De la division du travail social, Durkheim’s doctoral thesis, is his first major book; it is also the one in which the influence of Auguste Comte is most obvious. The theme of Durkheimian thought, and consequently the theme of this first book, is the relation between individuals and the collectivity. The problem might be stated thus: How can a multiplicity of individuals make up a society? How can individuals achieve what is the condition of social existence, namely, a consensus?
Durkheim’s answer to this central question is to set up a distinction between two forms of solidarity and organic solidarity, respectively.
Mechanical solidarity is, to use Durkheim’s language, a solidarity of resemblance. The major characteristic of a society in which mechanical solidarity prevails is that the individuals differ from one another as little as possible. The individuals, the members of the same collectivity, resemble each other because they feel the same emotions, cherish the same values, and hold the same things sacred. The society is coherent because the individuals are not yet differentiated.
The opposite form of solidarity, so-called organic solidarity, is one in which consensus, or the coherent unity of the collectivity, results from or is expressed by differentiation. The individuals are no longer similar, but different; and in a certain sense, which we shall examine more thoroughly, it is precisely because the individuals are different that consensus is achieved.
Why does Durkheim call solidarity based on, or resulting from, differentiation of the individuals, organic? The reason for this terminology is probably as follows. The parts of a living organism do not resemble each other; the organs of a living creature each perform a function, and it is precisely because each organ has its own function, because the heart and the lungs are altogether different from the brain, that they are equally indispensable to life.
In Durkheim’s thought, the two forms of solidarity correspond to two extreme forms of social organization. The societies which in Durkheim’s day were called primitive and which today are more likely to be called archaic (or societies without writing—incidentally, the change in terminology reflects a different attitude toward these societies) are characterized by the predominance of mechanical solidarity. The individuals of a clan are, so to speak, interchangeable. It follows from this—and this idea is essential to Durkheim’s conception—that the individual does not come first, historically; the individual, the awareness of oneself as an individual, is born of historical development itself. In primitive societies each man is the same as the others; in the consciousness of each, feelings common to all, collective feelings, predominate in number and intensity.
The opposition between these two forms of solidarity is combined with the opposition between segmental societies and societies characterized by modern division of labor. One might say that a society with mechanical solidarity is also a segmental society; but actually the definition of these two notions is not exactly the same, and the point is worth dwelling on for a moment.
In Durkheim’s terminology, a segment designates a social group into which the individuals are tightly incorporated. But a segment is also a group locally situated, relatively isolated from others, which leads its own life. The segment is characterized by a mechanical solidarity, a solidarity of resemblance; but it is also characterized by separation from the outside world. The segment is self-sufficient, it has little communication with what is outside. By definition, so to speak, segmental organization is contradictory to those general phenomena of differentiation designated by the term organic solidarity. But, according to Durkheim, in certain societies which may have very advanced forms of economic division of labor, segmental structure may still persist in part.
The idea is expressed in a curious passage in the book we are analyzing:
It may very well happen that in a particular society a certain division of labor—and especially economic division of labor—may be highly developed, while the segmental type may still be rather pronounced. This certainly seems to be the case in England. Major industry, big business, appears to be as highly developed there as on the continent, while the honeycomb system is still very much in evidence, as witness both the autonomy of local life and the authority retained by tradition. [The symptomatic value of this last fact will be determined in the following chapter.]
The fact is that division of labor, being a derived and secondary phenomenon, as we have seen, occurs at the surface of social life, and this is especially true of economic division of labor. It is skin deep. Now, in every organism, superficial phenomena, by their very location, are much more accessible to the influence of external causes, even when the internal causes on which they depend are not generally modified. It suffices, therefore, that some circumstance or other arouse in a people a more intense need for material well-being, for economic division of labor to develop without any appreciable change in social structure. The spirit of imitation, contact with a more refined civilization, may produce this result. Thus it is that understanding, being the highest and therefore the most superficial part of consciousness, may be rather easily modified by external influences like education, without affecting the deepest layers of psychic life. In this way intelligences are created which are quite sufficient to insure success, but which are without deep roots. Moreover, this type of talent is not transmitted by heredity.
This example proves that we must not decide a given society’s position on the social ladder by the state of its civilization, especially its economic civilization; for the latter may be merely an imitation, a copy, and may overlie a social structure of an inferior kind. True, the case is exceptional; nevertheless it does occur.
Durkheim writes that England, although characterized by a highly developed modern industry and consequently an economic division of labor, has retained the segmental type, the honeycomb system, to a greater extent than some other societies in which, however, economic division of labor is less advanced. Where does Durkheim see the proof of this survival of segmental structure? In the continuance of local autonomies and in the force of tradition. The notion of segmental structure is not, therefore, identified with solidarity of resemblance. It implies the relative isolation, the self-sufficiency of the various elements, which are comparable to the rings of an earthworm. Thus one can imagine an entire society, spread out over a large space, which would be nothing more than a juxtaposition of segments, all alike, all autarchic. One can conceive of the juxtaposition of a large number of clans, or tribes, or regionally autonomous groups, perhaps even subject to a central authority, without the unity of resemblance of the segment being disturbed, without that differentiation of functions characteristic of organic solidarity operating on the level of the entire society.
In any case, remember that the division of labor which Durkheim is trying to understand and define is not to be confused with the one envisaged by economists. Differentiation of occupations and multiplication of industrial activities are an expression, as it were, of the social differentiation which Durkheim regards as taking priority. The origin of social differentiation is the disintegration of mechanical solidarity and of segmental structure.
These are the fundamental themes of the book. With these in mind, let us try to focus on some of the ideas which follow from this analysis and which constitute Durkheim’s general theory. First of all, let us see what definition of the collective consciousness Durkheim gives at this period, because hence the concept of collective consciousness is of first importance.
Collective consciousness, as defined in this book, is simply “the body of beliefs and sentiments common to the average of the members of a society.” Durkheim adds that the system of these beliefs and sentiments has a life of its own. The collective consciousness, whose existence depends on the sentiments and beliefs present in individual consciousness, is nevertheless separable, at least analytically, from individual consciousness; it evolves according to its own laws, it is not merely the expression or effect of individual consciousness.
The collective consciousness varies in extent and force from one society to another. In societies where mechanical solidarity predominates, the collective consciousness embraces the greater part of individual consciousness. The same idea may be expressed thus: in archaic societies, the fraction of individual existences governed by common sentiments is nearly coextensive with the total existence.
In societies of which differentiation of individuals is a characteristic, everyone is free to believe, to desire, and to act according to his own preferences in a large number of circumstances. In societies with mechanical solidarity, on the other hand, the greater part of existence is governed by social imperatives and interdicts. At this period in Durkheim’s thought, the adjective social means merely that these prohibitions and imperatives are imposed on the average, the majority of the members of the group; that they originate with the group, and not with the individual, and that the individual submits to these imperatives and prohibitions as to a higher power.
The force of this collective consciousness coincides with its extent. In primitive societies, not only does the collective consciousness embrace the greater part of individual existence, but the sentiments experienced in common have an extreme violence which is manifested in the severity of the punishments inflicted on those who violate the prohibitions. The stronger the collective consciousness, the livelier the indignation against the crime, that is, against the violation of the social imperative. Finally, the collective consciousness is also particularized. Each of the acts of social existence, especially religious rites, is characterized by an extreme precision. It is the details of what must be done and what must be thought which are imposed by the collective consciousness.
On the other hand, Durkheim believes he sees in organic solidarity a reduction of the sphere of existence embraced by the collective consciousness, a weakening of collective reactions against violation of prohibitions, and above all a greater margin for the individual interpretation of social imperatives.
Let us take a simple illustration. What justice demands in a primitive society will be determined by collective sentiments with an extreme precision. What justice demands in societies where division of labor is advanced is formulated by the collective consciousness only in an abstract and, so to speak, universal manner. In the first instance, justice means that a given individual receives a given thing; in the second, what justice demands is that “each receive his due.” But of what does this “due” consist? Of many possible things, no one of which is in any absolute sense free from doubt or unequivocally fixed.
From this sort of analysis Durkheim derived an idea which he maintained all his life, an idea which is, as it were, at the center of his whole sociology, namely, that the individual is born of society, and not society of individuals.
Stated this way, the formula has a paradoxical sound, and often Durkheim himself expresses the idea just as paradoxically as I have done. But for the moment I am trying to understand Durkheim, not to criticize him. Reconstructing Durkheim’s thought, I would say that the primacy of society over the individual has at least two meanings which at bottom are in no way paradoxical.
The first meaning is the one I indicated above: the historical precedence of societies in which the individuals resemble one another, and are so to speak lost in the whole, over societies whose members have acquired both awareness of their individuality and the capacity to express it.
Collectivist societies, societies in which everyone resembles everyone else, come first in time. From this historical priority there arises a logical priority in the explanation of social phenomena. Many economists will explain the division of labor by the advantage that individuals discover in dividing the tasks among themselves so as to increase the output of the collectivity. But this explanation in terms of the rationality of individual conduct strikes Durkheim as a reversal of the true order. To say that men divided the work among themselves, and assigned everyone his own job, in order to increase the efficacy of the collective output is to assume that individuals are different from one another and aware of their difference before social differentiation. If Durkheim’s historical vision is true, this awareness of individuality could not exist before organic solidarity, before division of labor. Therefore, the rational pursuit of an increased output cannot explain social differentiation, since this pursuit presupposes that very social differentiation which it should explain.1
We have here, I think, the outline of what is to be one of Durkheim’s central ideas throughout his career—the idea with which he defines sociology—namely, the priority of the whole over the parts, or again, the irreducibility of the social entity to the sum of its elements, the explanation of the elements by the entity and not of the entity by the elements.
In his study of the division of labor, Durkheim discovered two essential ideas: the historical priority of societies in which individual consciousness is entirely external to itself, and the necessity of explaining individual phenomena by the state of the collectivity, and not the state of the collectivity by individual phenomena.
Once again, the phenomenon Durkheim is trying to explain, the division of labor, differs from what the economists understand by the same concept. The division of labor Durkheim is talking about is a structure of the society as a whole, of which technical or economic division of labor is merely an expression.
Having stated these fundamental ideas, I shall now turn to the second stage of the analysis, namely how to study the division of labor which we have defined. Durkheim’s answer to this question of method is as follows. To study a social phenomenon scientifically, one must study it objectively, that is, from the outside; one must find the method by which states of awareness not directly apprehensible may be recognized and understood. These symptoms or expressions of the phenomena of consciousness are, in De la division du travail social, found in legal phenomena. In a tentative and perhaps rather oversimplified manner, Durkheim distinguishes two kinds of law, each of which is characteristic of one of the types of solidarity: repressive law, which punishes misdeeds or crimes, and restitutive or cooperative law, whose essence is not to punish breaches of social rules but to restore things to order when a misdeed has been committed or to organize cooperation among the individuals.
Repressive law is, as it were, the index of the collective consciousness in societies with mechanical solidarity, since by the very fact that it multiplies punishments it reveals the force of common sentiments, their extent, and their particularization. The more widespread, strong, and particularized the collective conscience, the more crimes there will be, crime being defined simply as the violation of an imperative or prohibition.
Let us pause over this point for a moment. This definition of crime is typically sociological, in Durkheim’s sense of the word. A crime, in the sociological sense of the term, is simply an act prohibited by the collective consciousness. That this act seems innocent in the eyes of observers situated several centuries after the event, or belonging to a different society, is of no importance. In a sociological study, crime can only be defined from the outside and in terms of the state of the collective consciousness of the society in question. This is the prototype of the objective, and therefore of the relativist, definition of crime. Sociologically, to call someone a criminal does not imply that we consider him guilty in relation to God or to our own conception of justice. The criminal is simply the man in a society who has refused to obey the laws of the city. In this sense, it was probably just to regard Socrates as a criminal.
Of course, if one carries this idea to its conclusion, it becomes either commonplace or shocking; but Durkheim himself did not do so. The sociological definition of crime leads logically to a complete relativism which is easy to conceive in the abstract but which no one believes in, perhaps not even those who profess it.
In any case, having outlined a theory of crime, Durkheim also offers us a theory of punishment. He dismisses with a certain contempt the classic interpretations whereby the purpose of punishment is to prevent the repetition of the guilty act. According to him, the purpose and meaning of punishment is not to frighten—deter, as we say today. The purpose of punishment is to satisfy the common consciousness. The act committed by one of the members of the collectivity has offended the collective consciousness, which demands reparation, and the punishment of the guilty is the reparation offered to the feelings of all.
Durkheim considers this theory of punishment more satisfactory than the rationalist interpretation of punishment as deterrence. It is probable that in sociological terms he is right to a great extent. But we must not overlook the fact that if this is so, if punishment is above all a reparation offered to the collective consciousness, the prestige of justice and the authority of punishments are not enhanced. At this point Pareto’s cynicism would certainly intervene: he would say that Durkheim is right, that many punishments are merely a kind of vengeance exercised by the collective consciousness at the expense of undisciplined individuals. But, he would add, we must not say so, for how are we to maintain respect for justice if it is merely a tribute offered to the prejudices of an arbitrary or irrational society?
The second kind of law is the one Durkheim generally refers to as restitutive. The point is no longer to punish but to reestablish the state of things as it should have been in accordance with justice. A man who has not settled his debt must pay it. But this restitutive law, of which commercial law is an example, is not the only form of law characteristic of societies with organic solidarity. At any rate, we must understand restitutive law in a very wide sense whereby it includes all aspects of legislation aimed at bringing about cooperation among individuals. Administrative law and constitutional law belong by the same token to the category of cooperative legislation. They are less the expression of the sentiments common to a collectivity than the organization of regular and ordered coexistence among individuals who are already differentiated.
Following this line of thought, we might suppose that we are about to encounter an idea which played a large part in the sociology of Herbert Spencer and the theories of the economists, the idea that a modern society is essentially based on contract, on agreements freely concluded by individuals. Were this the case, the Durkheimian vision would in a sense accord with the classical formula “from statute to contract,” or from a society governed by collective imperatives to a society where common order is created by the free decisions of individuals.
But such is not Durkheim’s idea. For him, modern society is not based on contract, any more than division of labor is explained by the rational decision of individuals to increase the common output by dividing the tasks among themselves. If modern society were a “contractualist” society, then it would be explained in terms of individual conduct, and it is precisely the opposite that Durkheim wishes to demonstrate.
While opposing “contractualists” like Spencer, as well as the economists, Durkheim does not deny that in modern societies an increasing role is indeed played by contracts freely concluded among individuals. But this contractual element is a derivative of the structure of the society and, one might even say, a derivative of the state of the collective consciousness in modern society. In order for an ever wider sphere to exist in which individuals may freely reach agreements among themselves, society must first have a legal structure which authorizes independent decisions on the part of individuals. In other words, inter-individual contracts occur within a social context which is not determined by the individuals themselves. It is the division of labor by differentiation which is the original condition for the existence of a sphere of contract. Which brings us back to the idea I indicated above: the priority of the structure over the individual, the priority of the social type over individual phenomena. Contracts are concluded between individuals, but the conditions and rules according to which these contracts are concluded are determined by a legislation which, in turn, expresses the conception shared by the whole society of the just and the unjust, the permissible and the prohibited.
The society in which the organic type of solidarity prevails is not therefore defined by the substitution of contract for community. Nor is modern society defined by the substitution of the industrial type for the military type, to adopt Spencer’s antithesis. Modern society is defined first and foremost by the phenomenon of social differentiation, of which contractualism is the result and expression. Once again, therefore, when economists or sociologists explain modern society on the basis of the contract, they are reversing both the historical and the logical order. It is in terms of the society as a whole that we understand not only what individuals are but how and why they are able to agree freely.
This brings us to the third stage of our analysis. We have considered first the themes, then the methods; now we must look for the cause of the phenomenon we are studying, the cause of organic solidarity or of social differentiation seen as the structural characteristic of modern societies.
Before indicating the answer Durkheim gives to the question, I should like to insert a parenthetical comment. It is not self-evident that Durkheim is right in stating the problem in the terms in which he does, namely: what is the cause of the growth of organic solidarity or of social differentiation? What he has done is, essentially, to analyze certain characteristics of modern societies. It is not evident a priori, and it may even be unlikely, that one can indeed find the cause of a phenomenon which is not simple and isolable but which is rather an aspect of the whole of society. Durkheim, however, wants to determine the cause of the phenomenon he has analyzed, the growth of division of labor in modern societies.
As we have seen, we are dealing here with an essentially social phenomenon. When the phenomenon to be explained is essentially social, the cause, in accordance with the principle of homogeneity of cause and effect, must also be social. Thus we eliminate the individualist explanation. Curiously, Durkheim eliminates an explanation which Comte had also considered and eliminated, i.e., the explanation whereby the essential factor in social growth was held to be ennui, or the effort to overcome or avoid ennui. He also dismisses the search for happiness as an explanation, for, he says, nothing proves that men in modern societies are happier than men in archaic societies. (I think he is absolutely right on this point.) The only surprising thing is that he considers it necessary (though perhaps it was necessary at the time) to devote so many pages to proving that social differentiation cannot be explained by the search for pleasure or the pursuit of happiness.
It is true, he says, that pleasures are more numerous and more subtle in modern societies, but this differentiation of pleasures is the result of social differentiation, and not its cause. As for happiness, no one is in a position to say that we are happier than those who came before us. At this time Durkheim was already impressed by the phenomenon of suicide. The best proof, he writes, that happiness does not increase with the advance of modern society is the frequency of suicide. He proposes that in modern societies suicides are more numerous than in the societies of the past. Let us add that due to the lack of statistics on suicides in early societies we cannot be absolutely sure on this point.
Thus, division of labor cannot be explained by ennui or by the pursuit of happiness or by the increase of pleasures, by the desire to increase the output of collective labor. Division of labor, being a social phenomenon, can only be explained by another social phenomenon, and this other social phenomenon is a combination of the volume, the material density, and the moral density of the society.
The volume of a society is simply the number of individuals belonging to a given collectivity. But volume alone is not the cause of social differentiation. Imagine a large society inhabiting a vast surface area but resulting from a juxtaposition of segments (e.g., the uniting of a great number of tribes, each of which retains its former structure); volume alone will not give rise to differentiation in it. In order for volume—i.e., increase in number—to bring about differentiation, there must also be both material and moral density. Density in the material sense is the number of individuals on a given ground surface. Moral density, it seems to me, is roughly the intensity of communication between individuals, the intensity of intercourse. The more communication there is between individuals, the more they work together, the more trade or competition they have with one another, the greater the density. Put these two phenomena—volume and material and moral density—together, and social differentiation will result.
