Simmel’s teaching power lay in demonstrating the creative process live

Evidence

Simmel took “his students down an oblique pit into the mine”; he was not a teacher, he was an “inciter.” “Just about the time when … one felt he had reached a conclusion, he had a way of raising his right arm and, with three fingers of his hand, turning the imaginary object so as to exhibit still another facet.” l A lecture by Simmel was creation-at-the-moment-of-delivery: the essence of Simmers spell seems to have been the spontaneous exemplification of the creative process. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 128

Categorization

Category: Craft and Method

Related

• Simmel taught by performing thought itself rather than delivering finished conclusions (similarity 0.91)
• Simmel’s aphorisms achieve their depth through striking leaps into the uncharted (similarity 0.79)
• Simmel never clearly defines sociology’s key concepts yet remains influential (similarity 0.79)
• Simmel’s teaching spanned philosophy, social psychology, and ethics (similarity 0.79)