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Prolegomena to the Interpretation of Durkheim

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Steven Lukes
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Extract

Durkheim's manner of thought and his style of expression have certain peculiar features the recognition of which can only clarify the interpretation of his ideas. First, there are certain concepts crucial to the understanding of his thought which need to be elucidated, either because they are ambiguous or because they are unfamiliar to a modern reader. Second, underlying these concepts, there are a number of sharp dichotomies, or “binary oppositions”, on which his thought rests, which need to be made explicit and related to one another. Third, there are a number of characteristic, and often bad, arguments, which likewise need to be brought to the surface and identified. And finally, Durkheim's style often tends to caricature his thought. He often expressed his ideas in an extreme or figurative manner, which distorted their meaning and concealed their significance: hence the relation between his style and his thought must be considered. It is to these matters that this article is devoted.

Type
Reflections on Durkheim
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , November 1971 , pp. 183 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1971

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References

* This article is based on the introduction to a forthcoming book by the author, entitled Émile Durkheim: his Life and Work. An historical and critical study. I am grateful to Rodney Needham and Alan Ryan for comments. All quotations have been newly translated from the French, chiefly because of the appalling quality of most of the published English translations. The main writings of Durkheim which I have used are referred to in abbreviated form as follows: S: Le suicide (Paris, Alcan, 1897)Google Scholar; R: Les règies de la méthode sociologique2 (Paris, Alcan, 1901)Google Scholar; D: De la division du travail social2 (Paris, Alcan, 1902)Google Scholar; F: Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (Paris, Alcan, 1912)Google Scholar.

(1) And there is the further difficulty of translation from French to English. Sometimes what is perfectly intelligible in French cannot be directly translated into seemingly equivalent English words (such as ‘conscience’ and ‘conscience’, or ‘reprdsentation’ and ‘representation’). The French words map out a different conceptual structure from the English; they make different discriminations and carry different presuppositions and connotations.

(2) Larousse gives two main senses for ‘conscience’: (I) “Sentiment qu'on a de son existence et de celle du monde extirieur représentation qu'on sefait de quelque chose”; and (2) “Sentiment qui fait qu'on porte un jugement moral sur ses actes, sens du bien et du mal; respect du devoir”.

(3) Durkheim, , Leçons de sociologie. Physique des mæurs et du droit (Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1950), pp. 95, 97Google Scholar.

(4) Durkheim, , in La sociologie en France au XIXe siècle, Revue Bleue, XII (1900), p. 648Google Scholar, wrote that it was Espinas who had shown that “the essential object of sociology is to investigate how représentations collectives are formed and combine”.

(5) Thus, e.g. F 621: “Concepts are collective représentations […] they correspond to the special way in which that special being, society, conceives of the things that are part of its own experience”.

(6) Thus, R xvii: “Myths, popular colleclegends, religious conceptions of all sorts, moral beliefs, etc.” are all collective représentations.

(7) Cf. Durkheim's confusion between the categories or fundamental forms of thought (e.g. of space and time) and particular spatial and temporal divisions, i.e. belief about how space and time are divided up.

(8) V. especially Durkheim, Repréntations individuelles et représentations collectives (1898), repr. in Id., Sociologie et philomoral Sophie (Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1951).

(9) Id. p. 34.

(10) Id. p. 43.

(11) Id.

(12) Cf. the excellent discussion in Roger Lacombe, , La méthode sociologique de Durkheim (Paris, Alcan, 1926)Google Scholar.

(13) ‘Fait’ has a somewhat different meaning from ‘fact’, signifying “that which exists or occurs or is real” rather than “that which is the case”. Nonetheless, we will, for simplicity, use the term “social fact”.

(14) S ix: Durkheim uses ‘things’ (choses) here in at least four senses, viz.: (I) phenomena with characteristics independent of the observer; (2) phenomena whose characteristics can only be ascertained by empirical investigation (i.e. as opposed to a apriori reasoning or intuition); (3) phenom-ena whose existence is independent of individuals' wills; and (4) phenomena which can only be studied through ‘external’ observation—i.e. by means of indicators, such as legal codes, statistics, etc. (Cf Benoit-Smuixyan, E., The Sociologism of Emile Durkheim and his School, in Barnes, H. E. (ed.), An Introduction to the History of Sociology (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1948), p. 501)Google Scholar.

(15) R 17.—This paragraph is inexplicably missing from the English translation.

(16) R xx. — Cf. Durkheim, , Représentations individuelles…, loc. cit. p. 35, fnGoogle Scholar.

(17) Id., L'éducation morale (Paris, Alcan, 1925), p. 69.

(18) Sorel, Georges, Les théories de M. Durkheim, Le devenir social, I (1895), p. 19Google Scholar.

(19) Id. p. 17.

(20) Mauss, M.et Fauconnet, P., Sociologie, in Grande Encyclopédie (Paris, S. A. Grande Encyclopédic, 1901), t. XXX, pp. 165–176, esp. p. 166Google Scholar.

(21) At one point Durkheim writes (R 124–125) that the “essential characteristic of ‘sociological phenomena’ is their power of exerting external pressure on individual consciences”. This repeats the same ambiguity.

(22) In this he was a good disciple of Comte who had banished psychology from the hierarchy of the sciences; but unlike Comte, who had subjected the psychology (or ‘idiélogie’) of his time to detailed criticism on the ground that it ‘mutilated’ man, Durkheim never attempted a critique of contemporary psychology. For a good discussion, v. Essehtier, D., Psychologie et sociologie (Paris, Alcan, 1927)Google Scholar.

(23) Durkheim, , La sociologia ed il suo dominio scientifico (1900), translated in Cuvillier, A., Où va la sociologie française? (Paris, Riviére, 1953), p. 192Google Scholar.

