In 1917, Simmel stopped reading the newspapers and withdrew to the Black Forest to finish the book The View of Life (Lebensanschauung).

[7] There are four basic levels of concern in Simmel's work: A dialectical approach is a multicausal and multidirectional method: it focuses on social relations; integrates facts and value, rejecting the idea that there are hard and fast dividing lines between social phenomena; looks not only at the present, but also at the past and future; and is deeply concerned with both conflicts and contradictions.

[12] The furthest Simmel has brought his work to a micro-level of analysis was in dealing with forms and interactions that takes place with different types of people.

"[12]: 158  In order for this free association to occur, Simmel explains, "the personalities must not emphasize themselves too individually...with too much abandon and aggressiveness.

"[12]: 158  Rather, "this world of sociability...a democracy of equals" is to be without friction so long as people blend together in the spirit of pleasure and bringing "about among themselves a pure interaction free of any disturbing material accent.

"[12]: 159 Simmel describes idealised interactions in expressing that "the vitality of real individuals, in their sensitivities and attractions, in the fullness of their impulses and convictions...is but a symbol of life, as it shows itself in the flow of a lightly amusing play," adding that "a symbolic play, in whose aesthetic charm all the finest and most highly sublimated dynamics of social existence and its riches are gathered.

The organisers of the exhibition overemphasised its negative comments about city life, because Simmel also pointed out positive transformations.

It gained wider circulation in the 1950s when it was translated into English and published as part of Kurt Wolff's edited collection, The Sociology of Georg Simmel.

However, it is important to note that the notion of the blasé is actually not the central or final point of the essay, but is part of a description of a sequence of states in an irreversible transformation of the mind.

The eighteenth century may have called for liberation from all the ties which grew up historically in politics, in religion, in morality and in economics in order to permit the original natural virtue of man, which is equal in everyone, to develop without inhibition; the nineteenth century may have sought to promote, in addition to man's freedom, his individuality (which is connected with the division of labor) and his achievements which make him unique and indispensable but which at the same time make him so much the more dependent on the complementary activity of others; Nietzsche may have seen the relentless struggle of the individual as the prerequisite for his full development, while socialism found the same thing in the suppression of all competition – but in each of these the same fundamental motive was at work, namely the resistance of the individual to being levelled, swallowed up in the social-technological mechanism.In The Philosophy of Money, Simmel views money as a component of life which helped us understand the totality of life.

[14] The Stranger is close to us, insofar as we feel between him and ourselves common features of a national, social, occupational, or generally human, nature.

[15] Objectivity may also be defined as freedom: the objective individual is bound by no commitments which could prejudice his perception, understanding, and evaluation of the given.On one hand the stranger's opinion does not really matter because of his lack of connection to society, but on the other the stranger's opinion does matter, because of his lack of connection to society.

[12] In his multi-layered essay, "Women, Sexuality & Love", published in 1923, Simmel discusses flirtation as a generalized type of social interaction.

The distinctiveness of the flirt lies in the fact that she awakens delight and desire by means of a unique antithesis and synthesis: through the alternation of accommodation and denial.