Why? Durkheim invokes a concept made fashionable by Darwin in the second half of the nineteenth century: the struggle for survival. Why does the increasing intensity of intercourse between individuals, itself created by material density, produce social differentiation? Because the more individuals there are trying to live together, the more intense the struggle for survival. Social differentiation is, so to speak, the peaceful solution to the struggle for survival. Instead of some being eliminated so that others may survive, as in the animal kingdom, social differentiation enables a greater number of individuals to survive by differentiation. Each man ceases to be in competition with all, each man is only in competition with a few of his fellows, each man is in a position to occupy his place, to play his role, to perform his function. There is no need to eliminate the majority of individuals once they are no longer alike but different, each contributing in his own peculiar way to the survival of all.2
This kind of explanation is in keeping with what Durkheim considers a rule of the sociological method: the explanation of a social phenomenon by another social phenomenon, the explanation of a mass phenomenon by another mass phenomenon, rather than the explanation of a social phenomenon by individual phenomena.
In conclusion, let us summarize briefly the essential ideas of this necessarily concise study. Social differentiation, a phenomenon characteristic of modern societies, is the formative condition of individual liberty. Only in a society where the collective consciousness has lost part of its overpowering rigidity can the individual enjoy a certain autonomy of judgment and action. In this individualist society, the major problem is to maintain that minimum of collective consciousness without which organic solidarity would lead to social disintegration.
The philosophical idea which underlies the whole theory might be summarized as follows: the individual is the expression of the collectivity itself. The individuals in mechanical solidarities are in a sense interchangeable; in an archaic society it would be out of the question to call the individual “the most irreplaceable of beings,” as Gide has put it. Even when we come to a society in which each man is willing and able to be the most irreplaceable of beings, the individual is still the expression of the collectivity. It is the structure of the collectivity that imposes on each man his peculiar responsibility. Finally, even in the society which authorizes each man to be himself and know himself, there is more collective consciousness present in the individual consciousness than we imagine. The society of organic differentiation could not endure if there were not, outside or above the contractual realm, collective imperatives and prohibitions, collective values and things held sacred to bind individuals to the social entity.
The book Durkheim devoted to the problem of suicide is related in various ways to his study of the division of labor. On the whole, Durkheim approves of the phenomenon of the organic division of labor. He sees it as a normal and generally speaking happy development in human societies. He approves of the differentiation of jobs, the variability and differentiation of individuals, the decline in the authority of tradition, the expanding domain of reason, the allowance for individual initiative. However, he also notes that the individual is not necessarily any more satisfied with his lot in modern societies. Durkheim is, incidentally, struck by the increase in the number of suicides as an expression and proof of certain possibly pathological traits in the contemporary organization of communal life.
The last part of the book devoted to the division of labor contains an analysis of these pathological traits. Durkheim is already using the term anomie—absence of norms or disintegration of norms—a concept which is to play a dominant role in his study of suicide. He reviews certain pathological phenomena: economic crisis, nonadjustment of workers to their jobs, the violence of the claims which individuals lodge against the collectivity. Insofar as modern societies are based on differentiation, it becomes indispensable that every man’s occupation correspond to his aptitudes and desires. Furthermore, a society that allows more and more room for individualism somehow finds itself obliged by its very nature to respect the kind of justice that gratifies the individualist temper.
The reasoning is roughly as follows. Societies ruled by tradition assign each man a place determined by birth or collective imperatives. In these traditional societies it would be abnormal, if you will, for the individual to demand a position suited to his tastes or proportional to his merits. The basic principle of modern societies, on the other hand, is individualism. Each man wants to obtain that to which he feels entitled. He demands that his claims be satisfied. Thus an individualist principle of justice becomes the indispensable collective principle of the contemporary order.
Modern societies can be stable only through respect for justice. But even in societies based on individual differentiation there persists the equivalent of the collective consciousness of societies dominated by mechanical solidarity. There must be sentiments, beliefs, and values common to all. If these common values are weakened, if the sphere of these common beliefs is seriously reduced, then the society is threatened with disintegration.
The central problem of modern societies, as of all societies, is therefore the relation of the individuals to the group. This relation is altered by the fact that the individual has become too conscious of himself to accept blindly any and all social imperatives. From another point of view, however, this individualism, desirable in itself, is attended by dangers. The individual may demand more from society than society can give him. There must be discipline, which can only be social.
In De la division du travail social, and especially in the preface to the second edition, Durkheim alludes to what he sees as the solution to the problem, the cure for the evil characteristic of modern societies: the organization of professional groups which promote the integration of individuals in the group.
The study of suicide deals both with a pathological aspect of modern societies and with a phenomenon illuminating in the most striking way the relation of the individual to the collectivity. Durkheim is anxious to show to what extent individuals are determined by the collective reality. Now, in this regard the phenomenon of suicide has, if I may say so, an extraordinary force, since on the face of it nothing is more supremely individual than the fact of taking one’s own life. If it is found that this phenomenon is governed by society, Durkheim will have proved the truth of his thesis by the very case most unfavorable to it. When an individual is alone and desperate enough to kill himself, it is still—speaking in Durkheim’s manner—society which is present in the consciousness of the unhappy man; it is society, more than individual history, which governs this solitary act.
Durkheim’s study of suicide proceeds with the admirable precision of a dissertation by a normalien. It begins with a definition of the phenomenon, continues with a refutation of earlier interpretations, then comes a definition of the types of suicide, and finally, out of the definition of the types of suicide, there develops a general theory of the phenomenon.
We shall term suicide “every case of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act performed by the victim himself and which strives to produce this result.” A “positive act” would be to shoot oneself in the temple or to hang oneself. A “negative act” would be to remain in a burning building or to refuse all nourishment to the point of starvation. A hunger strike carried out until death is an example of suicide according to Durkheim’s definition.
“Directly or indirectly” refers to a distinction comparable to the one between positive and negative. A gunshot in the temple produces death directly; but if you do not leave a burning building, or if you refuse nourishment, you can bring about the desired result—i.e., death—indirectly or in the long run.
According to this definition, the concept includes not only the cases of suicide usually recognized as such, but also the act of the officer who lets himself be blown up rather than surrender his fortress or his ship; or of the Japanese who chooses death because he has been (or thinks he has been) dishonored; or of the women who, according to custom in India, were to follow their husbands to death. In other words, we must also regard as suicides those instances of voluntary death which are surrounded by an aura of heroism and glory and which on first sight we are not inclined to class with so-called common suicides—those of the despairing lover, the ruined banker, the trapped criminal.
Having defined the phenomenon, we can proceed to a second stage: we can take a look at the statistics. They indicate the following fact, regarded as essential by Durkheim: the suicide rate, i.e., the frequency of suicide in a given population, is relatively constant. It is characteristic of a whole society, or a province, or a region. It does not vary arbitrarily; it varies as a result of many circumstances. The sociologist must establish correlations between these circumstances and variations in the suicide rate. Or again, to state it more clearly and simply, one should distinguish suicide, which is an individual phenomenon—a certain person, in certain circumstances, killed himself—from a different phenomenon, which is social: the suicide rate. What Durkheim tries to analyze is the social phenomenon, the suicide rate. The most important thing from the point of view of theory is the relation between the individual phenomenon (suicide) and the social phenomenon (the suicide rate).
Having defined the phenomenon, Durkheim dismisses psychological explanations. Many doctors and psychologists who have studied individual suicides are inclined to offer explanations of a psychological or psychopathological nature. They say that the majority of people who take their own lives are in a pathological state when they commit the act, and that they are predisposed to it by the pathological state of their sensibility or of their psyche. To this sort of explanation Durkheim immediately opposes the following line of argument. He admits that there is a psychological predisposition to suicide, a predisposition which can be explained in psychological or psychopathological terms. Given certain circumstances, neuropaths are indeed more likely to kill themselves. But, Durkheim says, the force which determines the suicide is not psychological but social.
One must consider the distinction carefully: psychological predisposition, social determination. I am by no means sure that Durkheim is right; but the scientific discussion will focus on these two terms.
To prove the formula—psychological predisposition, sociological determination—Durkheim makes use of the classical method of concomitant variations. He examines variations in the suicide rate in different populations and tries to prove that there is no correlation between the frequency of psychopathological states and that of suicide. For example, he considers the various religions and remarks that the proportion of neurotic or insane persons among Jews is particularly high, while the frequency of suicide in these populations is especially low. Similarly, he tries to show that there is no correlation between hereditary tendencies and the suicide rate. The percentage of suicides increases with age, which is hardly compatible with the hypothesis that the efficient cause of suicide is transmitted by heredity. In this way he attempts to refute an interpretation which might be implied by repeated cases of suicide in the same family.
Prévost-Paradol, French writer and ambassador to the United States, and rather well known in the last century, committed suicide after the declaration of the Franco-Prussian War. About thirty years later his son also committed suicide under altogether different circumstances. Thus there are instances of multiple suicide in the same family which suggest that a predisposition to suicide may be transmitted by heredity. But, generally speaking, Durkheim dismisses such a hypothesis.
In these preliminary analyses Durkheim also dismisses the interpretation of suicide as deriving from the phenomenon of imitation. He takes the opportunity to settle accounts with a man who was rather celebrated in his day, a contemporary with whom he disagreed on everything, Gabriel Tarde, who considered imitation the keystone of the social order.3 The Durkheimian analysis proceeds somewhat as follows. There are three phenomena which are confused under the term imitation. The first is what today would be called the fusion of consciousness, the sentiments experienced mutually by a large number of people. The typical example of this is the revolutionary mob. In the revolutionary mob, individuals tend to lose the identity of their consciousness; each one feels the same emotions as the next; the sentiments which stir individuals are mutual sentiments. Acts, beliefs, passions belong to each because they belong to all. The basis of the phenomenon is the collectivity itself, and not one or more individuals.
But often the individual only adapts himself to the collectivity; he behaves like the others but there is not a true fusion of consciousness. He yields to social imperatives which are more or less diffuse; or he simply wishes not to be conspicuous. Fashion is a watered-down form of social imperative. A woman of a certain social milieu would feel devaluated, humiliated, if she wore a different dress from what fashion required for that particular season. In this case we do not have imitation but submission of the individual to the collective rule.
Finally, the designation imitation is only of value in the strict sense of the term, “an act which has for its immediate antecedent the representation of a similar act, previously performed by another, without the intervention, between representation and execution, of any explicit or implicit intellectual operation relating to the intrinsic character of the act performed.”
This sentence is a textual quotation. To understand the phenomenon to which it refers, you need only think of the contagion of coughing or sneezing in the course of a tedious lecture—those more or less mechanical reactions which sometimes occur in large gatherings.
Again, we should distinguish between two phenomena, contagion and epidemic. The distinction is useful because it is typically Durkheimian. Contagion—as in the case of coughing—is a phenomenon which we should call interindividual, or even individual. The man who coughs after the man before him has coughed is reacting to the cough of his neighbor. It is like a ricochet from one individual to another. The number of coughers may be large, but each of the attacks is strictly individual. The phenomenon proceeds from one individual to another. In the case of epidemic, however, a process of contagion may come into play, but there is something besides. The epidemic may be transmitted by contagion, but in fact it is a collective phenomenon whose basis is the whole of the society.
This distinction between a succession of individual acts and a collective phenomenon is typically Durkheimian. It enables us to focus once again on what is the center of Durkheimian thought, the determination of the social as such.
After these formal analyses, Durkheim statistically refutes the conception that the suicide rate is essentially determined by phenomena of imitation. The refutation proceeds as follows. If suicide were essentially attributable to contagion, then on a map showing the geographical distribution of suicide, we could see cases radiating from a center where the rate is particularly high toward other regions. But analyses of geographical maps of suicide show nothing of the sort. Next to a given region where the rate is high appear other regions where it is particularly low. The distribution of rates is irregular, and thereby incompatible with the hypothesis of contagion. Contagion may come into play in certain cases. For example, on the eve of a defeat or at the moment when a city is about to be captured, desperate individuals kill themselves one after another; but such phenomena explain neither the suicide rate nor its variations.
We have now covered the first two stages. We have defined the phenomenon and we have dismissed explanations of a psychological nature which do not take account of the social phenomenon; we have dismissed both imitation and psychopathology. We now come to the third and principal part of the study, the analysis of types.
Let us consider the nature of the operation for a moment. Durkheim takes the suicide statistics as he finds them, that is, incomplete and partial statistics dealing moreover with only small numbers. The suicide rate varies from one hundred to three hundred million per year. It is important to have an idea of the magnitude of these figures, for skeptical doctors have maintained that study of variations in the suicide rate is almost without consequence in view of the small number considered as well as the possible inaccuracies in the statistics.
Durkheim observes that the suicide rate varies with a certain number of circumstances, which he then considers. He believes that social types of suicide can be determined from statistical correlations. I emphasize this point because, according to another sociological theory, variations in the suicide rate might be established as a result of circumstances, but this does not make it legitimate to determine types from these co-variations.
The three types of suicide which Durkheim feels qualified to define are: egoist suicide, altruist suicide, anomic suicide. The first type, egoist suicide, emerges from the correlations between the suicide rate and integrating social contexts like religion and family, in the double form of marriage and children.
The suicide rate varies with age, which is to say that generally speaking it increases with age. It varies with sex; it is higher in men than in women. It varies with religion; and by using statistics, especially German ones, Durkheim establishes that suicide is more frequent in populations of Protestant religion than in populations of Catholic religion. Further, he makes comparisons between the situation of married men and women and that of single or widowed men and women. He establishes these comparisons by simple statistical methods. He compares the frequency of suicide in married and single men of the same age, establishing what he calls the coefficient of preservation, the diminution in the frequency of suicide at a given age as a result of marriage. Similarly, he establishes coefficients of preservation or coefficients of aggravation for single or married women, for widows and widowers. His conclusions are roughly as follows.
There is a preservation of individuals, both men and women, by marriage; but after a certain age the preservation is less due to marriage itself than to children. After a certain age, according to the statistics, married women without children do not enjoy a coefficient of preservation, but on the contrary suffer a coefficient of aggravation. Hence it is not so much marriage that protects as family and children. In childless wives there is aggravation. The family without children is not a sufficiently strong integrating milieu. Perhaps childless women suffer from what today’s psychologists would call frustration. The disproportion between expectation and fulfillment is too great. Individuals left to themselves—individualized, so to speak—experience infinite desires; since these are incapable of being satisfied, the individuals achieve equilibrium only through the outside force of a moral order which teaches them moderation and helps them find peace. Every situation that tends to aggravate the disparity between desires and satisfaction must be expressed by a coefficient of aggravation.
The first social type of suicide revealed by the statistical study of correlations is defined as egoist. Men and women commit suicide more often than others when they are egoists, when they think primarily of themselves, when they are not integrated into a social group, when the desires that motivate them are not limited to the measure compatible with human destiny by the social authority of the group, by the authority of obligations imposed by a narrow and powerful milieu.
The second type is altruist suicide. In Durkheim’s book it consists of two principal examples. The first, which may be observed in numerous archaic societies, is suicide required by the collectivity: in India, the widow who agrees to take her place on the pyre on which the body of her husband is to be burned. In this instance there is no question of suicide through excess of individualism, but, on the contrary, suicide through the complete disappearance of the individual into the group. The individual chooses death in conformity with social imperatives, without even thinking of asserting what is referred to today as the right to live. Similarly, the captain of a ship who does not choose to survive its loss commits suicide through altruism. The individual sacrifices himself to an internalized social imperative; he obeys what the group ordains, to the point of stifling his own instinct of self-preservation.
In addition to these instances of heroic or religious suicide, Durkheim finds in the suicide statistics a modern example of altruist suicide: the increase in the frequency of suicide in a specific professional body, the army. The statistics studied by Durkheim—and I believe that present statistics point in the same direction—reveal for soldiers of a certain age, noncommissioned officers and officers, a coefficient of aggravation: soldiers supposedly commit suicide a little more often than civilians of the same age and class. Suicide among soldiers cannot be explained as egoist because by definition soldiers, especially noncommissioned officers, belong to a strongly integrated group. I say especially noncommissioned officers because enlisted men may regard their military status as temporary and combine obedience with a very great liberty in their evaluation of the system. The professionals are integrated into the system and by all appearances believe in it since, except for exceptional cases, they would not have chosen it had they not pledged a minimum of loyalty to it. They belong to an organization whose formative principle is discipline. Thus they are located at the opposite extreme from the single men and women who reject the discipline of family life, who are incapable of subordinating the infinity of their desires to its necessary limitations.
It must therefore be acknowledged that the suicidogenic impulse affects two types of men, those who are too detached from the social group and those who are not detached enough. If egoists commit suicide more often than others, the same is true of the excessively altruistic, those who are so identified with the group to which they belong that they are incapable of resisting a given stroke of fate.
Finally, there is a third social type of suicide, which probably interests Durkheim most because it is most characteristic of modern society, namely, anomic suicide. Anomic suicide is the type indicated by the statistical correlation between frequency of suicide and economic crisis. Statistics do seem to indicate a tendency in periods of economic crisis—but also, more interestingly, in phases of extreme prosperity—toward an increase in suicides. Another curious phenomenon, however, is the tendency toward a diminution in the frequency of suicide in times of great political events. For example, in wartime the number of suicides is smaller.
These phenomena—increase in frequency in times of social unrest, decline in frequency in times of great events—suggest to Durkheim a third type of suicide, anomic suicide. As I remarked at the beginning of this chapter, the expression was used in De la division du travail social. It is the key concept in Durkheim’s social philosophy. What primarily interests him, what indeed obsesses him, is the crisis of modern society which is defined by social disintegration, the weakness of the ties binding the individual to the group.
Anomic suicide is the type that increases in economic crisis; it is also the type whose frequency rises with divorce. And Durkheim makes a long and perceptive study of the influence of divorce on both men and women as regards the frequency of suicide.
Actually, the statistics afford results which are relatively difficult to interpret. The divorced man is more threatened by suicide—a Durkheimian expression—than the divorced woman. Divorce is more dangerous for men than for women, which leads Durkheim to analyze what men and women find in marriage in the way of equilibrium, satisfaction, and discipline. Men find equilibrium and discipline in marriage, but, thanks to the tolerance of custom, they also retain a certain freedom. Women—Durkheim was writing in a bygone era—are more apt to find discipline than freedom in marriage. The divorced man returns to indiscipline, to the disparity between desires and satisfaction. The divorced woman enjoys a greater freedom, which partly compensates for the loss of familial protection.