(24) Halbwachs, M., Les causes du suicide (Paris, Alcan, 1930), p. 13Google Scholar.

(25) Cf. Lukes, S., Methodological Individualism Reconsidered, British Journal of Sociology, XIX (1968), 119–129CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in D. Emmet and A. Macintyre (eds), Sociological Theory and Philosophical Analysis (London, Macmillan, 1970).

(26) Ginsberg, Morris, Durkheim's Ethical Theory (1951), in On the Diversity of Morals (London, Heinemann (Mercury Books), 1962), p. 51Google Scholar.

(27) Durkheim, Détermination du fait moral (1906), reprinted in Id., Sociologie et philosophie, op. cit. p. 78.

(28) Id., Le problème religieux et la dualité de la nature humaine, Bulletin de la Société française de philosophie, XIII (1913), p. 74Google Scholar.

(29) Id., Détermination…, loc. cit. p. 77.

(30) Ibid. p. 80.

(31) In fact Durkheim had a strong tendency always to conceive of ‘society’ as a whole, rather that in terms, say, of a plurality of, or a conflict between, different social groups and forces. This is strikingly brought out in a review of Bauer's, A.Les classes sociales he wrote in Sciences sociales, III (1902), 257–258Google Scholar. Bauer argued that classes are the only proper object of social sciences. Durkheim wrote: “Outside the life of each organ, there is the general life of society. There are phenomena that are not localised in any occupational group, which are present in them all and which are precisely the most essential of all social facts: such as morality, religion, all common ideas, etc.”.

(32) Durkheim, , Détermination…, loc. cit. p. 84Google Scholar.

(33) As Durkheim himself wrote (Le problème religieux…, loc. cit. pp. 72–73): “The soul and the body, sensation and reason, egoistic appetites and moral will are opposed and, at the same time, mutually related, just as the profane and the sacred, which are forbidden one to the other, nonetheless are forever intermingled”.

(34) Ibid. p. 84.

(35) Durkheim, Le dualisme de la nature humaine et ses conditions sociales (1914), reprinted in Id., La science sociale et l'action, introduction et présentation de J. -C. Filloux (Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1970) pp. 330–331.

(36) Id., Détermination…, loc. cit. p. 56.

(37) Id., Le dualisme…, loc, cit. p. 331.

(38) Id., L'éducation morale, op. cit. p. 30.

(39) Ibid. p. 294.

(40) Durkheim, , L' évolution pédagogique en France (Paris, Alcan, 1938), t. II, p. 54Google Scholar.

(41) Id., Le dualisme…, loc. cit. p. 330.

(42) Id., L'éducation morale, op. cit. p. 128.

(43) Ibid. Leçons 7–8.

(44) Durkheim, , Le problème religieux…, loc. cit. p. 64Google Scholar.

(45) Id., Le dualisme…, loc. cit. pp. 330–331.

(46) Ibid. pp. 316–317, 327.

(47) Durkheim, , Détermination…, loc. cit. pp. 103, 68Google Scholar.

(48) Id., Le dualisme…, loc. cit. p. 327.

(49) Ibid. p. 328.

(50) Ibid. pp. 327–330.

(51) Stanner, W.E.H., Reflections on Durkheim and Aboriginal Religion, in Freedman, M. (ed.), Social Organisation: essays presented to Raymond Firth (London, Frank Cass, 1967), p. 229Google Scholar.—I am much indebted to Stanner's discussion. Cf. also Evans-Pritchard, E. E., Theories of Primitive Religion (Oxford, Clarendon, 1965), pp. 64–65Google Scholar.

(52) Stanner, , Reflections…, op. cit. p. 232Google Scholar.

(53) Ibid.

(54) Of the noa-tabu kind.

(55) Stanner, , Reflections…, op. cit. pp. 234, 231Google Scholar. Stanner, writes: “Historians of ideas will no doubt wish to say much about Durkheim's inclination to dichotomism and dualism. The sacred-profane division is one of the most pre-emptive” (p. 229)Google Scholar.

(56) Durkheim, , De la division du travail social, Introduction à la Ire édition (Paris, Alcan, 1893), p. 36Google Scholar.

(57) Id., L'évolution pédagogique…, op. cit. t. I, pp. 22–23.

(58) Needham, Rodney, Introduction to translation of Durkheim, É. and Mauss, M., Primitive Classification (London, Cohen and West, 1963), p. xvGoogle Scholar. Cf. Lévi-Sthauss, Cl., Le totémisme aujourd'hui (Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1962), p. 102Google Scholar, and Douglas, J. D., The Social Meanings of Suicide (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 30Google Scholar.

(59) Cf. Alpert, H., Emile Durkheim and his Sociology2 (New York, Russell and Russell, 1961), pp. 87–88Google Scholar.

(60) Durkheim, , Determination…, loc. cit. pp. 52–53Google Scholar.

(61) Chevalier, J., Entretiens avec Bergson (Paris, Plon, 1959), p. 34Google Scholar.

(62) Evans-Pritchard, E. E., Introduction to Hertz, R., Death and the Right Hand, translated by Rodney, and Needham, Claudia (London, Cohen and West, 1960), p. 12Google Scholar.

(63) Ginsberg, , Durkheim's Theory of Religion, op. cit. p. 242Google Scholar.

(64) E. g. D 351: “What gives unity to organised societies, however, as to all organisms, is the spontaneous consensus of the parts”.

(65) Durkheim, , Leçons de sociologie…, op. cit. pp. 184–185Google Scholar.

(66) Id., Le problème religieux…, op. cit. p. 66.