Émile Durkheim

David Émile Durkheim (; or ; 15 April 1858 – 15 November 1917) was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline of sociology, and is commonly cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science, along with Karl Marx and Max Weber.

Much of Durkheim's work concerns the inability of societies to maintain their integrity and coherence in modernity, an era in which traditional social and religious ties are much less universal, and in which new social institutions have come into being. His conception of the scientific study of society laid the groundwork for modern sociology. He used such scientific tools as statistics, surveys, and historical observation in his analysis of suicides in Roman Catholic and Protestant groups.

Durkheim's first major sociological work was (1893; The Division of Labour in Society), followed in 1895 by (The Rules of Sociological Method). Also in 1895, he set up the first European department of sociology and became France's first professor of sociology. His seminal monograph, Le Suicide (1897), a study of suicide rates in Roman Catholic and Protestant populations, pioneered modern social research, serving to distinguish social science from psychology and political philosophy. In 1898, he established the journal L'Année sociologique. (1912; The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life) presented a theory of religion, comparing the social and cultural lives of aboriginal and modern societies.

Durkheim was preoccupied with the acceptance of sociology as a legitimate science. Refining the positivism originally set forth by Auguste Comte, he promoted what could be considered as a form of epistemological realism, as well as the use of the hypothetico-deductive model in social science. For Durkheim, sociology was the science of institutions, understanding the term in its broader meaning as the "beliefs and modes of behaviour instituted by the collectivity," with its aim being to discover structural social facts. He was a major proponent of structural functionalism, a foundational perspective in both sociology and anthropology. In his view, social science should be purely holistic in the sense that sociology should study phenomena attributed to society at large, rather than being limited to the study of specific actions of individuals.

Durkheim remained a dominant force in French intellectual life until his death in 1917, presenting numerous lectures and publishing works on a variety of topics, including the sociology of knowledge, morality, social stratification, religion, law, education, and deviance. Some terms that he coined, such as "collective consciousness", are now also used by laypeople.

Early life and education

David Émile Durkheim was born 15 April 1858 in Épinal, Lorraine, France, to Mélanie (Isidor) and Moïse Durkheim, coming into a long lineage of devout Alsatian Jews. His parents had four other children: Israël (1845–1846), Rosine (1848–1930), Félix (1850–1889) and Céline (1851–1931). Durkheim came from a long line of rabbis, stretching back eight generations, including his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather and began his education in a rabbinical school. However at an early age he switched schools, deciding not to follow in his family's footsteps. At the same time, he read Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, whereby Durkheim became interested in a scientific approach to society early on in his career.

The opportunity for Durkheim to receive a major academic appointment in Paris was inhibited by his approach to society. From 1882 to 1887 he taught philosophy at several provincial schools. In the 1885-6 school year he visited Germany, where he travelled and studied sociology at the universities of Marburg, Berlin and Leipzig. By 1886, as part of his doctoral dissertation, he had completed the draft of his The Division of Labour in Society, and was working towards establishing the new science of sociology.

In 1895, he published The Rules of Sociological Method,

By 1902, Durkheim had finally achieved his goal of attaining a prominent position in Paris when he became the chair of education at the Sorbonne. Durkheim had aimed for the position earlier, but the Parisian faculty took longer to accept what some called "sociological imperialism" and admit social science to their curriculum. Emotionally devastated, Durkheim collapsed of a stroke in Paris two years later, on 15 November 1917.

Methodology

thumb|right|Cover of the French edition of [[The Rules of Sociological Method (1919)]]

In The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Durkheim expressed his desire to establish a method that would guarantee sociology's truly scientific character. One of the questions raised concerns the objectivity of the sociologist: how may one study an object that, from the very beginning, conditions and relates to the observer? According to Durkheim, observation must be as impartial and impersonal as possible, even though a "perfectly objective observation" in this sense may never be attained. A social fact must always be studied according to its relation with other social facts, never according to the individual who studies it. Sociology should therefore privilege comparison rather than the study of singular independent facts.

Durkheim sought to create one of the first rigorous scientific approaches to social phenomena. Along with Herbert Spencer, he was one of the first people to explain the existence and quality of different parts of a society through referencing what function they served in maintaining the quotidian (i.e. by how they make society "work"). He also agreed with Spencer's organic analogy, comparing society to a living organism. Durkheim also insisted that society was more than the sum of its parts.

Unlike his contemporaries Ferdinand Tönnies and Max Weber, he did not focus on what motivates individuals' actions (an approach associated with methodological individualism), but rather on the study of social facts.

Inspirations

During his university studies at the ENS, Durkheim was influenced by two neo-Kantian scholars: Charles Renouvier and Émile Boutroux. As an epistemology of science, realism can be defined as a perspective that takes as its central point of departure the view that external social realities exist in the outer world and that these realities are independent of the individual's perception of them.