Let us examine these concepts in detail. The Durkheimian reasoning is as follows. Besides suicide through egoism and suicide through altruism, there is a third type, anomic suicide, which affects individuals as a result of the conditions of existence in modern societies. Social existence is no longer ruled by custom; individuals are in endless competition with one another; they expect a great deal of life, they demand a great deal from it. They are in perpetual danger of suffering from the disproportion between their aspirations and their satisfactions. This atmosphere of restlessness and dissatisfaction is favorable to the growth of the suicidogenic impulse.
Durkheim now turns from the social type to the psychological type of suicide and endeavors to show that the social types he has established correspond approximately to psychological types. Egoist suicide tends to be characterized by a state of apathy, an absence of attachment to life; altruist suicide, by a state of energy and passion. Anomic suicide is characterized by a state of irritation or disgust, irritation resulting from the many occasions of disappointment afforded by modern existence, disgust being the extreme form of perception of the disproportion between aspirations and satisfactions.
After the social types of suicide have been translated into psychological terms, there remains what is, after all, the ultimate aim of the analysis, and the chief thing from a theoretical point of view: to explain, or to formulate in explicative terms, the results of the study.
Durkheim’s theory may be summarized as follows. Suicide is an individual phenomenon whose causes are essentially social. There are social forces—suicidogenic impulses, to adopt Durkheim’s expression—running through society, whose origin is not the individual but the collectivity, forces which are the real, the determining cause of suicide. Of course, says Durkheim, these suicidogenic impulses are not embodied in any one individual taken at random. If certain individuals commit suicide, it is in all probability because they were predisposed to it by their psychological makeup, by nervous weakness or neurotic disturbances. But the same social circumstances which create the suicidogenic impulses create the psychological predisposition, because individuals living in modern society have refined and consequently vulnerable sensibilities.
The real causes are social forces. These social forces vary from one society to another, from one group to another, from one religion to another. They emanate from the group and not from the individuals taken separately. This brings us back to the fundamental theme of Durkheimian society, namely, that societies are by nature heterogeneous in relation to individuals; that there are phenomena, forces, whose basis is the collectivity and not the sum of the individuals. It may be said further that individuals, together, give rise to phenomena or forces which can be explained only when taken as a whole. There are, therefore, specific social phenomena which govern individual phenomena. The most impressive, most eloquent example is that of the social forces which drive individuals to their deaths, each believing that he is obeying only himself.
The first question that arises when one tries to draw practical conclusions from Durkheim’s study of suicide is that of the normal or pathological character of the phenomenon under consideration. As I have indicated, Durkheim regards crime as a socially normal phenomenon. This does not mean that criminals are not often psychically abnormal, or that crime should not be condemned and punished, but simply that in every society a certain number of crimes are committed and that consequently, if by normal we mean what happens regularly, crime is not a pathological phenomenon. Similarly, a certain suicide rate may be regarded as normal. Durkheim then goes on to decide, perhaps without quite conclusive demonstration, that the increase in the suicide rate in modern society is pathological, or, rather, that the current suicide rate reveals certain pathological traits in modern society.
Modern society is characterized by social differentiation, organic solidarity, density of population, intensity of communications and of the struggle for survival. All these phenomena are related to the essence of modern society and as such should not be regarded as abnormal.
But at the end of De la division du travail social, as at the end of Le Suicide, Durkheim indicates that modern societies do present certain pathological symptoms—above all, insufficient integration of the individual into the collectivity. The type of suicide that in this respect most engages Durkheim’s attention is the type he has called anomic, the type corresponding to an increase in the suicide rate in periods of economic crisis as well as in periods of prosperity, i.e., whenever there occurs an “exaggeration” of activity, an amplification of the intercourse and competition which are inseparable from the society in which we live but which beyond a certain threshold become pathological. Hence the question Durkheim raises at the end of his book: how can reintegration of the individual into the collectivity be effected? He considers in turn the family group, the religious group, and the political group (particularly the state), and tries to demonstrate that none of these three groups provides a social context that would give the individual security while subjecting him to the demands of solidarity.
He dismisses reintegration into the family group with two kinds of arguments. In the first place, the suicide rate rises as rapidly in married people as in single people, which indicates that the family group no longer offers protection against the suicidogenic impulse or that the rate of protection given by marriage does not rise. Thus it would be useless to count on the family alone to provide for the individual a milieu both close to him and capable of imposing discipline on him. Moreover, the functions of the family are declining in modern society. The family is more and more limited; its economic role is more and more curtailed. It is not the family which will serve as intermediary between the individual and the collectivity.
The state or the political grouping is too far from the individual, too abstract, too purely authoritative to offer the context necessary for integration.
Religion too, according to Durkheim, is unable to do away with anomie. We cannot expect religion to offer the remedies necessary to cure the pathological type of suicide. Why not? Essentially the reason is this. Durkheim’s fundamental requirement for the group which is to be the means of reintegration is discipline. Individuals must consent to limit their desires, to obey imperatives that both fix the objectives they may set themselves and indicate the means they may rightly use. But in modern societies religions present an increasingly abstract, intellectual character; in a certain sense they are being purified, they are nobler, but they have partially lost their function of social constraint. They appeal to individuals to transcend their passions, to live according to spiritual law, but they are no longer capable of specifying the obligations or rules which man should obey in his secular life. Modern religions, according to Durkheim, are no longer schools of discipline to the degree they were in the past. They have little authority over morals in action.
Therefore Durkheim’s conclusion that the only social group that might foster the integration of individuals in the collectivity is the professional organization, or, to use his own term, the “corporation.”
In the preface to the second edition of De la division du travail social, Durkheim speaks at length of corporations as institutions which are considered anachronistic today but which actually meet the needs of the present order. Generally speaking, by corporations he means professional organizations which would apparently include employers and employees, which would be close enough to the individual to constitute schools of discipline and far enough above him to enjoy prestige and authority. Finally, being professional organizations, corporations would correspond to the major characteristic of modern societies in which economic activity prevails.
I shall return later to this conception of corporations, which might be called the Durkheimian version of socialism; it has had the ill fortune to be rejected by socialists and liberals alike, with the result that it is condemned to remain an academic solution.
For the moment let us take from this discussion of the pathological character of current suicide rates and the search for therapy an idea that for me is central to Durkheim’s philosophy. According to Durkheim, man when left to himself is motivated by unlimited desires. Individual man resembles the creature around whom Hobbes constructed his theory: he always wants more than he has, and he is always disappointed in the satisfactions he finds in a difficult existence. Since individual man is a man of desires, the first necessity of morality and of society is discipline. Man needs to be disciplined by a superior force which must have two characteristics: it must be commanding and it must be lovable. This force which at once compels and attracts can, according to Durkheim, only be society itself.
Before turning to Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, I should like to take up the three points on which discussion regarding Durkheim’s thesis on suicide has focused.
The first point concerns the value of statistics. Statistics on suicide are inevitably based on small numbers, because, happily, only a small number of persons deliberately take their own lives, even in societies with organic solidarity. Statistical correlations are established through relatively slight differences in the suicide rate. If one is a doctor, or if one believes in the individual-psychological interpretation of suicide, one can always try to prove that variations in the suicide rate are meaningless in the majority of cases because of errors in the statistics.
There are at least two incontestable sources of error. The first is that more often than not suicides are known only through the declarations of families. Certain suicides are known because the very circumstances of the desperate act are witnessed by others; but a good number of suicides are committed under conditions such that the authorities know of these voluntary deaths only through the declarations of families. Hence it may be argued that the percentage of misrepresented suicides varies with the social milieu, the times, and the circumstances.
The second source of uncertainty is the frequency of unsuccessful suicides, attempted suicides. Durkheim had not studied this problem, which is extraordinarily complex; a psychosocial study of each case is required to determine whether the intention to die was authentic or not.
The second point of discussion concerns the validity of the correlations established by Durkheim. To give you an idea of what is involved here, I need only refer to a classic thesis of Durkheim’s, that Protestants commit suicide more often than Catholics because the Catholic religion is a greater integrating force than the Protestant religion. This thesis was based on German statistics taken in regions of mixed religion. It seems convincing until we ask ourselves whether by chance the Catholics live in agricultural regions and the Protestants in the towns; for if by chance the two religious groups correspond to populations having different ways of life, the thesis regarding the integrative value of the religions would be cast into doubt.
The establishment of correlations between the suicide rate and a factor such as religion requires a statistical demonstration that there are no differential factors other than religion. In a large number of cases, of course, one does not arrive at an incontestable result. The religious factor is difficult to isolate. Populations that live close to one another and are of different religions have also, more often than not, different ways of life and different professional activities.
It should not be forgotten that causal analysis as Durkheim practiced it by working from suicide statistics bears witness to an intuition that can truly be called inspired. He did not have the mathematical training of the sociologists of today, and the methods he employed often seem simple and crude in comparison with the subtleties of modern methods. Nevertheless, in this field Durkheim remains an impressive pioneer, worthy of admiration.
The third point of discussion and the most interesting from the theoretical point of view is the relation between the sociological and the psychological interpretations. Psychologists and sociologists are agreed on one thing: the majority of those who take their own lives have a nervous or psychic constitution which, though not necessarily abnormal, is at least fragile, vulnerable. These people dwell at the outer limits of normality. More simply, many of those who kill themselves are in one sense or another neuropaths. They belong either to the anxious type or to the cyclothymic type. Durkheim himself had no objections to admitting this. But he was quick to add that there are a great many neuropaths who do not kill themselves, that the neuropathic character merely constitutes favorable soil, a favorable circumstance for the suicidogenic impulse.
I here quote from Durkheim the passage that seems to me most characteristic of his manner of stating the problem:
We can now form a more precise idea of the role of individual factors in the genesis of suicide. If in the same social milieu—for example, in the same religious community, the same body of troops, or the same profession—certain individuals are struck and not others, it is undoubtedly, at least generally speaking, because their mental constitution, as nature and events have made it, offers less resistance to the suicidogenic impulse. But though these conditions may help to determine the particular subjects in which this impulse is embodied, neither its distinctive characteristics nor its intensity depends on them. It is not because there are so many neuropaths in a social group that the annual number of suicides is so high. Neuropathy simply determines that some will give way rather than others. Here is the great difference that separates the clinician’s point of view and the sociologist’s. The former is confronted by particular cases isolated from one another. He observes that very often the victim is either a nervous type or an alcoholic, and he ascribes his action to one or the other of these psychopathic states. In one sense he is right, for if the subject committed suicide rather than his neighbors, it is frequently for this particular reason. But this is not the general reason why people commit suicide, or why in each society a certain number of people commit suicide in a determined period of time.
What is ambiguous in a passage like this is the expression suicidogenic impulse. This concept seems to imply that there is properly speaking a social force, a collective force emanating from the group as a whole, which drives individuals to suicide. But neither individual facts directly observed nor statistical facts force us to any such conclusion. Suicide rates can be explained by the percentage of nervous or anxious people in a given society, or by the incitement to suicide exerted on the nervous and anxious people in a given society. There are many anxious people who do not commit suicide, and it is understandable that, depending on professional status, political circumstances, or family status, anxious people should commit suicide more or less frequently.
In other words, nothing obliges us to regard a suicidogenic impulse as an objective reality, a determining cause. The statistical data may result from the combined influence of psychological or psychopathological facts and social circumstances, the social factors helping to increase either the number of the psychically unbalanced or the number of unbalanced persons who take their own lives.
The danger in the Durkheimian interpretation and the Durkheimian vocabulary is that of substituting for a positive interpretation, which readily combines individual and collective factors, a sort of mythical concretization of the social factors, the latter being transfigured, so to speak, into a supra-individual force that chooses its victims from among the individuals.
We now come to Durkheim’s third major book, certainly the most important of the three: Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse. It is the most important because it is the most profound, the most original; it is also, I think, the one in which Durkheim’s inspiration is most clearly evident.
The book is devoted to elaborating a general theory of religion derived from an analysis of the simplest, most primitive religious institutions. This statement in itself suggests one of Durkheim’s leading ideas, that it is legitimate and possible to base a valid theory of higher religions on a study of the primitive forms of religion. In other words, totemism reveals the essence of religion.
This last sentence is mine, not Durkheim’s, but it is faithful, as I hope to show, to Durkheim’s underlying thought. All the conclusions which Durkheim draws from his study of totemism presuppose the principle I have just formulated: that one can grasp the essence of a social phenomenon by observing its most elementary forms.
There is another reason why the study of totemism has a decisive significance in the Durkheimian system of thought: here again we meet the central theme not only of Durkheim but of all three sociologists we are studying. In one manner or another their common theme is the relation between science and religion.
In Durkheim’s eyes science holds the supreme intellectual and moral authority in present-day societies. Our societies are individualist and rationalist. One can transcend science, but one cannot ignore it or challenge its teachings. We have also seen that it is society itself which determines, indeed favors, the growth of individualism and rationalism. Every society needs common beliefs, but apparently these beliefs can no longer be provided by traditional religion, since religion does not meet the requirements of the scientific spirit. There is a solution, which Durkheim finds simple and, if I may use the word, miraculous; it is that science itself reveals that religion is, at bottom, merely the transfiguration of society.
If it should be demonstrated that throughout history men have never worshipped any other reality, whether in the form of the totem or of God, than the collective social reality transfigured by faith, we would immediately have a solution to the paradox, a way out of the impasse. If this were so, the science of religion would reveal the possibility of reconstructing the beliefs necessary to consensus. Not that science alone is capable of creating the collective faith; but science would allow us hope that, as Bergson put it, the society of the future will still be capable of producing gods, since all the gods of the past have never been anything but society transfigured.
In this sense, Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse represents Durkheim’s solution to the antithesis between science and religion. Science, by discovering the underlying reality of all religion, does not re-create a religion, but it gives us confidence in society’s capacity to provide itself in every age with whatever gods it needs. The exact expression employed by Durkheim is: “Religious interests are merely the symbolic form of social and moral interests.”
Straining the analogy somewhat perhaps, I would be inclined to say that Durkheim’s book on the elementary forms of religious life represents in his work the equivalent of the Système de politique positive in the work of Auguste Comte. Not that Durkheim describes a religion of society in the detailed way in which Comte described a religion of humanity. At a certain point in his book, Durkheim says explicitly that Comte was wrong to believe that an individual could make a religion to order. Precisely if religion is a collective creation, it would be contrary to the theory to suppose that a sociologist could create a religion single-handed. Durkheim did not wish to create a religion in the manner of Comte; but insofar as he wished to demonstrate that the object of religion is none other than the transfiguration of society, he laid a foundation comparable to the one Comte had given to the religion of the future when he asserted that humanity, having killed transcendent gods, would love itself or at least would love what was best in itself under the name of humanity.
Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse may be considered from three points of view because it brings together three kinds of studies. It contains a description and a detailed analysis of the clan system and of totemism in certain Australian tribes, with allusions to tribes of America. Second, it contains a theory of the essence of religion drawn from a study of Australian totemism. Finally, it outlines a sociological interpretation of the forms of human thought, an attempt to explain categories in terms of social contexts; an introduction, therefore, to what is now referred to as the sociology of knowledge.
Of these three themes it is the first, the descriptive study of the clan system and totemism, which occupies the most space; but it is the theme I shall discuss most briefly. It would be almost impossible to summarize the description of the clan and totemic system in a few words.
What concerns us here is the second theme, the general theory of religions derived from the study of totemism. Durkheim’s method in this book is the same as in the earlier books. The first step is a definition of the phenomenon, religion. The second is a refutation of theories that differ from the author’s. The third is a demonstration of the essentially social nature of religions.
The definition of the religious phenomenon adopted by Durkheim is as follows. The essence of religion is to establish a division of the world into two kinds of phenomena, the sacred and the profane. The essence of religion is not, therefore, belief in a transcendent god; there are religions, even higher religions, without gods; Buddhism, or at least a majority of the schools of Buddhism, does not profess faith in a personal and transcendent god. Nor is religion defined by the notion of mystery or of the supernatural. Notions of this kind can only be recent: there is no supernatural except in relation to the natural; but to have a clear idea of the natural, one must think in a positive and scientific manner. The notion of the supernatural cannot precede the notion, itself recent, of a natural order.
What constitutes the category of the religious is the bipartite division of the world into what is profane and what is sacred. The sacred consists of a body of things, beliefs and rites. When a number of sacred things maintain relations of coordination and subordination with one another so as to form a system of the same kind, this body of corresponding beliefs and rites constitutes a religion. Religion hence presupposes first the sacred; next, the organization of the beliefs regarding the sacred into a group; finally, rites or practices which proceed in a more or less logical manner from the body of beliefs.
The definition of religion at which Durkheim arrives is: “A religion is an interdependent system of beliefs and practices regarding things which are sacred, that is to say, apart, forbidden, beliefs and practices which unite all those who follow them in a single moral community called a church.” The concept of church is added to the concept of the sacred and to the system of beliefs in order to differentiate religion from magic, which does not necessarily involve the consensus of the faithful in one church.
The second step of the study consists in dismissing interpretations contrary to those Durkheim is about to offer. The two interpretations which he seeks to refute in the first part of the book are animism and naturism.
Reduced to their simplest elements, these two interpretations are as follows. In animism, religious beliefs are held to be beliefs in spirits, these spirits being the transfiguration of the experience men have of their twofold nature of body and soul. As for naturism, it amounts to stating that men worship transfigured natural forces.
The exposition and refutation of these two doctrines is rather long, but I should like to indicate immediately what I believe is the idea underlying the double refutation. Whether one adopts the animist or the naturist interpretation, Durkheim says, in either case one ends by rescinding its object. To love spirits whose unreality one affirms, or to love natural forces transfigured merely by man’s fear—in either case, Durkheim says, religion would amount to a kind of collective hallucination. The explanation of religion which Durkheim is about to provide amounts, according to him, to saving the reality of religion. For if man worships society transfigured, he worships an authentic reality, real forces, for what, he asks, is more real than the forces of the collectivity itself?
Religion is too permanent, too profound an experience not to correspond to a true reality; and if this true reality is not God, then it must be the reality, so to speak, immediately below God, namely, society. (I need scarcely add that “immediately below God” is not Durkheim’s expression but mine.)
The aim of Durkheim’s theory of religion is to establish the reality of the object of faith without accepting the intellectual content of traditional religions. Traditional religions are doomed in his eyes by the development of scientific rationalism, but it will save what it seems to be destroying by showing that in the last analysis men have never worshipped anything other than their own society.
A few words more on the two theories, the animist and the naturist, which Durkheim dismisses. He is referring to Tylor’s (and Spencer’s) theory, which was fashionable in his day. This theory began with the phenomenon of the dream. In dreams men see themselves where they are not; thus they conceive, as it were, a double of themselves, a double of the body, and it is easy for them to imagine that at the moment of death this double detaches itself and becomes a floating spirit, a good or bad genie. According to this interpretation, primitive men have difficulty distinguishing the animate from the inanimate. As a result, they lodge, so to speak, the souls of the dead, the floating spirits, in this or that reality. Thus there arises the cult of the tutelary spirit and of ancestors. Beginning with the quality of body and soul conceived in the dream, primitive religions pollulate with spirits, as it were, existing and acting around us, beneficent or formidable.
