Durkheimian Studies

The question of how we should understand the fact that Durkheim calls religion 'a variety of illusion (délire)' has recently been discussed in this journal. In the following, I briefly outline a new interpretation, leaving its more detailed development to a later publication. I argue that Durkheim's notion of religion as drawing from Boyer's idea of counterintuitive representations can further develop illusion. Also Durkheim's idea of the social as the basis of religion partly relates to some of Boyer's arguments and those of other cognitive scientists of religion. It, too, can be elaborated in the light of some recent cognitive-evolutionary considerations.

To understand a [case of delirium] properly and to be able to apply the most appropriate treatment, the doctor needs to know what its point of departure was' (Durkheim 1912a:10; t.6). Durkheim's linking of the study of religions with the practice of the alieniste shows above all that the believer's point of view does not have explanatory value when it comes to religious phenomena. Does this necessarily mean that religious beliefs are mere misunderstandings or illusions? On the contrary, Durkheim thought that they had objective meaning, and even suggested that thought categories themselves had a religious origin (ibid.: 3). To discover this meaning, what was needed was simply a more reliable point of view than the believer's. However, having recourse to the scientific viewpoint still left him open to a petitio principii, since he also held that the objectivity of abstract thought was genetically derived from that of religious representations, i.e. from the demonstrandum. If we answer, as Durkheim in fact did, (1) that religious representations obey practical necessities only, not theoretical ones, we would be sidestepping the problem, since representations are always representations of something; (2) they always have a cognitive or speculative aspect. The comparison with thealieniste contains another paradox: whereas discovering the objective cause of a case of madness makes it possible to measure the great distance between pathology and a normal relation to reality, the doctor must also apply therapy, which is a means of making the phenomenon itself disappear. The search initiated by the postulate of objectivity (of religion, of collective representations) would thus seem to lead to the discovery that there is no objectivity at all.

It is important, in all the commentary on Durkheim's Elemental Forms, to take at least some notice of what he himself said it was about. So the importance of the term dynamogénique is that although he uses it on only four known occasions, these are all occasions when he himself comments on his newly published work and says what it is fundamentally about the dynamogenic influence of religion.

‘The Dualism of Human Nature’ was made available some time ago in English, and this undoubtedly helped to stimulate the mass of commentary that has grown around the essay and made it well-known. But it is time to replace the old translation, since it is so inadequate and fault-ridden. For example, it involves a systematic impulse to change a Durkheimian collective noun such as our will into English individualized plurals, such as ‘our wills’. Or it often cuts things out. Thus it eliminates Durkheim’s key talk of creative effervescence, which merely becomes ‘creativity’. An opposite tendency is to add things in.

Although sociology is defined as the science of society, in reality it cannot deal with human groups, which are the immediate concern of its research, without in the end tackling the individual, the ultimate element of which these groups are composed. For society cannot constitute itself unless it penetrates individual consciousnesses and fashions them 'in its image and likeness'; so, without wanting to be over-dogmatic, it can be said with confidence that a number of our mental states, including some of the most essential, have a social origin. Here it is the whole that, to a large extent, constitutes the part; hence it is impossible to try to explain the whole without explaining the part, if only as an after-effect. The product par excellence of collective activity is the set of intellectual and moral goods called civilization; this is why Auguste Comte made sociology the science of civilization. But, in another aspect, it is civilization that has made man into what he is; it is this that distinguishes him from the animal. Man is man only because he is civilized. To look for the causes and conditions on which civilization depends is therefore to look, as well, for the causes and conditions of what, in man, is most specifically human. This is how sociology, while drawing on psychology, which it cannot do without, brings to this, in a just return, a contribution that equals and exceeds in importance the services it receives from it. It is only through historical analysis that it is possible to understand what man is formed of; for it is only in the course of history that he has taken form.

Durkheim's Aesthetics: A Neglected Argument? For quite some time now, Durkheimian sociology has been viewed as paying scant attention to art. Indeed, one can imagine that Durkheim was too busy establishing the fundamentals of his discipline to indulge in the more recreational aspects of social life. Sociologists build theories and consider serious topics (e.g. capital, division of labour, rationality and so on) and do not give extra-time to what's happening after the working day. If we look at indices and textbooks, this lack of interest is obvious. The upgrading of culture as a central feature of sociological investigation is a rather recent phenomenon (Alexander 2003, Fabiani 1993). In many ways this has to do with the emergence of cultural industries, which forced sociologists to analyze, first in a very critical manner, social changes brought about by the mass consumption of symbolic commodities. Today the sociology of art and culture has moved from the periphery to the centre. In France in particular, these topics have been taken up so as to renew theories and build intellectual reputations. Durkheim, of course, never planned to draw up any sociological aesthetics, as Bourdieu attempted to do in Distinction (1979). Although from today's perspective Bourdieu's book may be considered as a partial failure, one cannot deny the panache and inventiveness it involved, largely based as it was upon the recognition of the high sociological significance of cultural and artistic matters. Bourdieu's interest in art and literature was central from the very beginning of his career, and one of his first attempts to define the concept of field (champ) appeared in a paper devoted to literature (Bourdieu 1967). Things are obviously very different with Durkheim.

