The tragedy in the sociologies of Georg Simmel and Max Weber

Abstract

This article discusses, although not exhaustively, the components of sociological thought of Georg Simmel and Max Weber that allow to identify the performance of a tragic sensitivity in the analysis of the processes that constitute the modern culture. In the first author, we identify the "tragic point of view" as ambivalence and the assumption of a fundamental self-contradiction embedded in the processes and phenomena that constitute the modern life style. In the second author, we try to reveal how the tragedy arises, in a surprising, ironic and undesirable way, from the unpredictable and unintentional consequences of the actions of agents.