Durkheim’s detailed refutation takes up the elements of this interpretation one by one. Why attach so much importance to the phenomenon of the dream? Assuming that we do conceive that each of us has a double, why make this double sacred? Why assign it an extraordinary import? Ancestor worship, Durkheim adds, is not a primitive cult. Moreover, it is not true that the cults of primitive peoples are addressed particularly to the dead. The cult of the dead is not a primitive phenomenon.
Having decreed that the essence of religion is the sacred, Durkheim does not have much difficulty showing the weaknesses of the animist interpretation. This interpretation may, strictly speaking, explain the creation of a world of spirits; but in Durkheim’s eyes the world of spirits is not the world of the sacred. The essential thing, the sacred element, still needs to be explained.
To conclude, I quote a passage in which Durkheim seeks to contrast the true science of religion, which preserves its object, with those pseudo-sciences which tend to rescind it:
It is inadmissible that systems of ideas like religion which have had such a considerable place in history, to which people have turned in all ages for the energy they need to live, should be mere tissues of illusion. It is commonly recognized today that law, morality, scientific thought itself, are born of religion, have long been identified with religion, and have remained imbued with her spirit. How could a vain phantasmagoria have fashioned human consciousness so firmly, so enduringly? Assuredly it must be a principle for the science of religions that religion expresses nothing that is not in nature, for every science is concerned with natural phenomena.
Let me pause for a moment. As a good scientist, Durkheim considers that the science of religions presupposes the unreality of the transcendent as a matter of principle. The transcendent, being supernatural, is automatically excluded by the scientific method. Thus the problem is to rediscover the reality of a religion after having eliminated the supernatural from it.
The question is to discover to what realm of nature these realities belong, and what could have caused men to represent them in the singular manner which is peculiar to religious thought. But in order to raise the question, we must begin by acknowledging that these are real things which are being represented in this way.
When the philosophers of the eighteenth century made religion out to be an enormous error conceived by priests, at least they were able to explain its persistence by the interest the sacerdotal caste had in deceiving the masses. But if the peoples themselves have been the artisans of these systems of erroneous ideas, at the same time that they were their dupes, how has this extraordinary hoax been able to perpetuate itself throughout the course of history?
And, a little further on: “What is the point of a science whose principal discovery would consist in causing the very subject it treats to disappear?” The question is well put. I suppose that a nonsociologist, or a non-Durkheimian, would be tempted to counter: Does a science of religion according to which men worship society safeguard its object or make it vanish?
Having expounded the central theme of this book, I do not now intend to expound in detail the analysis of totemism to be found in Durkheim’s book. I should merely like to indicate some of the leading ideas and methods of reasoning, ideas and methods which are part of Durkheim’s general sociology.
First, I shall review an idea which is of extreme importance in Durkheim’s thought, the idea that totemism is the simplest religion. To say that totemism is the simplest religion implies an evolutionist conception of religious history. In the context of a nonevolutionist viewpoint, totemism would be one religion among others, one simple religion among others. If Durkheim asserts that it is the simplest, most elementary religion, he is implicitly acknowledging that religion has an evolution from a single origin.
Also, in order to comprehend the essence of religion from the particular and privileged case of totemism, one must subscribe to a method whereby a well-chosen sample reveals the essence of a phenomenon that is found throughout all societies. The theory of religion is not elaborated on the basis of study of a large number of religious phenomena. The essence of the religious phenomenon is apprehended from one particular case which is regarded as indicative of all phenomena of the same kind and also what is essential in these phenomena.
Of what does this simple religion consist? The principal notions utilized by Durkheim are those of clan and totem.
The clan is a group of kindred which is not based on ties of consanguinity. The clan is a human group, perhaps the simplest of all, which expresses its identity by associating itself with a plant or animal, with a genus or species of plant or animal. The transmission of the totem identified with the clan is effected, according to the practice of Australian tribes, in various ways. The most common method of transmission is through the mother; but it is not a case of absolute regularity or of law. There are clan totems, but there are also individual totems and totems of more extensive groups like phratries, matrimonial classes.4
In the Australian tribes studied by Durkheim the totem is represented in various ways. Each totem has its emblem or blazon. In almost all clans there are objects, pieces of wood or polished stones, which bear a figurative representation of the totem. Ordinary objects, which are referred to as churinga, are transfigured once they bear the emblem of the totem; they share the sacred quality that is associated with the totem, a phenomenon which, for that matter, we can easily understand by observing ourselves. In modern societies, the flag may be regarded as the equivalent of the churinga of the Australians. The flag of a collectivity shares the sacred quality which we attribute to the native land; and the profanation of the flag—there are numerous examples, throughout modern history, of such profanation—is the equivalent of certain phenomena studied by Durkheim. Totemic objects, bearing the emblem of the totem, give rise to behavior typical of the religious order, i.e., either practices of abstention or positive practices. The members of the clan must abstain from eating or touching the totem or the objects which share the sacred quality of the totem; or, on the other hand, they must display with regard to the totem some explicit form of respect.
In this way there is formed in the Australian societies a realm of sacred things. This realm includes first the plants or animals which are totems themselves, then the objects which bear the representation of the totem; eventually, the sacred quality is communicated to individuals. In the last analysis the whole of reality is found to be divided into two fundamental categories: the profane, things toward which one behaves in a manner we might call economic—economic activity being the prototype of profane activity; and on the other hand a whole realm of sacred things: plants, animals, representations of these plants and animals, individuals who are linked, through clan participation, with these sacred things. This realm of sacred things is organized more or less systematically.
After this brief description, we pass to an explanation of totemism. Following the method we are now familiar with, Durkheim begins by dismissing the interpretations that derive totemism from a more primitive religion. He dismisses the interpretation that totemism is descended from ancestor worship; the interpretation that sees the primitive phenomenon in animal worship; interpretations that give individual totemism as anterior to clan totemism. He dismisses interpretations according to which local totemism, i.e., the attribution of a totem to a fixed locality, is the basic phenomenon. What is first for him, historically and logically, is the totemism of the clan.
I shall quote some passages which I think will help us to understand Durkheim’s thought better than any commentaries:
Totemism is the religion, not of certain animals or of certain men or of certain images, but of a kind of anonymous and impersonal force which is found in each of these beings, without however being identified with any one of them. None possesses it entirely, and all participate in it. So independent is it of the particular subjects in which it is embodied that it precedes them just as it is adequate to them. Individuals die, generations pass away and are replaced by others. But this force remains ever present, living, and true to itself. It quickens today’s generation just as it quickened yesterday’s and as it will quicken tomorrow’s. Taking the word in a very broad sense, one might say that it is the god worshipped by each totemic cult; but it is an impersonal god, without a name, without a history, abiding in the world, diffused in a countless multitude of things.
This passage, a splendid one and one which might apply to almost any form of religion, reveals the Durkheimian theme in a striking manner, I think. He finds all these totemic beliefs or practices similar in essence to a religious belief or practice. Why?
According to him, what the Australians recognize as outside the world of profane things first and foremost is an anonymous, impersonal force that is embodied indiscriminately in a plant, an animal, or the representation of a plant or an animal. It is toward this impersonal and anonymous force, at once immanent and transcendent, that belief and worship are directed. Nothing would be easier than to adopt the same expressions and apply them to a higher religion. But we are dealing with totemism, and with an interpretation of totemism which is arrived at by the following analysis. It is the totemism of the clan which comes first. What is decisive is not where the notion of sacred is applied, but that the notion exists, that is, that men make the distinction between what is profane and everyday on the one hand and what is different in kind and sacred on the other. The distinction accords with the consciousness of primitive people, because as participants in a collectivity they have the vague feeling that there is something superior to their individuality; this superior reality is the force of society anterior to each individual, which will survive all of them and which, without knowing it, they worship.
Let me quote another passage dealing with a notion that has played a large role in sociology, mana.
One finds in these peoples [the Melanesian peoples], under the name of mana, a notion that is the exact equivalent of the fuakan of the Sioux and the orenda of the Iroquois. The Melanesians believe in the existence of a force absolutely separate from any material force which acts in all kinds of ways, whether for good or ill, and which it is to man’s greatest advantage to bring under control and dominate. It is called mana. I believe I understand the meaning this word has for the natives. It is a force, an influence of an immaterial order, and in a certain sense supernatural, but it is revealed through physical force, or rather through any kind of power or superiority that we possess. Mana is by no means fixed on a specific object; it may be brought to bear on every kind of thing. The whole religion of a Melanesian consists in procuring mana, either for one’s own sake or for the sake of another. Is this not the very notion of an anonymous and diffuse force whose germ we discovered just now in Australian totemism?
In this passage we again find the central concept of the interpretation of religion, namely the anonymous and diffuse force. This time the example is taken from Melanesian societies; but in Durkheim’s eyes the very juxtaposition of these analyses applied to different societies confirms his theory that the origin of religion is the distinction between sacred and profane, and that the anonymous, diffuse force superior to individuals and very close to them is in reality the object of worship.
What is this anonymous and diffuse force? Why does society become the object of belief and worship? We find Durkheim’s answer a little further on: society has in itself something sacred.
There is no doubt that a society has everything needed to arouse in men’s minds, simply by the influence it exerts over them, the sensation of the divine, for it is to its members what a god is to his faithful. For a god is first a being whom man imagines in certain respects as superior to himself, and on whom he believes he depends, whether we are speaking of personalities like Jacob, Zeus, or Jahweh, or of abstract forces like those which come into play in totemism. In either case, the believer feels that he is obliged to accept certain forms of behavior imposed on him by the nature of the sacred principle with which he feels he is in communication. But society also maintains in us the sensation of a perpetual dependence, because it has a nature peculiar to itself, different from our individual nature, and pursues ends which are likewise peculiar to itself; but since it can attain them only through us, it imperiously demands our cooperation. It requires that we forget our personal interests and become its servants; it subjects us to all kinds of inconveniences, hardships, and sacrifices without which social life would be impossible. So it is that at every moment we are obliged to submit to rules of conduct and ideas which we have neither made nor willed and which are sometimes even opposed to our most fundamental inclinations and instincts.
Society awakens in us the feeling of the divine. It is at the same time a commandment which imposes itself and a reality qualitatively superior to individuals which calls forth respect, devotion, adoration.
Moreover, according to Durkheim, society favors the rise of beliefs because individuals, brought together, living in communion with one another, are able in the exaltation of festivals to create the divine, as it were, to create a religion. I should like to refer you to two curious and characteristic passages, one in which Durkheim describes the scenes of exaltation experienced by the Australians of the primitive societies, and another immediately following it in which he alludes to the French Revolution as a possible creator of religion. Here is the passage on the Australians:
The smoke, the torches all aflame, this shower of sparks, this mass of men dancing and shouting, all this, according to Spencer and Guillem [observers of the Australian societies whom Durkheim follows], created a scene whose savagery it is impossible to suggest in words.
This is the first part of the description of the festival, and here is Durkheim’s commentary:
It is not difficult to imagine that, having reached this state of exaltation, man no longer knows himself, and feels himself dominated, carried away by a kind of outside power which makes him think and act differently than he ordinarily does. He naturally has the sensation of no longer being himself. He seems to have become a different creature. The decorations in which he is rigged out, the kinds of masks with which his face is covered, represent this interior transformation materially even more than they help to bring it about. And since at the same time all his companions are transfigured in the same manner and express their feelings by their cries, their gestures, their attitudes, all proceeds as if they really were transported into a special world, completely different from the one in which he ordinarily lives, into a milieu swarming with exceptionally intense forces which invade and transform him. How could experiences like these, especially when they recur daily for weeks, fail to convince him that there indeed exist two worlds which are heterogeneous and not to be compared with one another? One is the world in which he languidly drags out his daily life; whereas he cannot penetrate the other without also entering into communion with extraordinary powers which stimulate him to the point of frenzy. The first is the profane world, the second is the world of sacred things.
The passage I have just quoted is, I think, the most categorical expression of the Durkheimian vision. Imagine for yourselves a crowd participating in a ceremony which is both feast and religious service, individuals united by common practices and similar behavior, dancing and shouting. The ceremony, a collective activity, carries each individual outside of himself; it makes him participate in the force of the group; it gives him the sensation of something that has no relation to that everyday life which he “languidly drags out,” This something—extraordinary, immanent, and transcendent all at once—is indeed the collective force; and it is sacred. These phenomena of exaltation are the prototype of the psychological, or rather psychosocial, process which gives rise to religions.
Somewhat earlier, Durkheim alludes to the revolutionary cult. At the time of the French Revolution, individuals were also seized with a kind of sacred enthusiasm. The words nation, liberty, and revolution were charged with a sacred value. Such periods of upheaval are favorable to the collective exaltations which give rise to the sacred. Durkheim admits that the exaltation at the time of the French Revolution was not sufficient to create a new religion. But, he says, other upheavals will occur, the moment will come when modern societies will once again be seized by the sacred frenzy, and out of it new religions will be born.
Bergson concludes his Two Sources of Morality and Religion with the statement, “Man is a machine for the making of gods.” Durkheim would have said that societies are machines for the making of gods. In order for this “making” to succeed, individuals must escape from everyday life, get outside themselves, and be seized by that fervor of which the exaltation of collective life is at once the cause and the expression.5
Thus, the sociological interpretation of religion takes two forms. One of these is expressed by the following proposition: in totemism, men worship their own society without realizing it; or, the quality of sacredness is attached first of all to the collective and impersonal force which is a representation of society itself. The second version of the theory is that societies are inclined to create gods or religions when they are in a state of exaltation, an exaltation which occurs when social life itself is intensified. In the Australian tribes this exaltation arises on the occasion of ceremonies which we can still observe today. In modern societies, Durkheim suggests, without making a rigorous theory of it, we must have crises in order to observe the equivalent of the dances of the Australian societies.
Beginning with these fundamental ideas, Durkheim develops, though I shall not follow him, an interpretation of the notions of soul, spirit, and god. He traces the intellectual elaboration of religious representations. Religion involves a body of beliefs, and these beliefs themselves are expressed verbally and assume the form of a system of thought. The systematization is carried rather far. Durkheim tries to discover how far totemic systematization goes. He wants to show the limits of the intellectual systematization of totemism as well as the possible transition from the totemic universe to the universe of later religions.
Durkheim also emphasizes the importance of two kinds of social phenomena, symbols and rites. Much of social behavior is addressed not to things themselves but to the symbols of things. In totemism, prohibitions apply not only to the totemic animals or plants but to objects on which the animals or plants are represented. Similarly our social behavior today is continually addressed not only to things themselves but to the symbols of these things.
Durkheim also works out an elaborate theory of rites; he distinguishes the different types of rites and their general functions. He distinguishes three kinds of rites: negative rites, positive rites, and rites which he calls piacular, or rites of expiation. Negative rites are essentially interdicts: prohibitions against eating or touching. They develop in the direction of all religious practices of asceticism. Positive rites, on the other hand, are rites of communion; they are intended to promote fecundity, reproduction. Durkheim also studies the mimetic or representative rites, which attempt to imitate the things one seeks to bring about.
These rites, whether negative, positive, or piacular, all have one major function of a social order. Their aim is to uphold the community, to renew the sense of belonging to the group, to maintain belief and faith. A religion survives only by practices which are both symbols of the belief and ways of renewing them.
Durkheim seeks to understand not only the religious beliefs and practices of the Australian tribes, but also the ways of thinking which are related to these beliefs. He derives a sociological theory of knowledge from his study of Australian totemism. In his eyes, religion is the original nucleus from which not only moral and religious rules in the strict sense have emerged through differentiation, but from which scientific thought, too, has derived.
This sociological theory of knowledge seems to involve three kinds of propositions. In the first place, using a certain number of examples, Durkheim shows that the original forms of classification are related to religious images of the universe drawn from the societies’ representations of themselves and of the duality of the profane and the religious universes.
In all probability we would never have thought of bringing the creatures of the universe together in homogeneous groups called genera if we had not had before our eyes the example of human societies, if indeed we had not begun by making things themselves members of the society of men, with the result that human groupings and logical groupings were at first identified.
From another point of view, a classification is a system whose parts are arranged according to a hierarchical order. There are dominant characters and others which are subordinated to these. The species and their distinctive properties depend upon the genera and the attributes which define them. Or again, different species of the same genus are conceived as located at the same level.
Generally speaking, Durkheim’s theme is that we have classified the creatures of the world in groups called genera because we had the example of human societies. Human societies are an example of logical groupings immediately given to individuals. We extend the practice of grouping to the things of nature, because we conceive of the world in the image of society itself. Moreover, the classifications—the dominant characters, the subordinate characters—are derived by imitation from the hierarchy existing in society.
After the passage I quoted above, Durkheim explains that the idea of hierarchy which is necessary to logical classification of genera and species can only be drawn from society itself. Neither the spectacle of physical nature nor the mechanism of mental association is capable of furnishing the idea. “Hierarchy is an exclusively social thing. It is only in society that there exist superiors, inferiors, equals. Consequently, even though the facts were not demonstrative to this extent, mere analysis of these notions would suffice to reveal their origin. Society has provided the canvas on which logical thought has worked.” This sentence is an excellent summary of Durkheim’s conception.
In the second place, Durkheim explains that an idea like causality comes, and can only come, from society. The experience of collective life gives rise to the idea of force. It is society itself that gives men the idea of a force superior to that of individuals.
In the third place, Durkheim attempts to demonstrate that the sociological theory of knowledge, as he outlines it, provides a way to avoid the antithesis of empiricism vs. apriorism, an antithesis articulated in all elementary courses in philosophy.
Empiricism is the doctrine according to which categories or concepts in general spring directly from sense experience; according to apriorism, concepts or categories are given in the human mind itself. According to Durkheim, empiricism is false because it cannot explain how concepts or categories spring from sense data, while apriorism is false because it explains nothing, since it places in the human mind, as an irreducible and basic datum, the very thing to be explained. Obviously, by a method with which we are now familiar, synthesis will result from the intervention of society. What apriorism has understood is that sensations cannot give rise to concepts or categories, that there is something in the human mind besides sense data. But what neither apriorism nor empiricism has understood is that this thing which is more than sense data must have an origin, an explanation. It is collective life which is the origin and explanation of concepts and categories. Concepts are impersonal representations, as the rationalist theory holds, because they are collective representations. Collective thought is indeed different in nature from individual thought. Concepts are representations which are imposed on individuals precisely because they are collective representations. As collective representations, moreover, concepts immediately present a quality of generality. For society is not concerned with details, with singularities. Society, Durkheim tells us, is the mechanism, as it were, whereby ideas arrive at generality and at the same time find the authority characteristic of concepts or categories. Science has an authority over us; but why, if not because the society in which we live so wills it? Somewhere in Durkheim there occurs this sentence, so characteristic of his thought: “Faith in science does not differ essentially from religious faith.”