After the End of a Dark Century: Philosophical and Theological Discourses on Evil, complex, highly interesting and full of religious, philosophical and existential implications. One has to hope that the theological and philosophical reflection on evil and suffering will also continue in a post-metaphysical world, even if this hope is part of an ongoing debate. As fascinating as these questions may be, I will not address any of the classical, philosophical and/or theological problems on evil in this paper. Rather than concentrating on this kind of approach to evil, I would like to try and offer a different way of dealing with a subject, which has long been neglected in the sociological field, and is almost absent among Durkheimian studies too. In other words, I would like to approach the problem of evil from a point of view similar to Durkheim?s sociology of religion. However, I will keep the modern philosophical turn in the theological discussion on evil as a background, since one of my objectives is to try and isolate the specific and distinctive characteristics of a Durkheimian idea of evil in the light of the modern transition from suffering to evil.

Je souhaiterais aborder dans cet article quelques éléments de l'histoire intellectuelle française susceptibles d'éclairer le contexte de réception du pragmatisme américain en France et de souligner certains des enjeux liés à cette réception; je m'intéresse donc ici plus particulièrement à la réception du pragmatisme de William James et John Dewey entre les années 1890 et 1920 environ. Durant cette période, on trouve de nombreux textes consacrés au pragmatisme dont on peut donner un aperçu chronologique en rappelant les principaux titres. En 1906, traduction de James Les variétés de l'expérience religieuse avec une préface d'Emile Boutroux; le 7 mai 1908 une séance de la Société française de Philosophie intitulée 'Signification du pragmatisme'; puis en 1908 de nouveau un texte d'Emile Boutroux Science et religion où il est notamment question de James; le texte de James Pragmatisme préfacé par Bergson en 1911; en 1913 Un romantisme utilitaire de René Berthelot puis en 1921 De l'utilité du pragmatisme de Georges Sorel. Tous ces textes et bien d'autres forment la toile de fond d'un débat sur le pragmatisme auquel un auteur quelque peu inattendu va apporter une contribution majeure; cet auteur c'est Emile Durkheim lui-même qui sera le seul à proposer un cours intégralement consacré au pragmatisme en 1913-1914 mais il faudra attendre 1955 pour en avoir une publication en français à partir de notes de cours grace au travail d'Armand Cuvillier, et 1983 pour qu'il en existe une version anglaise avec une introduction d'Allcock. Tous les commentateurs actuels s'accordent pour dire que ce cours n'a pas eu l'attention qu'il méritait et qu'il demeure méconnu et injustement relégué au rang de 'document historique'1 sans être considéré à sa juste valeur.

The question of the trajectory of Durkheimian thought after the death of Durkheim in 1917 is of great interest to many scholars. Increasing attention has been paid in recent years to the place of the Collége de Sociologie in that legacy (e.g., Hollier 1979; Kurasawa 1998; Richman 2002; Marroquin 2005). The focus of much of this scholarship, however, has been on one participant in the Collége, Georges Bataille. Both those who see the Collége as a legitimate inheritor of the Durkheimian mantle (e.g., Richman 2002) and those who do not (e.g., Marcel 2001) place central importance on the person and work of Bataille. There were however other members of the Collége, some of whom in fact had a much closer institutional connection to the Durkheimian group through Durkheim's nephew, Marcel Mauss, than Bataille did. Roger Caillois is perhaps the most important of these others. (1) The work of Caillois is still relatively little known outside the French-speaking world. Largely considered a figure of the literary avant-garde when he is known at all among English-speaking academics, (2) he was in fact a thinker of immensely broad interests, with intellectual connections spanning from surrealist circles to Durkheimian ethnography. Unlike Bataille, he actually studied under Marcel Mauss (and Georges Dumézil) and some of the most compelling work he authored took up themes he explicitly recognized as having to do with sociology and social theory.

Neil Gross and Robert Alun Jones (eds., trans.). Durkheim’s Philosophy Lectures: Notes from the Lycée de Sens Course, 1883-1884, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2004. pp. 339.

Massimo Borlandi and Giovanni Busino (eds.), ‘La sociologie durkheimienne: tradition et actualité. À Philippe Besnard, in memoriam’, Revue européenne des sciences sociales, XLII (129) 2004. pp.410.

Warren Schmaus. Rethinking Durkheim and His Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2004. pp. 195.

Anne Warfield Rawls. Epistemology and Practice: Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2005. pp. 355.

W. Schmaus, Rethinking Durkheim and His Tradition, and A. W. Rawls, Epistemology and Practice. Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.

Jonathan S. Fish. Defending the Durkheimian Tradition: Religion, Emotion and Morality, Aldershot: Ashgate. 2005. pp. 207.

E. Dubreucq. Une éducation républicaine. Marion, Buisson, Durkheim, Paris: Vrin. 2004. pp. 236.

Annette Becker. Maurice Halbwachs. Un intellectuel en guerres mondiales, 1914-1945. Paris: Agnès Viénot. 2003. pp. 478.

Jeffrey Alexander. The Meanings of Social Life, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 2003. pp. 296.

Randall Collins. Interaction Ritual Chains, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. 2004. pp. 464.

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