"Of those who created the intellectual capital used to launch the enterprise of professional sociology, Georg Simmel was perhaps the most original and fecund. In search of a subject matter for sociology that would distinguish it from all other social sciences and humanistic disciplines, he charted a new field for discovery and proceeded to explore a world of novel topics in works that have guided and anticipated the thinking of generations of sociologists. Such distinctive concepts of contemporary sociology as social distance, marginality, urbanism as a way of life, role-playing, social behavior as exchange, conflict as an integrating process, dyadic encounter, circular interaction, reference groups as perspectives, and sociological ambivalence embody ideas which Simmel adumbrated more than six decades ago."--Donald N. Levine
Half of the material included in this edition of Simmel's writings represents new translations. This includes Simmel's important, lengthy, and previously untranslated "Group Expansion and Development of Individuality," as well as three selections from his most neglected work, "Philosophy of Money"; in addition, the introduction to "Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie," chapter one of the "Lebensanschauung," and three essays are translated for the first time.

作为西美尔文集的一种，本书由以货币哲学和性别哲学为主题精选出来的、最能体现西美尔独特的社会学（或文化哲学）风貌的10篇论文以及两篇分别代表了国内外西美尔研究水准的研究性论文组成。此种编排，可谓文集类书籍中的经典。西美尔文风的生动优雅，加上选编者独到的学术眼光及精深的学术修养，共同造就了本书的精品地位。
从内容上说，不同于马克思和韦伯的“宏大”社会学，西美尔的社会学带有更多的经验、感觉特征，他注重社会现象背后的文化内涵和生命感觉，这使他对现代社会的批判有独到的深刻，值得我们借鉴。