He comments that all the demonstrations in the world would lose their effectiveness if, in a given society, faith in science should disappear. This is both obvious and absurd: it is obvious that demonstrations would cease to convince if men ceased to believe in the value of demonstrations. But it is absurd to think that propositions would cease to be true if men decided to believe that white is black or black is white. In other words, if we are speaking of the psychological fact of belief, Durkheim is obviously right; but if we are speaking of the logical or scientific fact of truth, it seems to me that he is just as obviously wrong.
A few words in conclusion. I have quoted frequently for a particular reason: I do not trust myself. As you may have noticed, I have a great deal of difficulty entering into Durkheim’s way of thinking, which has always been foreign to me. By quoting passages from his writings, I hope I have helped you to understand him and I have perhaps been less unfair to him than I might otherwise have been.
Before proceeding to the next chapter, I should like to indicate the source of my difficulty in understanding Durkheim clearly. Society, he says, is at the same time real and ideal, and society by its essence generates the ideal. First, let us consider society as a collection of individuals, like the Australian clan or tribe; for society as a tangible reality perceptible from without is composed of individuals and the objects they use. (Durkheim stressed the fact that society is not only a collection of individuals but also includes the objects which the individuals use.) This society, as a natural reality, may indeed favor the emergence of beliefs. It is difficult to imagine the religious practices of solitary individuals. Besides, all human phenomena, not only religion, present a social dimension; no religion is conceivable outside of the groups in which it appeared, outside of the communities called churches. But if I am also told that society as such is not only real but ideal and that insofar as individuals worship it they worship a transcendent reality, then I have trouble following, for if religion consists in adoring a concrete, tangible society as such, this love strikes me as idolatrous, and religion becomes a hallucinatory image to exactly the same degree as in the animist or the naturist interpretation.
My objection, or, if you prefer, my doubt, might be formulated as follows. Either, as Durkheim believed, the society to which religious worship is addressed is a concrete, tangible society composed of individuals and just as imperfect as the individuals themselves—and in this case, if the individuals worship it they are victims of hallucinatory images exactly as if they worshipped plants, animals, spirits, or souls. If society is regarded as a natural reality, Durkheim does not “save” the object, or religion, any more than any other interpretation of religion does. Or else the society Durkheim has in mind is not real, concrete, tangible society, but a society different from the one we are able to observe; ideal society, as it were—and in this case we emerge from totemism and enter a kind of religion of humanity, to use Auguste Comte’s phrase. The society to which religious adoration is addressed is no longer a concrete reality, but an ideal reality; it is the ideal imperfectly realized in real society. But in this case it is not society which accounts for the notion of the sacred; it is the notion of the sacred, occurring spontaneously to the human mind, which transfigures society, just as it can transfigure any reality whatever.
Let us consider the same difficulty in another form. Durkheim says, “Society creates a religion when it is in a state of agitation.” According to this hypothesis, it is simply a question of a concrete circumstance whereby individuals experience a psychic state in which they react to impersonal forces both immanent and transcendent. Such an interpretation of religion amounts to a causal explanation. Social ferment is favorable to the rise of religion. But nothing remains of the idea that the sociological interpretation of religion makes it possible to save the object of religion by showing that man worships that which deserves to be worshipped. Or, to use simpler language, we are wrong to speak of society in the singular; according to Durkheim himself, there are only societies. Which means that if the object of worship is societies, there exist only religions: tribal religions, national religions. In this case, the essence of religion would be to inspire in men a fanatical devotion to partial groups, to pledge each man’s devotion to a collectivity and, by the same token, his hostility to other collectivities.
It seems to me absolutely inconceivable to define the essence of religion in terms of the worship which the individual pledges to the group, for in my eyes the essence of impiety is precisely the worship of the social order. To suggest that the object of the religious feelings is society transfigured is not to save but to degrade that human reality which sociology seeks to understand.
In De la division du travail social as in Le Suicide and Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, Durkheim’s development is the same: at the outset, definition of the phenomenon; next, refutation of previous interpretations; and finally, a sociological explanation of the phenomenon in question.
The similarity goes even further. In all three books the interpretations that Durkheim refutes have the same characteristic: they are all individualist and, so to speak, rationalizing interpretations such as are found in the economic sciences. In De la division du travail social Durkheim dismisses the interpretation of progress toward differentiation through mechanisms of individual psychology; he shows that social differentiation cannot be explained in terms of the striving for an increased productivity, the pursuit of pleasure or happiness, or the effort to overcome ennui. In Le Suicide the explanation of suicide which he dismisses is the individualist and psychological explanation of madness or alcohol. Finally, in Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse the interpretations he refutes are those of animism and naturism, which are also essentially individualist and psychological.
In all three cases the explanation at which Durkheim arrives is essentially sociological, although the word may have a slightly different meaning from one book to another. In De la division du travail social the explanation is sociological because it assumes the priority of society over individual phenomena. Particular emphasis is placed on population volume and density as causes of social differentiation and organic solidarity. In the case of suicide, the social phenomenon by which Durkheim explains suicide is what he calls the suicidogenic impulse, a social tendency to suicide which is embodied in certain individuals because of circumstances of an individual order. Finally, in the case of religion the sociological explanation has a twofold quality. On the one hand, it is the collective exaltation caused by the gathering of individuals in the same place which gives rise to the religious phenomenon and inspires the sense of the sacred; on the other, it is society itself which the individuals worship without knowing it.
Hence, sociology as Durkheim conceives it is the study of essentially social facts and the explanation of these facts in a sociological manner.
It goes without saying that in all three cases my analysis has been schematic; for this reason I have probably been unfair to him. At any rate, I think I ought to say that in my opinion the detail in Durkheim’s books is more valuable than the whole, or, more exactly, the scientific analysis is of greater value than the philosophical interpretation.
To conclude this account, I shall devote the next three chapters to the following subjects. First I shall try to explain how Durkheim conceived of sociology when he was working on his theory of it, that is, when he was writing Les Règles de la méthode sociologique. This work dates from 1895. The book was written after the publication of De la division du travail social, in 1893, and before Le Suicide. Next I shall indicate how Durkheim conceived of the relation between sociology and socialism, and more generally of the political problems of his day. Finally, I shall examine the relation between Durkheimian sociology and philosophy, or, if you prefer, the transition from sociology to certain philosophical ideas.
Les Règles de la méthode sociologique is an abstract formulation of the method we have observed in the first two books, De la division du travail social and Le Suicide. The Durkheimian conception of sociology is based on a theory of the social fact. Durkheim’s aim is to demonstrate that there may and must be a sociology which is an objective science conforming to the model of the other sciences, and whose subject is the social fact. The requirement for such a sociology is twofold. First, the subject of this science must be specific, it must be distinguished from the subjects of all the other sciences. Second, this subject must be such as to be observed and explained in a manner similar to the way in which facts are observed and explained in the other sciences.
This twofold requirement leads to the two celebrated formulas that are found throughout Durkheim’s work, formulas which summarize Durkheimian philosophical if not scientific thought. First, social facts must be regarded as things; and second, the characteristic of the social fact is that it exercises a constraint on individuals.
Let us consider these formulas and try to understand here what Durkheim means when he says that we must regard social facts as things. Durkheim’s point of departure is that we do not know, in the scientific sense of the word know, what the social phenomena which surround us, among which we live, and, it can even be said, which we live, really are. To use Durkheim’s language, we do not know what the state, sovereignty, political liberty, democracy, socialism, or communism are. This does not mean that we do not have some idea of them; but precisely because we have a vague and confused idea of them, it is important to regard social facts as things, i.e., to rid ourselves of the preconceptions and prejudices which incapacitate us when we try to know social facts scientifically. We must observe social facts from the outside; we must discover them as we discover physical facts. Precisely because we have the illusion of knowing social realities, it is important that we realize that they are not immediately known to us. It is in this sense that Durkheim maintains that we must regard social facts as things because things, he says, are all that is given, all that is offered to—or rather forced upon—our observation.
The formula “social facts must be regarded as things” implies a criticism of political economy, a criticism of abstract discussion of such concepts as that of value.6 According to Durkheim, all these discussions are subject to the same fundamental shortcoming: they begin with the misconception that we can understand social phenomena in terms of the meaning we spontaneously assign to them, while the true meaning of these phenomena can only be discovered by an exploration that is objective and scientific.
How do we recognize a social phenomenon? We recognize it by the fact that it forces itself on the individual. And Durkheim gives a series of extremely varied examples which show the multiplicity of meanings with which the term constraint is invested in his thinking. There is constraint when, in a gathering or a crowd, a feeling imposes itself on everyone, or a collective reaction—laughter, for example—is communicated to all. Such a phenomenon is typically social in Durkheim’s eyes because its basis, its subject, is the group as a whole and not one individual in particular. Similarly, there is a social phenomenon in the case of fashion; everyone dresses in a certain way in a given year because everyone else does so. It is not an individual which is the cause of fashion, it is society itself which expresses itself in these implicit and diffuse obligations.
Durkheim takes as still another example what he calls currents of opinion, which impel people toward marriage, or a higher or lower birth rate, and which he terms states of the collective soul. (The suicidogenic impulse belongs to the same category.) Finally, the institutions of education, law, beliefs also have the characteristic of being given to everyone from without and of being imperative for all.
We have just mentioned some very different facts, from crowd phenomena on the one hand to currents of opinion, moralities of education, law, and beliefs (what the German writers call objective mind) on the other. Durkheim puts all these facts together because he finds in them the same fundamental characteristic. These facts are general because they are collective; they are different from the repercussions they have on individuals; their substratum is the collectivity as a whole. It is legitimate, therefore, to call a social fact “any way of behaving, fixed or not, which is capable of exercising an outside constraint on the individual,” or again, “any way of behaving which is universal throughout a given society and has an existence of its own independent of its individual manifestations.”
These two propositions—to regard social facts as things, and to recognize the social fact by the constraint it exercises—are the foundation of Durkheim’s methodology. They have been the subject of endless discussion, which, to a large extent, has been concerned with the ambiguity of the terms employed. Indeed, if we agree to call thing any reality which can and must be observed from without and whose nature is not immediately knowable, Durkheim is perfectly right to say that social facts must be regarded as things. If, on the other hand, the term implies that social facts do not call for an interpretation different from the interpretation called for by natural facts, or if he is suggesting that any interpretation of the meaning men assign to social facts must be dismissed by sociology, he is wrong. Moreover, a rule of this kind would be contrary to his own practice, for in all his books he has sought to grasp the meaning which individuals or groups assign to their way of life, their beliefs, their rites; what is referred to as understanding (the German Verstehen) is precisely apprehending the meaning of social phenomena in the consciousness of the actors. A conservative interpretation of the Durkheimian thesis merely requires that this authentic meaning is not given immediately, that it has to be discovered or elaborated gradually.
In the case of the notion of constraint, the ambiguity is twofold. In the first place, the word constraint ordinarily has a more restricted meaning than the one Durkheim assigns to it. In popular speech we do not speak of constraint either with reference to fashion or with reference to the beliefs held by individuals, even when these beliefs have been internalized—when the individuals have the impression, while subscribing to the same faith as their fellows, that they are expressing themselves.
In other words, Durkheim uses the word constraint in a very vague sense which is not without its disadvantages, since the reader is inclined to remember only the popular meaning of the word, while the Durkheimian meaning is infinitely broader.
The second ambiguity in defining the social fact in terms of constraint relates to the following question: is constraint the essence of the social phenomenon, or is it merely an external characteristic which helps us to recognize it? According to Durkheim himself, it is the second alternative which is true. He does not claim that constraint is the essential characteristic of social facts as such; he simply gives it as the external characteristic which enables them to be recognized. Nevertheless, sometimes there is a confusion between the external character and the essential definition. There has been endless debate on whether or not it is right to define the social fact by constraint. Personally, my conclusion would be that if one takes the word constraint in the broad sense and regards this characteristic as merely one easily visible feature, the theory becomes more easily acceptable but perhaps less interesting.
Debate over the terms thing and constraint has been all the livelier in that Durkheim himself, as a philosopher, is a conceptualist. He has a tendency to regard the distinctions between genera and species as fundamental, as inscribed in reality itself. Also, in his theory of sociology, problems of definition and classification are of the first importance.
In each of the three books, Durkheim begins by defining the phenomenon in question. Definition of the phenomenon is essential for him, for it is a matter of isolating a category of facts. Durkheim is always inclined to think that once a category of facts is defined, it will be possible to find an explanation for it, and a single explanation. The abstract formula is that a given effect always proceeds from the same cause. Thus, if there are several causes of suicide, it is because there are several types of suicide. The same is true of crime.
The rule of procedure for definitions is as follows: “Take for the subject of investigation a group of phenomena previously defined by certain external characteristics which are common to them, and include in the same investigation all those phenomena which answer this definition.”
Supposing we wish to formulate a definition of crime. We observe that this phenomenon can be recognized by certain external signs. What distinguishes a crime is that it provokes society to a reaction called punishment, which in turn indicates that the collective consciousness has been offended, wounded by the act considered guilty. We shall then call crimes all those acts which present this external characteristic: that once committed, they produce in society the particular reaction which is called penalty or punishment.
What is problematical about this method? The problem is this: Durkheim starts with the idea that one should define social facts by easily recognizable external features in order to avoid prejudices or preconceptions. For example, crime as a social fact is an act that calls for punishment. If this definition is not given as essential, there is no difficulty; here is a convenient method of recognizing a certain category of facts. But if, having established this definition, we apply an alleged principle of causality and declare that all facts in this category have one fixed cause and only one, without even realizing it we are implying that the extrinsic definition amounts to an intrinsic definition, and assuming that all the facts we have classed in the category have the same cause. It is by a process of this kind that Durkheim, in his theory of religion, slips from the definition of religion in terms of the sacred to the conception that there is no fundamental difference between totemism and the religions of salvation, and ends by proposing that all religion consists in worshipping society.
The danger of the process is twofold : unwittingly to replace an extrinsic definition by an intrinsic definition; and to assume that all the facts one has classified in one category necessarily have one and the same cause.
In the case of religion, the significance of these two reservations is immediately apparent. It may be that in totemic religion the believers worship society without even being aware of it. It does not therefore follow that the intrinsic, essential meaning of religious belief is the same for the religions of salvation. Durkheim’s conceptualist philosophy implies an identity of kind among the various facts classified in the same category, defined by extrinsic characteristics: an identity which is by no means evident.
This tendency to regard social facts as capable of being classified in genera and species is seen in a chapter of Les Règles de la méthode sociologique devoted to the classification of societies. Classification is based on the principle that societies differ in degree of complexity. Let us begin by considering the simplest aggregate, which Durkheim calls the horde. The horde, which according to him may be a historical reality or simply a theoretical fiction, immediately breaks down into individuals juxtaposed in atomic fashion, if you will. The horde is to the social domain what the protozoan is to the animal kingdom. If the horde is not, perhaps, a historical reality, the simplest segment, after the horde, is the clan, which includes several families. But, according to Durkheim, families are historically later than the clan, and families do not constitute social segments. The clan is the simplest society known to history, and is composed of a group of hordes. If the clan consists, to all intents and purposes, of several hordes, then in order to classify other societies we need only apply the same principle. Simple polysegmental societies, like Kabyle tribes, will consist of a large number of clans juxtaposed. Societies like the Iroquois federations will be called simply-composed polysegmental societies in which the segments, instead of being merely juxtaposed, are composed—i.e., organized into a society of a higher type. The next stage is that of doubly-composed polysegmental societies, which result from the combining of simply-composed polysegmental societies. To this type belong the Greek and Roman city-state.
This classification presupposes simple social units, combinations of which constitute the various social types. According to this conception, each society would be defined by its degree of complexity, and this criterion would make it possible to determine the nature of society without reference to historical phases such as, for example, the development of industrial society.
Durkheim indicates somewhere that a society (he is referring to Japanese society) may absorb a certain economic growth of outside origin without, however, having its fundamental nature altered. Classification of social genera and species would then be radically different from determination of phases in economic or historical development. Nineteenth-century sociologists such as Comte and Marx had attempted to determine the principal moments of historical evolution, the phases of intellectual, economic, and social progress. Durkheim believed that such attempts were fruitless but that it would be possible to establish a scientifically valid classification of genera and species of societies by concentrating on a criterion reflecting the nature of the society in question, namely the number of juxtaposed segments in a complex society and the mode of combination of these segments.
This theory of the definition of genera and species has two important results: first, a distinction between the normal and the pathological; and second, a theory of explanation.
The distinction between the normal and the pathological plays an important role in Durkheim’s thought. In my opinion, this distinction remained important until the end of his career, although he did not use it as often in the last phase, the one marked by Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse.
The importance of this distinction is related to Durkheim’s projects for reform. As we know, he wanted to be a pure scientist; but this did not prevent him from maintaining that sociology would not be worth an hour’s trouble unless it enabled us to improve society. He had hopes of founding programs for action on this objective and scientific study. Now, one of the intermediate phases between observation of facts and the formulation of precepts is precisely the distinction between the normal and the pathological. If a phenomenon is normal, we have no grounds for seeking to eliminate it, even if it shocks us morally; on the other hand, if it is pathological, we possess a scientific argument to justify projects of reform.
Crime is a normal phenomenon; or, rather, a certain rate of crime or suicide is a normal phenomenon. What does normal mean? Durkheim’s answer is that a phenomenon is normal when it is generally encountered in a society of a certain type at a certain phase in its evolution.
Thus normality is defined by generality; but since societies are different, it would be impossible to recognize generality in any abstract or universal manner. Generality can only be determined on the basis of a classification of societies. That phenomenon will be regarded as normal which is encountered most often in a society of a given type at a given moment in its evolution.
This definition of normality by generality does not mean that, on a secondary level, we do not try to explain generality, that is, try to discover the cause of the frequency of the phenomenon in question. But the first, external, and decisive indication of normality is simply generality or frequency.
If normality is defined by generality, Durkheim tells us, the explanation is defined by the cause. To explain a social phenomenon is to look for its cause, we might even say its efficient cause; it is to look for the antecedent phenomenon which necessarily brings it about.
Causal explanation is the explanation characteristic of every science; it must therefore be the normal procedure of sociology.