This view opposes other predominant philosophical perspectives such as empiricism and positivism. Empiricists, like David Hume, had argued that all realities in the outside world are products of human sense perception, thus all realities are merely perceived: they do not exist independently of our perceptions, and have no causal power in themselves. while others argue that proving the existence of a direct influence of Jewish thought on Durkheim's achievements is difficult or impossible.

Durkheim and theory

Throughout his career, Durkheim was concerned primarily with three goals. First, to establish sociology as a new academic discipline. Lastly, Durkheim was concerned with the practical implications of scientific knowledge.

Establishing sociology

Durkheim authored some of the most programmatic statements on what sociology is and how it should be practiced. Arguing for a place for sociology among other sciences, he wrote, "sociology is, then, not an auxiliary of any other science; it is itself a distinct and autonomous science."

To give sociology a place in the academic world and to ensure that it is a legitimate science, it must have an object that is clear and distinct from philosophy or psychology, and its own methodology.

In the Tarde-Durkheim debate of 1903, the "anthropological view" of Gabriel Tarde was ridiculed and hastily dismissed.

A fundamental aim of sociology is to discover structural "social facts". The establishment of sociology as an independent, recognized academic discipline is among Durkheim's largest and most lasting legacies.

Durkheim defines morality as "a system of rules for conduct". His analysis of morality is influenced by Immanuel Kant and his notion of duty. While Durkheim was influenced by Kant, he was critical of aspects of the latter's moral theory and developed his own positions.

Durkheim agrees with Kant that within morality, there is an element of obligation, "a moral authority which, by manifesting itself in certain precepts particularly important to it, confers upon [moral rules] an obligatory character." who replaced Durkheim's concept of society with nation. An ideologue who provided the intellectual justification for the Ottoman Empire's wars of aggression and massive demographic engineering—including the Armenian genocide—he could be considered to pervert Durkheim's ideas. Randall Collins has developed a theory of what he calls interaction ritual chains, a synthesis of Durkheim's work on religion with that of Erving Goffman's micro-sociology. Goffman himself was also influenced by Durkheim in his development of the interaction order.

Outside of sociology, Durkheim has influenced philosophers, including Henri Bergson and Emmanuel Levinas, and his ideas can be identified, inexplicitly, in the work of certain structuralist theorists of the 1960s, such as Alain Badiou, Louis Althusser, and Michel Foucault.

Durkheim contra Searle

Much of Durkheim's work remains unacknowledged in philosophy, despite its direct relevance. As proof, one can look to John Searle, whose book, The Construction of Social Reality, elaborates a theory of social facts and collective representations that Searle believed to be a landmark work that would bridge the gap between analytic and continental philosophy. Neil Gross, however, demonstrates how Searle's views on society are more or less a reconstitution of Durkheim's theories of social facts, social institutions, collective representations, and the like. Searle's ideas are thus open to the same criticisms as Durkheim's. Searle responded by arguing that Durkheim's work was worse than he had originally believed, and, admitting that he had not read much of Durkheim's work: "Because Durkheim's account seemed so impoverished I did not read any further in his work." Stephen Lukes, however, responded to Searle's reply to Gross, refuting, point by point, the allegations that Searle makes against Durkheim, essentially upholding the argument of Gross, that Searle's work bears great resemblance to that of Durkheim. Lukes attributes Searle's miscomprehension of Durkheim's work to the fact that Searle, quite simply, never read Durkheim.

Gilbert pro Durkheim

Margaret Gilbert, a contemporary British philosopher of social phenomena, has offered a close, sympathetic reading of Durkheim's discussion of social facts in the first chapter and the prefaces of The Rules of Sociological Method. In her 1989 book, On Social Facts—the title of which may represent an homage to Durkheim, alluding to his ""—Gilbert argues that some of his statements that may seem to be philosophically untenable are important and fruitful.

Selected works

"Montesquieu's contributions to the formation of social science" (1892)
The Division of Labour in Society (1893)
The Rules of Sociological Method (1895)
Suicide (1897)
The Prohibition of Incest and its Origins (1897), in L'Année Sociologique 1:1–70
Sociology and its Scientific Domain (1900), translation of an Italian text entitled "La sociologia e il suo dominio scientifico"
Primitive Classification (1903), in collaboration with Marcel Mauss
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912)
Who Wanted War? (1914), in collaboration with Ernest Denis
Germany Above All (1915)

Published posthumously

Education and Sociology (1922)
Sociology and Philosophy (1924)
Moral Education (1925)
Socialism (1928)
Pragmatism and Sociology (1955)

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

External links

Resources related to research : BEROSE - International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology. "Durkheim, Émile (1858-1917)", Paris, 2015. ()
L'Ecoles des Hautes Etudes Internationales et Poltiques HEI-HEP
The Durkheim pages (University of Chicago)
DD – Digital Durkheim
Bibliography on Durkheim (McMaster University)
Annotated bibliography on Durkheim and Religion (University of North Carolina)
Review material for studying Émile Durkheim
Institut Marcel Mauss à l'EHESS