Simmel considered society a whole - an inaccessible whole.
How do we study something that we don’t have access to?
This is already relevant to the experience of living in a big city.
You know the city is a kind of big “whole”, but you always have new impressions, new experiences, but never a view of the city’s whole.
Sociological “impressionism” - Simmel writes about the city as if he’s “painting” it. He writes about it through a fragmentary view, the viewpoint offered by his own experiences.
The big question - “How does the individual relate to the city?”
How important is Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit” to Simmel’s work?
How does Simmel’s work relate to Symbolic Interactionalism?