On a secondary level, once the cause of a phenomenon is established, one may then look for the function it performs, the usefulness it presents. But the functionalist explanation, presenting as it does a teleological character, is and should be subordinated to the search for the efficient cause.
Of what nature are the causes which explain social phenomena? Durkheim would reply that the causes of social phenomena must be sought in the social milieu; it is the structure of the society in question which is the cause of the phenomena sociology seeks to explain.
The explanation of phenomena by social milieu is opposed to the historical method whereby the way to explain a phenomenon is supposedly to search in the past, in a former state, of the society. Durkheim feels that explanation by the past, i.e., historical explanation, is not a true scientific explanation. He holds that a social phenomenon is explained by concomitant conditions. He even goes so far as to say that if social milieu does not account for phenomena observed at a given moment in history, it will be impossible to establish any relation of causality.
In a certain sense, the efficient causality of the social milieu is, in Durkheim’s eyes, the very condition for the existence of scientific sociology. For scientific sociology consists in studying facts from the outside, in rigorously defining concepts with which to isolate categories of phenomena, in classifying societies into genera and species, and finally, in explaining a particular phenomenon within a given society by the social milieu. The proof of the explanation is obtained by the method known in logic as the method of concomitant variation.
We have seen one application of this method in the case of suicide. The application was particularly simple because we limited ourselves to a comparison of suicide rates within a single society or within societies very close to one another, according to circumstances. But the method of concomitant variation should involve comparison of a single phenomenon, for example family or crime, from one society to another of the same species or not of the same species. The idea, according to Durkheim, is to trace the complete development of a given phenomenon, for example, family or religion, through all social species.
In the case of religion we have seen how Durkheim returns to the elementary forms of religious life; he does not trace the development of the religious phenomenon through the social species; but in the light of his analysis, we can see how an ideal sociology would begin with a category of facts defined by externally recognizable features, would trace the development of the institution through the social species, and would thus arrive at a general theory of an order of facts, or even of social species. Ideally, if I may say so, we imagine a general theory of society whose principle is a conceptualist philosophy: a conception of categories of facts, a conception of genera and species of society, a conception of social milieu as the determining cause of social facts.
This theory of scientific sociology is based on an assumption central to Durkheimian thought, the assumption that society is a reality different in kind from individual realities and that every social fact is the result of another social fact and never of a fact of individual psychology.
Here is one of the numerous passages I might quote in illustration:
But, it will be said, since the only elements of which society is composed are individuals, the original source of sociological phenomena can only be psychological. By arguing this way one can just as easily establish that biological phenomena are analytically explained by inorganic phenomena. But in fact it is quite certain that in the living cell there are only molecules of raw matter; they are associated, however, and it is this association which is the cause of those new phenomena which characterize life and of which it is impossible to discover even the germ in any of the associated elements. A whole is not identical with the sum of its parts. It is something new, and all its properties differ from those displayed by the parts of which it is composed. Association is not, as has sometimes been believed, a phenomenon unproductive in itself, consisting merely in bringing into external relation established facts and formed properties. Is it not, on the contrary, the course of all the innovations which have occurred successively in the course of the general evolution of things? What difference is there between the lower organisms and the others, between the organized living thing and the simple amoeba, between the latter and the inorganic molecules that compose it, if not a difference of association? In the last analysis, all these creatures may be reduced to elements of the same kind, but these elements are here juxtaposed, there associated, here associated in one way, there in another.
By virtue of this principle, society is not merely a sum of individuals; the system formed by their association represents a specific reality.
Such is the central point of Durkheim’s thought. The social fact is specific; it is born of the association of individuals and it differs in kind from what occurs in individuals, in individual consciousness. These social facts can be the subject of a general science because they can be arranged in categories and because social entities themselves may be classified in genera and species.
Let us now turn to Durkheim’s political ideas, and especially to his conception of the relation between socialism and sociology. My only texts are three series of lectures which were published after his death, but since Durkheim had the good habit of carefully writing down his lectures, they express his thought precisely.
One of the three is entitled Le Socialisme and deals primarily with Saint-Simon; another, first published in 1950, is entitled Leçons de sociologie: physique des moeurs et du droit; and a third series deals with education.
As we know, Durkheim was a philosopher by training. He was a student at the École Normale Supérieure in the 1880’s; and, like his classmates Lévy-Bruhl and Jaurès, he was passionately interested in what were known at the time as social questions, which seemed broader than mere political questions. When he began his research, he was formulating the problem whose study would result in De la division du travail social: in the abstract form, what is the relation between individualism and socialism?
His nephew, Marcel Mauss, in his preface to the series of lectures on socialism, recalls the theoretical starting point of Durkheim’s research, namely, the relation between the two intellectual movements known as socialism and individualism respectively. In a certain sense, this amounts to a translation into philosophical terms of the sociological problem that is at the heart of De la division du travail social. The question of the relation between the individual and the group led Durkheim to that theme of consensus, of Comtist origin, which one encounters so frequently in his books. Questioning the relation between individualism and socialism or between individual and group belongs to a tradition initiated by Auguste Comte. Durkheim is faithful in many ways to the inspiration of the founder of positivism.
At the outset Durkheim establishes the absolute of scientific thought: scientific thought is the only form of thought valid in our age. No moral or religious doctrine may be accepted, at least in its intellectual content, unless it can sustain the criticism of science. Thus Durkheim can find a basis for the social order only in a scientific type of thought. This was also the origin of the positivist doctrine.
Moreover, by his statement of the problem, Durkheim immediately finds himself criticizing the economists, and particularly the liberal or theoretical economists. His criticism is fundamentally the same as that formulated by Comte. They agree that economic activity is characteristic of modern societies; modern societies are industrial, and consequently the organization of the economy must exercise a decisive influence on the whole of the society. But it is not in terms of the competition of individual interests or of the preestablished harmony among these interests that one can create that concurrence of wills which is the condition of social stability, any more than one can explain a society in terms of the supposedly rational behavior of its economic subjects.
The social problem, if not exclusively economic, is a problem of consensus, i.e., of common sentiments by which conflicts are reduced, egoisms repressed, and peace preserved. The social problem is a problem of socialization. The social problem is to make the individual a member of the collectivity, to instill in him thus respect for its imperatives, prohibitions, and obligations without which collective life would be impossible.
The book on division of labor represents Durkheim’s first answer to the problem of the relation between individualism and socialism, and this answer is related to the discovery, or rediscovery, of sociology as a science. It is no longer in the abstract, by the speculative method, that we attempt to solve the social problem, the problem of the individual’s relation to the group, but by the scientific method. Why? Because science shows us that there is no one type of relation between individual and group, that there are different types of integration which vary according to the time and the society.
In particular, we have analyzed two fundamental types of integration: mechanical solidarity (solidarity by resemblance) and organic solidarity (solidarity by differentiation). Organic solidarity by differentiation, in which each man performs a function of his own and society results from the necessary concurrence among different individuals, is found to be the actual solution, demonstrated by the scientific method, to the problem of the relation between individualism and socialism.
The ideas I am rapidly reviewing here are those we have already analyzed in relation to division of labor. But what I am pointing to here is how, for Durkheim, an analysis of organic solidarity also becomes the answer to a strictly philosophical problem, that of the relation between individualism and socialism. A society in which organic solidarity prevails allows individualism to flourish as a result of both a collective necessity and a moral imperative. It is the social morality itself which commands each man to fulfill himself. Organic solidarity is not unproblematic, however. While it is true that in modern society individuals are no longer interchangeable and each may realize his own destiny, nevertheless there must still be common beliefs–if only a belief in the absolute respect due the human person–to maintain the peaceful coexistence of these differentiated individuals. Thus it is important, in a society where individualism has become the highest law, to give large enough content and sufficient authority to the collective consciousness.
Every society of this type, where organic solidarity prevails, runs the risk of disaggregation, of anomie. In fact, the more that modern society encourages individuals to claim the right to fulfill their own personalities and gratify their own desires, the more danger there is that the individual may forget the requirements of discipline and end by being perpetually unsatisfied. For no matter how great the allowance made for individualism in modern society, there is no society without discipline, without limitation of desires, without disproportion between each man’s aspirations and the satisfactions obtainable.
It is at this point in his analysis that Durkheim encounters the problem of socialism and that we can understand in what sense Durkheim is a socialist and in what sense he is not, or in what sense sociology as Durkheim understands it is a substitute for socialism.
As a matter of fact, Durkheimian thought was rather closely associated with the thought of the French socialists of the late nineteenth century. According to Marcel Mauss, it was Durkheim who influenced Jaurès’ thinking in the direction of socialism and who showed him the emptiness or poverty of the radical ideas to which Jaurès subscribed at the time. Jaurès’ conversion to socialism was probably not due to the influence of Durkheim alone; Lucien Herr, librarian of the École Normale, played a direct and preponderant role in it. Nevertheless, it is true that from approximately 1885 to 1895 the Durkheimian concept of socialism was an important element of French political consciousness in leftist intellectual circles.
The course Durkheim devoted to socialism is part of a larger undertaking which he did not finish. He proposed to make a historical study of all the socialist doctrines. He completed only his course on the origins, i.e., essentially on Saint-Simon.
Durkheim approaches historical study with several ideas which should be explained immediately, for they illuminate his interpretation of socialism. Though he may be a socialist in a certain sense (I should be inclined to say that he is a true socialist, according to the definition of socialism he adopts), Durkheim is not a Marxist. He is even opposed to Marxism, as it is ordinarily interpreted, on two essential points.
First, Durkheim does not favor violence: he does not believe in the fruitfulness of violent means, and he refuses to regard the class struggle, particularly conflicts between labor and management, as an essential element in present society or as the impulse of the movement of history. Here again Durkheim is a good disciple of Auguste Comte. For him, conflicts between labor and management are proof of a disorganization or partial anomie in modern society which ought to be corrected, and not the herald of the transition to a fundamentally different social or economic regime. So if, as is believed today, class struggle and violence are preeminent in Marxist thought, and if (as we should not) we agree to rank socialism and Marxism together, then we would have to say that Durkheim is at the opposite pole from socialism.
Neither is Durkheim a socialist insofar as many socialists tend to believe that the solution to the problems of modern society will result from an economic reorganization. As we shall see in a moment, the social problem for Durkheim is not so much economic as moral. Here again Durkheim is very far from Marxist thought. He certainly sees neither the law of ownership nor even the welfare state as the essence of socialist thought. Then what does socialism mean to Durkheim? I should say that Durkheim’s socialism is essentially the “socialism” of Comte, which may be summarized in two key words: organization and moralization.
Socialism is a better, a more intelligent organization of collective life whose aim and result would be to integrate individuals within social frameworks or communities invested with moral authority and capable of performing an educational function.
Let us now consider Durkheim’s lectures on socialism, subtitled Sa définition, ses débuts, la doctrine saint-simonienne. Durkheim does not distinguish clearly what belongs to Saint-Simon from what belongs to Augustin Thierry or Auguste Comte. Personally I feel that he attributes to Saint-Simon many merits, virtues, and original insights which belong rather to his collaborators; but this is not what concerns us here.
What does concern us is Durkheim’s definition of socialism and the analogies he draws between Saint-Simonianism and the state of socialism in his own day.
Durkheim always seeks to define a social reality objectively. He does not claim the right, as Max Weber did, to choose his definition of a social phenomenon. He tries to determine from the outside what a certain social phenomenon is by considering its visible features. In the present case, Durkheim establishes a definition of socialism by considering the features common to the doctrines popularly called socialist at a certain period.
The simplest thing would be to quote the few lines in which he formulates his definition:
We call socialist any doctrine which seeks the amalgamation of all economic functions, or of certain ones which are now diffused, with the controlling and conscious center of society.
This passage is soon followed by a somewhat longer definition:
Socialism cannot be reduced to a matter of salary or, as we say, of the belly. It is above all an aspiration toward a rearrangement of the social body, whose effect is to alter the position of the industrial apparatus in the whole of the organism, to draw it out of the darkness where it functions automatically, and to summon it into the light and control of consciousness. But even now one can perceive that this aspiration is not experienced solely by the lower classes, but by the State itself, which, as economic activity becomes a more important factor in life as a whole, is led by the force of circumstances and vital necessities of the highest importance to supervise and regulate its manifestations to a greater extent.
Durkheim establishes a rigorous distinction between the doctrines he calls communist and those he calls socialist. According to him, there have been communist doctrines at all periods of history, at least since antiquity. These doctrines were born of a protest against social inequality and injustice, and visualized a world in which the condition of each man would be the condition of all. They are not characteristic of a given historical period, as are the socialist doctrines of the early nineteenth century immediately following the French Revolution. Far from regarding economic activity as fundamental, they rather attempt to reduce economic activity and wealth to a minimum. Many of them are inspired by an ascetic conception of existence, whereas socialist doctrines emphasize the primordial character of economic activity and, far from desiring a return to a simple and frugal life or demanding laws against luxury, they seek the solution to social difficulties in abundance and the development of productive capacities.
According to Durkheim, the socialist doctrines are defined neither by the negation of private property nor by the demands of the workers nor by the desire of the upper classes or the leaders of the state to improve the condition of the underprivileged. According to Durkheim, denial of private property is by no mean characteristic of socialism, and if there occurs a criticism of inheritance in the Saint-Simonian doctrine, Durkheim sees this criticism as a kind of confirmation of the very principle of private property. This apparently paradoxical line of reasoning is nevertheless intelligible. Suppose we call private property property possessed by the individual, and suppose we say that private property is justified when it belongs to the person who acquired it. Hereditary transmission becomes contrary to the principle of private property, since through inheritance someone receives a piece of property which he has not had the merit of acquiring himself. In this sense, Durkheim says, the criticism of inheritance may be regarded as the logical extension of the principle whereby the only legitimate property is private, i.e., that which the individual possesses because he has acquired it himself.
As for the demands of the workers or efforts to improve the condition of the workers, while Durkheim agrees that these belong to the sentiments which inspire socialist doctrines, he maintains that they are not essential to the socialist idea. In all ages there have been men inspired by the spirit of charity or pity who have taken a sympathetic interest in the lot of the poor and have tried to improve it. But this kind of paternalism and concern for the unhappiness of others is characteristic neither of socialist doctrines nor of a given moment in European social history. Neither, Durkheim adds, will we ever solve the “social question” by economic reforms.
For Durkheim, the French Revolution was a necessary antecedent to the development of the socialist doctrines. In the eighteenth century he does find certain phenomena which may be regarded as the germ of socialism. For example, protests against inequalities increase and the idea appears that more extensive functions may be assigned to the state. But before the French Revolution these ideas remain in a germinal state and the essential is missing, i.e., the conception of a conscious reorganization of economic life, the central idea of socialism.
Why did this central idea emerge after the French Revolution? Because the revolution disturbed the social order, it propagated the feeling of a crisis, it led thinkers to seek the causes of the crisis. By overthrowing the old order, the French Revolution created an awareness of the possible role of the state. Finally, it was after the French Revolution that the contradiction between the increased capacity of production and the poverty of the majority clearly emerged. Men discovered economic anarchy. They transferred to the economic order the protest against inequality which before the revolution laid the blame primarily on political inequalities. There was a sort of encounter between the equalitarian aspirations fostered by the revolution and the awareness of economic anarchy created by the spectacle of nascent industry. The encounter of these two phenomena–protest against inequality and awareness of economic anarchy–led to the formulation of the socialist doctrines, which are projects aimed at social reorganization in terms of economic life.
According to Durkheim’s definition of socialism, then, the social question is above all a question of organization. But it is also a question of moralization. And in an impressive passage Durkheim explains why reforms inspired by the spirit of charity alone could not solve the social problem:
Unless we are mistaken, this current of pity and sympathy, successor to the old communist current, which is generally to be found in contemporary socialism, is merely a secondary element. It supplements but does not constitute socialism. As a consequence, measures taken to arrest it leave intact the causes that have given birth to socialism. If the needs expressed by socialism are justified, they will not be satisfied by according some satisfaction to these vague feelings of brotherhood. Look at what is happening in all the countries of Europe. People everywhere are concerned about what is called the social question and are trying to provide partial solutions to it. And yet almost all of the arrangements made to this end are intended exclusively to improve the lot of the working classes, that is, they correspond only to the generous tendencies which are at the root of communism. People seem to believe that what is most urgent and most useful is to mitigate the poverty of the workers, to compensate what is wretched in their condition by handouts, legal favors. They are ready to increase grants and subventions of all kinds, to extend the circle of public charity as far as possible, to make laws to protect the health of the workers, in order to narrow the gap separating the two classes, in order to reduce inequality. They do not see–and for that matter this is always happening with socialism–that by proceeding in this way, they are mistaking the secondary for the essential. It is not by displaying a generous complacency toward what still remains of the old communism that we will ever be able to contain, or realize, socialism. It is not by giving all our attention to a situation which is of all time that we will offer the slightest relief to one which dates from yesterday. Not only do we bypass in this way the goal we should have before us, but even the goal we have in mind cannot be reached by the paths we are following, for in vain will we create for the workers privileges that partly neutralize those enjoyed by their employers, in vain will we reduce the length of the working day or even legally raise salaries: we shall not succeed in appeasing the appetites aroused, for they will assume new forms as soon as they are appeased. There are no possible limits to their demands; to undertake to appease them by satisfying them is to try to fill the vessels of the Danaïdes. If the social question were truly stated in these terms, it would be much more worthwhile to declare it insoluble.
The passage is astonishing. It has a strange ring in the climate of today, and we must try to understand it.
It goes without saying that Durkheim is not an enemy of social reform, that he is not hostile to reduction of the working day or increase of salaries. What is revealing about this passage is that the sociologist is transformed into a moralist. The fundamental theme is always the same: men’s appetites are insatiable; unless you create a moral authority which limits their desires, men will be eternally unsatisfied, because they will always want to obtain more than they can. In a certain sense Durkheim is right. But he has not asked himself another question: must the goal of social organization be to make men satisfied? Is not frustration part, not only of the human condition, but also specifically of the condition proper to the society in which we live?7
Perhaps, as social reforms increase, men do remain just as unsatisfied as they were before; but perhaps they do not. Even if they do, it is conceivable that frustrations or demands are the mechanism of historical movement. One need not be a Hegelian to believe that human societies are transformed through men’s refusal to accept their situation, whatever it may be. In this sense, frustration is not necessarily pathological; it certainly is not in societies like ours, where the authority of tradition is growing weaker and the accustomed mode of life no longer seems to impose itself upon men as a norm or an ideal. If each generation aspires to live better than the preceding one, the permanent frustration described by Durkheim will be inevitable, the sieves of the Danaïdes or the labors of Sisyphus; these myths are representations of modern society.
