Simmel taught by performing thought itself rather than delivering finished conclusions

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

• XREF: Simmel’s ex tempore teaching of thought-as-process resonates with the reader’s interest in social theory as lived method rather than doctrine.
• QUESTION: How did performing unfinished thought sustain a decades-long reputation, when most academic fame accrues to finished systems?