Assorted Durkheim
Emile Durkheim, in his own words, exploring various subjects...
From Government to Tradition
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On Government
"In the first place, whenever we find ourselves in the presence of a governmental system endowed with great authority, we must seek the reason for it, not in the particular situation of the governing, but in the nature of the societies they govern. We must observe common beliefs, the common sentiments which, by incarnating themselves in a person or in a family, communicate such power to it."
(1933, p. 196)
"...As we have seen, the force of authoritarian governments does not come from authorities themselves, but from the very constitution of society."
(1933, p. 195)
On Industry
"Society has no justification if it does not bring a little peace to men -- peace in their hearts and peace in their mutual intercourse. If, then, industry can be productive only by disturbing their peace and unleashing warfare, it is not worth the cost."
(1982, p. 156 [excerpt from Professional Ethics and Civic Morals])
On Methods
"Treat social facts as things."
(1982, p. 101 [excerpt from The Rules of Sociological Method])
"To treat phenomena as things is to treat them as data, and these constitute the point of departure of science."
(1982, p. 101 [excerpt from The Rules of Sociological Method])
On Morality
"Everything which is the source of solidarity is moral, everything which forces man to take account of other men is moral, everything which forces him to regulate his conduct through something other than the surviving of his ego is moral, and morality is as solid as these ties are numerous and strong."
(1933, p. 398)
"...man is a moral being only because he lives in society, since morality consists in being solidary with a group and varying with this solidarity. Let all social life disappear, and moral life will disappear with it, since it would no longer have any objective."
(1933, p. 399)
"Morality, in all its forms, is never met with except in society. It never varies except in relation to social conditions."
(1933, p. 399)
"The duties of the individual towards himself are, in reality, duties towards society."
(1933, p. 399)
"Now there is only one moral power---moral, and hence common to all---which stands above the individual and which can legitimately make laws for him, and that is collective power. To the extent the individual is left to his own devices and freed from all social constraint, he is unfettered too by all moral constraint."
(1963, p. 117 [excerpt from Professional Ethics and Civic Morals])
On Nationalism
"As long as there are states, so there will be national pride, and nothing can be more warranted. But societies can have their pride, not in being the greatest or the wealthiest, but in being the most just, the best organized and in possessing the best moral constitution."
(1982, p. 154-155 [excerpt from Professional Ethics and Civic Morals])
On Science
"Today it is generally sufficient that [truths or ideas] bear the stamp of science to receive a sort of privileged credit, because we have faith in science. But this faith does not differ essentially from religious faith. In the last resort, the value which we attribute to science depends upon the idea which we collectively form of its nature and role in life; that is as much as to say that it expresses a state of public opinion. In all social life, in fact, science rests upon opinion."
(1963, p. 96-97 [excerpt from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life])
On Social Change
"What history teaches us is that man does not change arbitrarily; he does not transform himself at will on hearing the voices of inspired prophets. The reason is that all chage, in colliding with the inherited institutions of the past, is inevitably hard and laborious; consequently it only takes place in response to the demands of necessity. For change to be brought about it is not enough that it should be seen as desirable; it must be the product of changes within the whole netwok of diverse casual relationships which the determine the situation of man."
(1982, p. 165 [excerpt from The Evolution of Educational Thought])
"To aim for a civilization beyond that made possible by the nexus of the surrounding environment will result will result in unloosing sickness into the very society we live in. Collective activity cannot be encouraged beyond the point set by the condition of the social organism without undermining health."
(1963, p. 54 [excerpt from The Division of Labor in Society])
On Social Class
"Now inheritance as an institution results in men being born either rich or poor; that is to say, there are two main classes in society, linked by all sorts of intermediate classes: the one which in order to live has to make its services acceptable to the other at whatever the cost; the other class which can do without these services, because it can call on certain resouces, which may, however, not be equal to the services rendered by those who have them to offer. Therefore as long as such sharp class differences exist in society, fairly effective palliatives may lessen the injustice of contracts; but in principle, the system operates in conditions which do not allow of justice."