But let us return to Durkheim’s solution to the social problem as suggested by the passage I have just quoted. The social problem, he says, cannot be solved by reform, by improving the lot of men. How can it be solved? What is the specificity of today’s social problem?
Formerly, in all societies, economic functions were subordinate to temporal and spiritual powers–temporal powers of a military or feudal nature and spiritual powers of a religious nature. What is typical of modern industrial society is that the economic functions are now left to themselves; they are no longer either regularized or moralized. Durkheim adds that Saint-Simon clearly understood that the old powers, that is powers of a military or feudal nature, based on constraint exercised by man over man, could only be an annoyance, a constraint in the industrial society. The old powers cannot organize and regularize economic life. But the first socialists made the mistake of thinking that this nonsubordination of economic functions to a social power was characteristic of modern society. In other words, observing that the old powers were ill-suited to the necessary regularization of economic functions, they concluded that these economic functions should be left to themselves, that they did not need to be subject to a power. This is what Durkheim calls the anarchic tendency of socialist doctrines.
For Durkheim himself, this is a fundamental error; economic functions do need to be subject to a power, and this power should be both political and moral. And, as we know, Durkheim immediately discovers the political and moral power necessary to regulate economic life: it is not the state or the family but professional groups.
The course on socialism dates from 1896, or a year after the publication of Les Règles de la méthode sociologique. It is therefore contemporaneous with the first phase of Durkheim’s career, with De la division du travail social and Le Suicide. In it, he recapitulates the ideas he expounded at the end of De la division du travail social and again in the preface to the second edition of the same work: the solution to the social problem is to reconstitute the professional groups formerly called corporations, which would exercise an authority over individuals and regulate economic life by moralizing it.
The state is no longer capable of exercising this function because it is too remote from individuals. The family, on the other hand, has become too narrow and has lost its economic function; economic activity normally proceeds outside of the family, the place of work is not identified with the place of residence. Therefore, neither state nor family can exercise the controlling influence over economic life; it is professional groups, reconstituted corporations, which will serve as intermediary between individuals and state and which will be endowed with the social and moral authority necessary to reestablish discipline, without which men give way to the infinity of their desires.
In this way, sociology would provide a scientific solution to the social problem. In this sense we understand how Durkheim could take as the starting point of his research a philosophical problem which took precedence over the political problem; and how he found in sociology, as he understood it, a substitute for socialist doctrine.
The conclusion of the lectures on socialism contains an interesting suggestion. Durkheim writes that at the beginning of the nineteenth century there were three roughly contemporaneous movements: the birth of sociology, an effort at religious revival, and the development of the socialist doctrines. The socialist doctrines sought to reorganize society, or rather to subject the diffused economic functions to a conscious authority; the religious movement attempted to re-create beliefs to replace the declining traditional beliefs; and sociology sought to subject social facts to a scientific study inspired by the spirit of the natural sciences.
According to Durkheim, these three movements are interrelated in many respects. Sociology, socialism, and religious revival coincided in the early nineteenth century because they were characteristic of the same crisis. In a sense it is the development of science which undermines, destroys, or at any rate weakens traditional religious beliefs. It is the development of the sciences which irresistibly leads the scientific spirit to turn its attention to social phenomena. Socialism is the realization of the moral and religious crisis on the one hand, of social disorganization on the other, and of the fact that the old political and spiritual powers are no longer suited to the nature of industrial society. Sociology is both a flower of the scientific spirit and an attempt to find an answer to the problems raised by socialism, by the decline of religious beliefs, and by the efforts at spiritual regeneration.
What is Durkheim’s conclusion? Unfortunately the last lines of his lectures are illegible, but their meaning is not hard to guess. As a sociologist, Durkheim wants to explain the causes of the socialist movement scientifically, to show what truth there is in the socialist doctrines, and also to indicate in scientific terms under what conditions it will be possible to find a solution to the so-called social problem. As for the religious revival, it cannot be said that as a sociologist Durkheim claims to make a decisive contribution to it; he is not the prophet of a sociological religion like Auguste Comte. But in a certain sense the science of society does help explain how religions are born out of social needs and collective exaltation, and thereby permits us to believe that by the same process other religions will be born to answer the same necessities.
To conclude I shall quote another passage very characteristic of Durkheim:
What is necessary for the social order to prevail is that the generality of men be content with their lot. But what is necessary for them to be content is not that they have more or less, but that they be convinced that they do not have the right to have more. And for this to be, it is absolutely necessary that there be an authority whose superiority they acknowledge, and which lays down the law. For never will the individual left to the pressure of his needs acknowledge that he has reached the extreme limit of his right.
For Durkheim it is the categorical imperative of the collective consciousness which limits the infinity of human desires.
Since, for Durkheim, socialism is organization rather than class struggle, its goal the creation of professional groups rather than a change in the status of property, then it is clear that he is not profoundly concerned with properly political mechanisms. In his eyes parliamentary institutions, elections, and parties constitute a superficial aspect of society.
In this respect, too, Durkheim is a disciple of Auguste Comte. Comte, in the first part of his career, was imbued with liberal ideas; but as his thinking evolved, he became less concerned with representative institutions as such. For him, parliaments were metaphysical institutions–or, more precisely, institutions whose spirit was contemporaneous with the transitional phase of metaphysics between theology and positivism. In his image of the future society Comte left very little room for elections, parties, or parliaments. He even went so far in this direction that at the time of Napoleon III’s coup d’état he was scarcely indignant at the suppression of these “metaphysical” survivals. He even wrote an amiable letter to the tsar of Russia. As a good philosopher and a good positivist, he was ready to grant that those reforms necessary to the achievement of the positivist era had been accomplished by an absolute power, even though this power was embodied in a man of tradition.
Durkheim did not go quite so far in his contempt for parliamentarianism; but, as his nephew Marcel Mauss says in his introduction to Durkheim’s course on socialism, for the sociologist, parliament and elections are “superstructure,” in Marxist terms, or, as we would say in ordinary language, superficial phenomena.
Durkheim believed in the necessity for profound reforms of a social and moral kind. According to him, these reforms were paralyzed rather than promoted by party conflicts and parliamentary confusion. When Durkheim discussed democracy, particularly in his Leçons de sociologie, he gave a definition of it which includes neither universal suffrage nor plurality of parties nor even parliament. In his eyes the true characteristic of a democratic state is “greater extension of the governmental consciousness and, second, closer communication with this consciousness on the part of the mass of individual consciousness.”
The consequence is a historical perspective suggested in a passage in the book:
From this point of view democracy is seen as the political form by which society arrives at full awareness of itself. A nation is more democratic to the extent that deliberation, reflection, and the critical spirit play a more important role in the progress of public affairs. It is less democratic to the extent that ignorance, unacknowledged habits, obscure feelings–in short, unexamined prejudices–are preponderant. In other words, democracy is not a discovery or rediscovery of our century; it is the character increasingly assumed by societies. If we can free ourselves of those popular labels which only damage clarity of thought, we will recognize that the society of the seventeenth century was more democratic than that of the sixteenth, or than any society with feudal foundations. Feudality is diffusion of social life, it is that maximum of obscurity and ignorance which the great contemporary societies have reduced. Monarchy, by centralizing collective power to an increasing extent, by extending its ramifications in all directions, by more intimately pervading the social mass, by preparing the future of democracy, was, in relation to what existed before it, itself a democratic government. That the head of state then bore the name of king is altogether secondary. What should be considered are the relations he maintained with the whole of the country. Even then, it was the country that actually took responsibility for the clarity of social ideas. Therefore, it is not in the last forty or fifty years that democracy has come into its own; its rise has been continuous from the beginning of history.
A passage of this kind reveals the persistence in Durkheim of what might be called the evolutionist vision. It is not in the twentieth century that democracy came into its own; down through the ages, societies have become increasingly democratic–provided we understand clearly what democracy means. To arrive at this vision of a society which evolves, so to speak, of itself toward an increasing democracy, it is necessary to devaluate properly political institutions, to regard the principle of legitimacy as secondary, to be indifferent whether the head of state is or is not called king, or whether he is appointed by birth or by election. Stated still differently, Durkheim’s proposed definition of democracy implies that the political order, that is, the order of command or authority, is only a secondary phenomenon in society as a whole, and that democracy itself must be characterized by certain features of the society as a whole–degree of consciousness of the governmental functions, degree of communication between the mass of the population and the government.
Durkheim lived in that fortunate era before World War I when it was possible to believe that all communication between government and governed must be benign. He certainly did not anticipate that, according to his definition of democracy, the Hitler regime would more or less deserve the name. Of course Durkheim introduced concepts like deliberation, reflection, critical spirit into the notion of governmental consciousness. But it is not evident that deliberation was absent from an authoritarian regime of the fascist type; reflection was at the service of ends which we may condemn, but reflection there was. If feudality is the prototype of a nondemocratic society, then the total state, if not the totalitarian state, should logically represent the opposite extreme.
Durkheim could adopt a definition of democracy more sociological than political because he assumed that governmental consciousness and communication between state and masses could only be brought about by procedures like those he observed in liberal societies and representative regimes; he did not foresee that this same concentration of power and a certain form of communication between government and governed might exist in conjunction with the absolute negation of the representative forms of power and hence with a fundamentally different mode of government.
Durkheim is so anxious to give the governmental function the capacity for deliberation and reflection that he takes a dim view of direct universal suffrage. In the Leçons de sociologie, he explains that parliamentary anarchy, as it may be observed in a country like France, is ill-suited to the requirements of the societies in which we live. He suggests a reform that would introduce indirect suffrage, which he feels would have the virtue of freeing the candidates elected from the pressure brought to bear on them by the obscure or blind passions of the masses, and thus of permitting the government to deliberate more freely upon the collective needs. Besides, the introduction of indirect suffrage enables Durkheim to find his favorite idea in the political order, the creation of intermediary bodies. These intermediary bodies, whose prototype is the corporation, must not be regional organizations, but professional organizations.
Like the French counterrevolutionaries of the first half of the nineteenth century, Durkheim frequently alludes to the crisis in modern societies brought on by the direct conflict between isolated individuals and an all-powerful state. He too wants to reinstate an intermediary between the individual and the state. He wants to make society more organic by avoiding both the total state and scattered and powerless individuals. But instead of envisioning the restoration of intermediary bodies of the regional or territorial type, as the counterrevolutionaries did, it is functional organizations—i.e., corporations—that he prefers.
I shall quote still another passage on the introduction of indirect suffrage:
There is a force in circumstances against which the best arguments are powerless. So long as political arrangements place deputies and more generally governments in such immediate contact with the multitude of the citizens, it is materially impossible for the citizens not to make the law. This is why fine minds have often demanded that members of a collective assembly be appointed by suffrage at a remove of two or more degrees. This is because the introduction of intermediaries frees the government, and can be effected without interrupting communications between governmental councils. Life must flow without a break in continuity between the state and private individuals and between private individuals and the state, but there is no reason why this circulation may not occur via intermediary organs. As a result of this interposition the state will be more responsible to itself; the distinction between it and the rest of society will be clearer, and if only for this reason it will be more capable of autonomy.
Then come the lines that in a way are the clearest expression of Durkheim’s diagnosis of the crisis of our society:
Thus our political malaise springs from the same cause as our social malaise, namely the absence of secondary milieus interpolated between the individual and the state. We have already seen that these secondary groups are indispensable to prevent the state from oppressing the individual. We now see that they are necessary to keep the state sufficiently independent of the individual. And indeed it is clear that they are useful to both sides, for it is advantageous that these two forces not be in immediate contact, although they are necessarily related to one another.
Before concluding, I should say a few words about a quantitatively and qualitatively important part of Durkheim’s work which I cannot, however, expound in detail. I refer to his lectures, several of which have been published, on the problem of education.
It is well to recall that Durkheim had a professional chair in education, and not in sociology itself. Every year he was condemned to teach a course in education. Moreover, even without such coercion, he was interested in the problem of education, for a reason which will immediately be obvious: education is essentially a social phenomenon, it consists in socializing individuals. To raise a child is to prepare or force him to be a member of one or more collectivities. For this reason, when Durkheim studied historically the different modes of education which have been practiced in France, he again found his favorite themes.
Education is a social process. Each society has the educational institutions which are suitable to it. Just as each society has a morality that is generally adapted to its needs, so each society has one or more methods of education corresponding to the collective needs. Durkheim’s theories of education are inspired by the same conceptions of man and society as are all his books. From the outset Durkheim posits man motivated and dominated by his natural egoism—Hobbes’ man with unlimited desires and consequently a need for discipline. Whence the first theme of the Durkheimian view that education consists first and foremost in accustoming individuals to submit to a discipline. This discipline must have a quality of authority; but it is not a case of a brute, wholly physical authority. Due to an ambivalence which we already know to be characteristic of society itself, this discipline to which the individual will be subject is both desired and in a certain sense loved, for it is the discipline of the group. It is through his attachment to the group that the individual discovers the need for devotion as well as discipline. To train individuals with a view to their integration into society is, therefore, to make them aware not only of the norms to which their conduct must conform but of the immanent and transcendent value of the collectivities to which each of us belongs and will belong.
This first theme—the idea of discipline—is combined with a second theme that we are already familiar with. Modern societies continue to need the authority peculiar to the collective consciousness; but they also instill in the individual the need to fulfill his personality. Thus, in modern societies the goal of education will be not only to discipline individuals but also to promote the full expression of their personalities and so to create in each of them a sense of autonomy, reflection, and choice.
The formula might be translated into Kantian terms: each of us must be subject to the authority of law, which is essentially social even when it is moral, but this subjection to law must also be desired by each of us, because it alone enables us to fulfill our reasonable personality.
Hence we see the twofold quality of all Durkheimian sociological explanations:
Insofar as it is possible to summarize them, these are the main lines of Durkheim’s thought. I should now like to point out the principal problems raised by this way of thinking.
It has often been said that Durkheim presented a social philosophy in the name of sociology, that he was more philosopher than sociologist. Durkheim’s was unquestionably a philosophical temperament and even, I think, a religious and prophetic temperament. He spoke of sociology with the moral fervor of the prophet. Moreover, as we have repeatedly seen, Durkheim’s sociology expresses a vision of man, a vision of modern society and of societies throughout their history. But it might be argued—at any rate, I personally would argue—that all great sociological systems are linked with a conception of man and history. To reproach a sociological doctrine for containing philosophical elements is not to reduce its value.
I shall not discuss Durkheim’s historical vision or his conception of man. (It is clear that Durkheim’s insistence on the necessity for consensus, like his relative neglect of factors of conflict, springs from certain philosophical tendencies. Similarly, his interpretation of modern society in terms of social differentiation is not the only possible one. When we study Max Weber, we shall see that for him the major characteristic of modern society is rationalization rather than differentiation.) I should like to address my critical remarks to the concept of society itself, or rather the different senses in which Durkheim uses the word. This plurality of meanings reveals, if not an internal contradiction, at least divergent tendencies in his thinking.
All his life Durkheim wanted to remain a positivist, a scientist. He wanted sociologists to be able to study social facts as things, to consider them from the outside, and to explain them the same way natural scientists explain phenomena. There is a constant, persistent positivism in Durkheimian thought. At the same time, however, there is the idea that society is both the source of the ideal and the true object of moral and religious faith. Obviously, this twofold interpretation of the notion of society creates ambiguities and difficulties.
Let us consider the first meaning, society as the social milieu which determines other phenomena. Durkheim rightly insists that various institutions—family, crime, education, politics, morality, religion—are conditioned by the organization of society; each type of society has its type of family, its type of education, its type of state, its type of morality. But he has a tendency to “realize” the social milieu—i.e., to take it for a total reality—and to forget that it is an analytical category and not a final cause. For what is social milieu as cause in relation to a particular institution is from another point of view merely all the institutions which social milieu is supposed to explain.
Durkheim tends to mistake the social milieu for a sui generis reality, objectively and materially defined, when in fact it is merely an intellectual representation. This tendency to “realize” abstractions appears in the notion of a suicidogenic impulse, which I discussed in connection with suicide. There is no “suicidogenic impulse” outside of Durkheim’s imagination or vocabulary. The suicide rate is higher or lower according to social conditions or groups; suicide rates reveal certain characteristics of groups—they do not show that those desperate persons who take their own lives are carried away by a “collective current.”
Durkheim often speaks as if the social milieu were sufficiently determined so that when one knew the milieu, one could name those institutions which are necessary to it. For example, when he is discussing morality, Durkheim begins with the proposition that “each society has its own morality,” a proposition everyone can accept. The morality of the Roman city-state differs concretely from the morality of the Soviet state or the American liberal state. It is true that each society has moral institutions, beliefs, and practices which are peculiar to it and which characterize the type of society it belongs to. But to say that moral practices vary from one type of society to another by no means implies that when we know a social type we can say what morality is appropriate to it. Durkheim often speaks as if a society were a closed unit, complete unto itself, exactly defined; but the truth is that, within each society or type of society, conflicts as to what is good or bad do arise. Moral conceptions are at war and certain of these eventually prevail; but it is rather naïve to suppose that science will ever be able to decree what morality corresponds to modern society, as if this type required one moral conception and one only, as if, knowing the structure of a society, one could say: “Here is the morality which this society needs.”
In other words, for the notion of society as a complete and integral unit we must substitute the notion of social groups coexisting within every complex society. Once one recognizes the plurality of social groups and the conflict of moral ideas, one also realizes that the social science, sociology, will for a long time—and probably always—be incapable of saying to moralists and educators: Here, in the name of science, is the morality you should preach.
Of course there are moral imperatives which all members of a given society accept, at least in the abstract. But what interests us most are precisely the subjects on which unanimity does not exist. When we come to subjects like these, sociology is normally incapable of saying which morality answers the society’s needs. Perhaps all social organizations can get along with various moral conceptions. Besides, even if the sociologist proved that a certain moral conception promoted the stability of the society we live in, why, in the name of morality, should we set up stability as our final goal? One of the characteristics of our society is that its foundations are perpetually called into doubt. Sociology can explain why in our age the foundations of society are called into doubt; but it cannot, in the name of science, give authoritative answers to the problems raised by individual thinkers.
This illusion regarding the possibility of deducing imperatives from analyses of fact is, I think, largely explained by another theory of Durkheim’s, the classification of types of society. Durkheim believed it was possible to arrange the different historically known societies in a single line according to their degree of complexity, from unisegmental societies to doubly-composed polysegmental societies.
This theory, on which Durkheim’s interpreters ordinarily lay scant emphasis, seems to me extremely important—not so much in Durkheim’s practice of sociology but in his dream of an ideal form of social science.
