Libertad y ley en Simmel

Abstract

La consideración de Simmel como uno de los clásicos de la Sociología y la enigmática belleza de sus textos estéticos ha hecho olvidar al Simmel filósofo. En este trabajo se intenta analizar su filosofía como una "filosofía de la libertad" y esa relación entre libertad y ley que, para él, es característica de la forma de entender la vida de los hombres. Simmel considera que se debe sustituir la ley universal de Kant por una "ley individual", pues sólo la ley que se impone el individuo singular nos proporciona el sentido verdadero de la ética. Esta valoración del individuo le lleva a proponer un "nuevo individualismo" y a considerar críticamente algunos aspectos del socialismo que él veía emerger en su época. Ésa es, precisamente, la causa de que su filosofía haya sido criticada por aquellos autores como Bloch o Lukács que, aún siendo discípulos suyos, a raíz de la Revolución de Octubre realizaron el "camino hacia Marx" que les llevó a convertirse en significativos representantes del llamado "Marxismo occidental".

We usually forget that Simmel was also philosopher, because of his role as one of the founding fathers of Sociology and because of the enigmatic beauty of his aesthetic writings. This paper deals with the study of his Philosophy as a philosophy of freedom: a philosophy of that relationship between liberty and law that for him was specific to human understanding of life. According to Simmel some individual law should replace Kant’s universal law, because only the law self-imposed by one individual can give us the real sense of ethics. This rather high valuation of individuals drives him to propose a new individualism and to be critical with some features of the, then, emerging socialism. Here we find the reason why his Philosophy was criticized by those authors like Bloch and Lukács that, even though they were his disciples, followed the «path to Marx» in the light of October Revolution and became important contributors to so called «western Marxism».