(1982, p. 150-151 [excerpt from Professional Ethics and Civic Morals])
"If one class of society is obliged, in order to live, to take any price for its services, while another can abstain from such action thanks to resources at its disposal which, however, are not necessarily due to any social superiority, the second has an unjust advantage over the first at law. In other words, there cannot be rich and poor a birth without there being unjust contracts."
(1982, p. 81 [excerpt from The Division of Labor in Society])
On Social Currents
"But there are other facts without such crystallized form which have the same objectivity and the same ascendancy over the individual. These are called 'social currents.' Thus the great movements of enthusiasm, indignation, and pity in a crowd do not originate in any one of the particular individual consciosnesses. They come to each one of us from without and carry us away in spite of ourselves."
(1982, p. 62 [excerpt from The Rules of Sociological Method])
On Socialism
"Let us suppose that by a miracle the whole system of property is entirely transformed overnight, and that on the collectivist formula the means of production are taken out of the hands of individuals and made over absolutely to collective ownership. All the problems around us that we are debating today will persist in their entirety. There will always be an economic mechanism and various agencies to combine in making it work. The rights and obligations of these various agencies therefore have to be determined, and in the different branches of industry at that. So a corpus of rules has to be laid down, fixing the stint of work, the pay of the members of staff, and their obligations to one another, towards the community, and so on. This means, then, that we should still be faced with a blank page to work on. Supposing the means -- the machinery of labor -- had been taken out of these hands or those and placed in others, we should still not know how the machinery worked or what the economic life should be, nor what to do in the face of this change in conditions. The state of anarchy would still persist; for, let me repeat, this state of anarchy comes not about from this machinery being in these hands and not in those, but because the activity deriving from it is not regulated."
(1982, p. 149-150 [excerpt from Professional Ethics and Civic Morals])
"Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature -- it is a cry of grief, sometimes of anger, uttered by men who feel most keenly our collective malaise. Socialism is to the facts which produce it what the groans of a sick man are to the illness with which he is afflicted, to the needs that torment him."
(1982, p. 159 [excerpt from Socialism])
On Socialization
"Doubtless, when one thinks through the concepts that he receives from the community, he individualizes them and marks them with his personal imprint, but there is nothing personal that is not susceptible to this type of individualization."
(1973, p. 152 [excerpt from "The Dualism of Human Nature and Its Social Conditions"])
On Sociology
"Sociology can then be defined as the science of institutions, of their genesis and of their functioning."
(1982, p. 57 [excerpt from The Rules of Sociological Method])
"Although sociology is defined as the science of societies, it cannot, in reality, deal with the human groups that are the immediate object of its investigation without eventually touching on the individual who is the basic element of which these groups are composed. For society can exist only if it penetrates the consciousness of individuals and fashions it in 'its image and resemblance'."
(1973, p. 149 [excerpt from "The Dualism of Human Nature and Its Social Conditions"])
On the State
"We should then define the political society as one formed by the coming together of a rather large number of secondary social groups,subject to the same one authority, which is not itself subject to any other superior authority duly constituted."
(1982, p. 152 [excerpt from Professional Ethics and Civil Morals])
"It is a group of officials sui generis, within which representations and acts of volition involving the collectivity are worked out, although they are not the product of the collectivity."
(1982, p. 153 [excerpt from Professional Ethics and Civil Morals])
"...the State is a special organ whose responsibility is to work out certain representations which hold good for the collectivity. These representations are distinguished from other collective representations by their higher degree of consciousness and reflection."
(1982, p. 153 [excerpt from Professional Ethics and Civil Morals])
On Tradition
"...tradition does not arouse, but tends to rather to preclude, thought and reflection."
(1963, p. 103 [excerpt from Education and Sociology])
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.