A classification of societies according to degree of complexity gave Durkheim the opportunity for a distinction which was very dear to him, the distinction between superficial and profound phenomena, between phenomena he readily and somewhat contemptuously left to history and phenomena belonging essentially to sociology. For if it is assumed that the type of society is defined by degree of complexity or number of segments, a criterion is then available for determining to what type a given society belongs. If it is observed that a society of a certain type, of lesser complexity, suddenly develops modern industry (as in the case of Japan), it can be argued that in spite of a modern economy comparable to Western economies, Japan remains a society of another, more primitive type by virtue of the number and composition of its segments.
In other words, Durkheim believed he had found a way to separate phenomena of structure or social integration—fundamental phenomena, belonging to sociology—from other, more superficial phenomena—political regimes or even economic institutions, phenomena belonging to historical science and not subject to strict laws. This classification of societies leading to the duality of profound vs. superficial, social types vs. historical phenomena, is based, I think, on a positivist (or “realist”) illusion that only one classification of societies is absolutely valid.
Let us turn now to the second meaning of the notion of society, society as source of the ideal, as an object of devotion, belief, respect, adoration. And, to this end, I recommend that you read a little book, Sociologie et philosophie, which contains three articles by Durkheim: one called “Les Représentations collectives”; a paper read to the Société de Philosophie, called “La Détermination du fait moral”; and a paper read to an international congress of philosophy, called “Jugements de réalité et jugements de valeur.” In this little book Durkheim expresses very effectively some of his favorite themes.
First of all, man is himself only in and through society. If man were not a part of society, he would be an animal like the rest. Durkheim writes:
As Rousseau demonstrated a long time ago, if we take away from man everything he derives from society all that remains is a creature reduced to sensation and more or less indistinguishable from the animal. Without language, a thing social in the highest degree, general or abstract ideas are effectively impossible, and all higher mental functions therefore ineffectual. Left to himself, the individual would fall under the domination of physical forces. If he has been able to escape, to free himself of this domination and develop a personality, it is because he has found refuge in a force sui generis, a force which is powerful because it results from the coalition of all individual forces, but which is also intelligent and moral, and therefore capable of neutralizing the unintelligent and amoral energies of nature. It is the collective force which has enabled theorists to demonstrate that man has a right to liberty. But whatever the value of such proofs, it is certain that this liberty has become a reality only in and through society.
Without society, man would be an animal. It is by virtue of society that the animal, man, arrives at humanity. To which it is easily answered that, just because animals live in a group, they do not necessarily develop language or the higher forms of intelligence. This amounts to saying that while society is certainly a necessary condition for the development of humanity in the human species, this condition becomes sufficient only if animal man is endowed with capacities which the other species do not possess. Language, comprehension, and communication obviously imply that there are several men, and in this sense a society exists, but the fact that there are several animals together is not enough to produce language, comprehension, and communication of the same type as in human society.
Durkheim is right when he says that language is a social phenomenon, as are morality and religion—but on one condition: that this proposition, which is obvious, commonplace, and uninteresting so long as it is formulated as I have just done, is not interpreted as if it also contained the word “essentially.” Morality and language have a social dimension or a social aspect; all human facts present a social character; but it does not follow that these human facts are essentially social, or that the true meaning of a given phenomenon depends on the social dimension.
This remark is particularly valid in the case of morality. According to Durkheim, there can be no morality unless society itself is endowed with a higher value than the individuals in it. I shall quote one more passage, the most characteristic and decisive:
Thus we arrive at this conclusion, that if a morality, a system of duties and obligations exists, society must be a moral body qualitatively distinct from the individual bodies it comprises and from whose synthesis it results.
You will see the analogy between this argument and the one used by Kant to prove the existence of God. Kant postulates God because without this hypothesis morality is unintelligible. [I do not agree at all that this is Kant’s argument] … We postulate a society specifically distinct from individuals because otherwise morality is without purpose, duty without relevance. Moreover, this postulate is easily verified by experience. Although I have already discussed the matter frequently in my books, it would be easy for me to add new reasons to those I have already given to justify this view. This whole argument can actually be reduced to a few very simple themes. It amounts to conceding that, with regard to popular opinion, morality begins only with disinterestedness and self-sacrifice. But disinterestedness has meaning only if the thing to which we subordinate ourselves has a value greater than ourselves as individuals. Now, in the world of experience, I know only one thing that has a moral reality richer and more complex than our own, and that is the collectivity. I am wrong, there is another thing capable of playing the same role, and that is divinity. We must choose between God and society.
If there is one statement characteristic of Durkheim, this is surely it. He really believed that it was necessary to choose between God and society. And after uttering this formula, he goes on to say:
I shall not examine here the reasons which may militate for one or the other of these solutions, both of which are coherent. I will say that the choice leaves me somewhat indifferent, since to me divinity is merely society transfigured and symbolically conceived.
Durkheim’s reasoning seems to me to contain several ambiguities. The first ambiguity lies in Durkheim’s analysis of the moral act, or rather of what constitutes an act as moral. He assumes that if an act whose object is my own person cannot be moral, an act whose object is merely another person cannot be moral either. But the popular opinion to which Durkheim appeals is quite ready to concede that an act of self-sacrifice whose object is to save another’s life is moral, even when that other is worth no more than myself. It is the fact of transcending oneself and devoting oneself to another which makes an act moral, and not the previously assessed value of the object of my act. A philosopher named Hamelin lost his life when, though he did not know how to swim, he jumped into the water to save someone who was drowning. The act was sublime—or was it pragmatically absurd? Our answer is not likely to be determined by the intrinsic value of the life to be saved.
Also disputable is the belief that the value that we create by our behavior must be embodied, so to speak, in reality. Durkheim uses, not so much religion, as a popular conception of religion. He holds that superior values are given a priori in God and that values realized by men depend upon values possessed a priori by the transcendent being. I doubt that this is true in a refined interpretation of religion; in any case, in a purely human conception, moral values are a creation, and a gratuitous creation, of humanity. Man is a species of animal who gradually accedes to humanity. To suppose that there must be an object of intrinsic value is to distort the meaning of religion, or the meaning of human morality.
The third strange proposition is the assumption that society and divinity can be compared and contrasted as if they were two circumscribed and observable things. There is no such thing as society; there is no such thing as a society; there are only human groups. Until we specify to what human groups the concept of society applies, we remain in an ambiguity, and a dangerous one at that. What should we conceive as a society equivalent to God? Family? Social class? National society? Humanity? At least in Auguste Comte’s philosophy there was no doubt on this point; society as the object of religious worship was humanity as a whole; not humanity in its concrete reality, but the best that has existed in men down through the centuries. Unless one specifies what one means by society, Durkheim’s conception may, contrary to his intentions, lead or seem to lead to the pseudo-religions of our age and the adoration of a national collectivity by its own members. Durkheim, as a rationalist and a liberal, would have detested these secular religions. But the possibility of this misunderstanding shows the danger involved in using the concept society loosely.
Unfortunately, this metaphysic of society vitiates certain profound intuitions of Durkheim’s concerning the relation between science, morality, and religion on the one hand and the social context on the other.
One of Durkheim’s leading ideas is that in the course of history man’s various activities have gradually become differentiated. In archaic societies, according to Durkheim, morality is inseparable from religion, and it is only gradually, over the centuries, that our categories—law, morality, religion—have acquired their autonomy. This proposition is correct, but it does not imply that all categories—law, morality, religion, science—derive their authority from their social origin. This is the essential point. For example, Durkheim outlines a sociological theory of knowledge and a sociological theory of morality. These two theories should proceed from an objective analysis of social circumstances and their influence on the development of scientific categories on the one hand and of moral notions on the other. But the theories are falsified, in my opinion, by Durkheim’s conviction that there is no fundamental difference between science and morality, between judgments of value and judgments of fact. In both cases, he believes we are dealing with essentially social realities, in both cases the authority of judgment is based on society itself.
I shall quote two very short passages from the article “Jugements de fait et jugements de valeur,” in which the comparison and quasi-assimilation of judgments of fact and value judgments occur.
A value judgment expresses the relation of a thing to an ideal. But the ideal, like the thing, is given, albeit in another manner. It is also a reality after its fashion.
This passage contains the Durkheimian notion that the ideal must be empirically given, a conception which led him to the choice between God and society. He continues:
Therefore the relation expressed combines two given terms exactly as in judgments of fact. Will it be argued that value judgments involve ideals? But the same is true of judgments of fact, for concepts are also constructions of the mind proceeding from ideals, and it would not be difficult to show that they are even collective ideals, since they can only be created in and by language, which is a collective thing to the highest degree. The elements of judgment are therefore the same in either case.
What is characteristic in this passage is the observation that concepts are constructions of the mind proceeding from ideals. If Durkheim means that constructions of the mind are nonempirical, ideal realities, he is obviously right. If he is identifying concepts with ideals in the moral sense of the word, then in my opinion the analogy is purely sophistical.
Another passage completes the foregoing one:
If every judgment involves ideals, these ideals are of different species. There is a species of ideals whose role is merely to express the realities to which they apply, to express them as they are. These are concepts, properly speaking. There are others, however, whose function is to transfigure the realities to which they refer: these are ideals of value. In the first case, it is the ideal which serves as symbol for the thing in order to render it assimilable to thought. In the second case, it is the thing which serves as symbol for the idea, in order to render it conceivable to different minds.
Naturally, judgments differ according to the ideals they employ. The first merely analyze reality, translate it as faithfully as possible. The second, however, express the new aspect with which reality is enriched under the influence of the ideal.
In this identification of judgments of fact with value judgments, we again encounter Durkheim’s conviction that authority of the concepts which tend to express reality, or of the ideals which tend to express reality, or of the ideals which tend to inform action, comes from society itself. But I think there is an ambiguity here. Sociological study of the origins of concepts should not be confused with the theory of knowledge, i.e., analysis of the transcendental conditions of truth. The conditions for scientific truth are not to be confused with the circumstances of the social advent of truth. It is a dangerous illusion to imagine that there is a sociological theory of knowledge. There is only a sociological theory of the conditions in which knowledge develops. The sociology of knowledge is knowledge. But knowledge can never be reduced to the sociology of knowledge.
In the case of value judgments, the error is different. Durkheim believes that the moral ideal is a social ideal, that society, the object of moral action, also confers its value on moral action. Here again it seems to me there is an ambiguity. Our value judgments—the conceptions of value which we are able to form in every age—depend on social circumstances. But the fact that our value judgments are suggested by our social milieu does not prove that the highest goal of morality is a certain state of society. To be sure, when we desire a certain morality, we desire a certain society, a certain kind of human relations. In this sense, a social purpose is implied by every moral purpose. But society as an empirical reality does not determine the specific content of this morality.
The philosophical character of Durkheim’s sociology, which I have emphasized in this account, explains the violence of the passions it aroused a little over fifty years ago. In France at the beginning of this century, when the conflict over Catholic vs. lay education was raging, the formula “society or divinity” was calculated to cause an uproar. In primary schools and in schools where primary-school teachers were trained, sociology appeared as the foundation of the lay morality that was replacing Catholic morality. When Durkheim went on to say that he saw scarcely any difference between divinity and society, this proposition, which was respectful of religion within the context of his thought, struck believers as utterly detrimental to sacred values.
Even today Durkheim’s thought is controversial and is interpreted in various ways. These contradictory interpretations may be explained by keeping in mind a duality which is not a contradiction and which is central to Durkheim’s thought. In a certain sense Durkheimian thought is conservative; it seeks to restore social consensus and thus reinforce the authority of collective imperatives and prohibitions. In the eyes of certain critics this restoration of social norms denotes an undertaking that is conservative, if not reactionary. Indeed, Durkheimian thought sometimes recalls the latter part of Auguste Comte’s career and the Système de politique positive, in which Comte attempted to found a religion of humanity. This recollection is only half true, for the social norm with which authority should be reinforced, according to Durkheim, is one that not only authorizes the individual to realize himself freely but also obliges him to use his judgment and assert his autonomy. Durkheim wants to stabilize a society whose highest principle is respect for the human person and fulfillment of personal autonomy. As the emphasis is placed on the stability of social norms or on the fulfillment of individual autonomy, a conservative or a rationalist-liberal interpretation of Durkheimian thought is suggested.
The center of Durkheimian thought is an attempt to demonstrate that rationalist, individualist, liberal thought is the last term in historical evolution and that, since this form of thought corresponds to the structure of modern societies, it must therefore be sanctioned and not dismissed. But at the same time this rationalist and individualist attitude would risk provoking social disaggregation, the phenomenon of anomie, unless the collective norms indispensable to any consensus were reinforced.
A sociology justifying rationalist individualism but also preaching respect for collective norms—such, it seems to me, is Durkheim’s ideal.
Notes
1 “Division of labor appears to us in a different light than it does to economists. For them it consists essentially in producing more. For us this increased productivity is only a necessary consequence, an after-effect of the phenomenon. The reason we specialize is not to produce more, but to achieve the new living conditions that are provided for us” (De la division du travail social, p. 259). It was Adam Smith who, in his celebrated work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), made the phenomenon of division of labor central to his analysis of the economic system in order to explain productivity, exchange, and the use of capital goods. Adam Smith’s study, which is found chiefly in the first three chapters of Book I of The Wealth of Nations, begins with a famous description of the operations performed in a pin factory whose elements were probably borrowed from Diderot’s Encyclopédie and from d’Alembert. It opens with this sentence: “The greatest improvements in the productive power of labor and most of the skill, dexterity, and intelligence with which it is directed and applied are due, seemingly, to division of labor.” In Chapter 2 Adam Smith seeks the principle which gives rise to division of labor: “This division of labor from which so many advantages flow must not be regarded as originating in a human wisdom which has foreseen and aspired to the general affluence which is its result. It is the necessary, although slow and gradual consequence of a certain tendency inherent in all men, who do not think in terms of such a long-range utility: this is the tendency that causes them to barter, to trade, to exchange one thing for another.” Adam Smith does not see only advantages in division of labor. In Chapter 1 of Book V he denounces the dangers of the stultifying and deadening of the intellectual faculties which may result from the fragmentation of work and demands that the government “take precautions to prevent this evil.” On this last point see Nathan Rosenberg’s article “Adam Smith on the Division of Labour: Two Views or One?” in Economica, May 1965.
2 “Division of labor is, therefore, a result of the struggle for survival, but it is a milder solution to that struggle. It is because of division of labor that rivals are not obliged to eliminate each other, but can coexist and cooperate. Also, as it develops, it provides a greater and greater number of individuals who in more homogeneous societies would be doomed to die out with the means to support themselves and to survive. Among many inferior peoples, every sickly organism was doomed to extinction because it was not useful for any function. In some cases the law, anticipating and in a sense sanctioning the results of natural selection, condemned newborn children who were weak or ill to death, and Aristotle himself found this practice natural. In more advanced societies the situation is quite different. Within the complex structure of our social organization, a puny individual can find a place where it is possible for him to render service. If he is weak in body only, if his mind is sound, he will devote himself to study, to speculative functions. If it is his brain that is defective, ‘he will, no doubt, be forced to renounce the great intellectual competition; but society has, in the secondary cells of its hive, some little niches which will prevent him from being eliminated.’ Similarly, among primitive tribes the defeated enemy is put to death; among peoples where the industrial functions are separated from the military functions, he continues to live alongside the conqueror in the role of a slave” (De la division du travail social, p. 253).
3 Gabriel Tarde (1834–1904) is the author of the following books: La Criminalité comparée (1888), Les Transformations du droit (1893), Les Lois de l’imitation (1890), La Logique sociale (1895), L’Opposition universelle (1897), and L’Opinion de la foule (1901). Tarde’s influence, although rather slight in France, has been more pronounced in the United States. Professor Paul Lazarsfeld is very much interested in Tarde and is always referring to the latter’s posthumous victory.
4 Modern anthropology, in the work of A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, A. P. Evans-Pritchard, R. H. Lowie, and B. Malinowski, has revolutionized the theory of totemism to the point where it has almost ceased to exist. On this evolution see Claude Lévi-Strauss, Le Totémisme d’aujourd’hui, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1962.
5 Bergson writes: “Mankind groans, half crushed beneath the weight of the progress he has made. He is not sufficiently aware that his future depends on himself. It is up to him, first of all, to decide whether he wants to go on living. It is up to him to wonder next whether he wants only to live or whether he is also willing to provide the necessary effort so that even on our rebellious planet there be fulfilled the essential function of the Universe, which is a machine for the making of gods.” (Henri Bergson, Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la religion, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 140th ed., 1965, p. 338.)
6 This is how Durkheim criticizes the deductive and abstract method of classical economics: “The subject of economics, according to John Stuart Mill, is the social facts which are produced mainly or exclusively for the purpose of the acquisition of wealth…. The subject matter of political economics, thus conceived, consists not of realities which one can point to with one’s finger, but of simple assumptions, pure conceptions of the mind; namely, facts which the economist conceives as relating to the end in question, and as he conceives them. For example, does he undertake to study what he calls production? From the outset he believes he can enumerate the principal agents of production and pass them in review. This means that he has not recognized their existence by observing the necessary conditions for the object of his study, for then he would have begun by presenting the experiences on which he based this conclusion. The fact that he presents this classification at the beginning of the inquiry and in a few words shows that he obtained it by simple logical analysis. He begins with the idea of production; breaking it down, he finds that it logically implies the ideas of natural forces, labor, the tool, and capital, and he goes on to treat these derived ideas in the same manner. The most fundamental of all economic theories, the theory of value, has obviously been constructed by this same method. If value had been studied as a reality should be studied, we would see the economist first indicate by what signs one can recognize the thing called by this name, next classify its species, seek by methodical induction what causes these variations in species, and finally compare these results in order to arrive at a general formula. According to this method the theory could only appear when the study had been rather well advanced. Instead, we find the theory right from the beginning. The fact is that to construct his theory the economist limits himself to meditating, to exploring his own idea of value, that is, an object capable of being exchanged for another; he finds that this idea implies the idea of the useful, the rare, etc., and it is with these products of analysis that he constructs his definition. No doubt he supports it with several examples. But when one thinks of the innumerable facts which such a theory must take into consideration, how is one to accord the slightest demonstrative value to the facts, necessarily very rare, which are cited at the whim of suggestion? Thus, in political economics as in morality, the role of scientific investigation is very limited; that of art is preponderant” (Les Règles de la méthode sociologique, pp. 24–26). This criticism has been adopted by economists who are disciples of Durkheim, such as Simiand, to challenge the theories of pure neo-classic economics of the Austrian or Walrasian schools. It is not unrelated to the criticisms which German historicism was already addressing to English classic economics.
7 Eric Weil, Philosophie politique, Paris, Vrin, 1956.