Assorted Durkheim
Emile Durkheim, in his own words, exploring various subjects...
From Academic Specialization to Global Solidarity
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On Academic Specialization
"...by becoming more specialized, science comes closer to things which are themselves specialized. It thus becomes more objective, more impersonal, and, consequently, accessible to the full range of individual talents and to all workers of good will."
(Thompson, 1982, p. 53-54 [excerpt from "Course in Sociology: Opening Lecture"])
"After analysis, there is need for synthesis, showing how those elements unite in a whole. Here is the justification of general sociology."
(1982, p. 56 [excerpt from "Sociology"])
On Altruism
"Wherever there are societies, there is altruism, because there is solidarity."
(Durkheim, 1933, p. 197)
"Thus, we find altruism from the beginning of humanity and even in a truly intemperate form. For these privations that the savage imposes upon himself in obedience to religious tradition, the abnegation with which he sacrifices his life when society demands such sacrifice..."
(1933, p. 197)
On Authority and Opinion
"When we obey somebody because of moral authority which we recognize in him, we follow out his opinions, not because they seem wise, but because a certain sort of physical energy is imminent in the idea that we form of this person, which conquers our will and inclines it in the indicated direction."
(1973, p. 170 [excerpt from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life])
"So opinion, primarily a social thing, is a source of authority, and it might even be asked whether all authority is not the daughter of opinion. It may be objected that science is often the antagonist of opinion, whose errors it combats and rectifies. But it cannot succeed in this task if it does not have sufficient authority, and it can obtain this authority only from opinion itself."
(1973, p. 171 [excerpt from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life])
On Bureaucracy
"Superficial mobility disguises the most monotonous uniformity."
(1982, p. 146 [excerpt from Moral Education])
On Civilization
"From the time that the number of individuals among whom social relations are established begins to increase, they can maintain themselves only by greater specialization, harder work, and intensification of their faculties. From this general stimulation, there inevitably results a much higher degree fo culture. From this point of view, civilization appears, not as an end which moves people by its attraction for them, not as a good foreseen and desired in advance, of which they seek to assure themselves the largest possible part, but as the effect of a cause, as the necessary resultant of a given state."
(1933, p.336-337)
"Civilization too is an inexorable result of the changes occurring in the volume and density of societies. The development of science, art, and economic activity derives from human necessity. Men cannot exist without them under new conditions into which they are thrust. When the number of individuals involved in social relations grows larger, they can survive only by increased specialization, by increased labor, by great refinement of their capacities. From this wholesale excititation there must come a higher degree of culture. Looked at this way, civilization emerges not as a goal urging peoples on by its attractiveness to them, not as a thing of value foreseen and longed for, of which they seek to appropriate as much as possible by every means possible, but civilization emerges as the effect of a cause, as the inevitable result of a fixed situation."
(1963, p. 51 [excerpt from The Division of Labor in Society])
"For a society is not made up merely of the mass of individuals who compose it, the ground which they occupy, the things which they use and the movements which they perform, but above all is the idea which it forms of itself."
(1973, p. 196 [excerpt from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life])
"...We see even better how false it is to make civilization the function of the division of labor; it is only a consequence of it. It can explain neither the existence nor the progress of the division of labor, since it has, of itself, no intrinsic or absolute value, but on the contrary, has a reason for existing only in so far as the division of labor is itself found necessary."
(1933, p.337)
"To seek to realize a civilization superior to that demanded by the nature of surrounding conditions is to desire to turn illness loose in the very society of which we are a part, for it is not possible to increase collective activity beyond the degree determined by the state of the social organism without compromising health."
(1933, p.340-341)
On Concepts and Ideas
"The ideas of man or animal are not personal and are not restricted to me; I share them, to a large degree, with all the men who belong to the same social group that I do. Because they are held in common, concepts are the supreme instrument of all intellectual exchange."
(Bellah, 1973, p. 152 [excerpt from "The Dualism of Human Nature and Its Social Conditions"])
On the Conscience Collective
"The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to average citizens of the same society (which) forms a determinate system which has its own life."
(1982, p. 60 [excerpt from The Division of Labor in Society])
On Discipline
"Discipline in effect regularizes conduct. It implies repetitive behavior under determinate conditions."
(1982, p. 162 [excerpt from Moral Education])
On the Duality of Man
"On the one hand is our individuality--and, more particularly, our body in which it is based; on the other is everything in us that expresses something other than ourselves."
(1973, p. 152 [excerpt from "The Dualism of Human Nature and Its Social Conditions"])
"In brief, this duality corresponds to the double existence that we lead concurrently: the one purely individual and rooted in our organisms, the other social and nothing but an extension of society."
(1973, p. 162 [excerpt from "The Dualism of Human Nature and Its Social Conditions"])
"...Man is double. There are two beings in him: an individual being which has its foundation in the organism and the circle of whose activities is therefore strictly limited, and a social being which represents the highest reality in the intellectual and moral order that we can know by observation---I mean society. This duality of our nature has as its consequence in the practical order, the irreducibility of a moral ideal to a utilitarian motive, and in the order of thought, the irreducibility of reason to individual experience. In so far as he belongs to society, the individual transcends himself, both when he thinks and when he acts."
(1963, p. 93 [excerpt from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life])
On Education
"The man whom education should realize in us is not the man such as nature has made him, but as the society wishes him to be; and it wishes him such as its internal economy calls for."
(1963, p. 99 [excerpt from Education and Sociology])
"A society in which there is pacific commerce between its members, in which there is no conflict of any sort, but which has nothing more than that, would have a rather mediocre quality. Society must, in addition, have before it an ideal toward which it reaches. ...It must go on to new conquests; it is necessary that the teacher prepare the children who are in his trust for these necessary advances. He must be on his guard against transmitting the moral gospel of our elders as a sort of closed book. On the contrary, he must excite in them a desire to add a few lines of their own, and give them the tools to satisfy this legitimate ambition."
(1982, p. 162 [excerpt from The Evolution of Educational Thought])
"It [education] is only the image and reflection of society. It imitates and reproduces the latter in abbreviated form; it does not create it. Education is healthy when people themselves are in a healthy state; but it becomes corrupt with them, being unable to modify itself. ... The strongest wills cannot elicit non-existent forces from nothingness, and the shocks of exerience constantly dissipate thes facile illusions. Besides, even though through some incomprehensible miracle a pedagogical system were constituted in opposition to the social system, this very antagonism would rob it of all effect. ... Education, therefore, can be reformed only if society itself is reformed. To do that, the evil from which it suffers must be attacked at its source."
(1982, p. 115-116 [excerpt from Suicide])
"These are relgious beliefs, moral beliefs and practices, national and occupational traditions, collective opinions of every kind. Their totality forms the social being. To constitute this being in each of us is the end of education."
(1963, p. 99 [excerpt from Education and Sociology])
On Functionalism
"...A great number of our mental states, including some of the most important ones, are of social origin. In this case then, it is the whole that, in a large measure, produces the part; consequently, it is impossible to attempt to explain the whole without explaining the part--without explaining, at least, the part as a result of the whole."
(1973, p. 149 [excerpt from "The Dualism of Human Nature and its Social Conditions"])
On Global Solidarity
"The ideal of human fraternity can be realized only in proportion to the progress of the division of labor."
(1933, p. 406)
"We have already seen that among European peoples there is a tendency to form, by spontaneous movement, a European society which has, at present, some idea of itself and the beginning of organization. If the formation of a single human society is forever impossible, a fact which has not been proved, at least the formation of continually larger societies brings us vaguely near the goal."
(1933, p. 405-406)
Sources:
Bellah, Robert N. 1973. Emile Durkheim: On Morality and Society, Selected Writings. Chicago: the University of Chicago Press.
Durkheim, Emile. 1933. The Division of Labor in Society Translated by George Simpson. New York: The Free Press.
Simpson, George. 1963. Emile Durkheim: Selections From His Work. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co.
Thompson, Kenneth. 1982. Emile Durkheim. London: Tavistock Publications.
