the elementary forms of religious life, emile durkheim

translator's introduction (karen fields)

(xix): "for durkheim, religions exist because human beings exist only as social beings and in a humanly shaped world. religion is 'an eminently social thing.'"

(xxiiii): "...the Durkheimian pedigree of Michel Foucault."

(xxv): "religion is the steady, day-in-day-out reality of millions, their routine framework of everyday activity..."

(xxxiii): "to exist at all, all communities must be imagined. what his intellectual descendant benedict anderson has so well shown for large-scale twentieth-century anticolonial nationalism is also true of any face-to-face community and of the smallest Australian clan."

(xxxiv): in sum--"bear three points in mind. first, religion is not defined in terms of anything that would turn a man of science positive away from observable phenomena, or the real--not divinity, the otherworldly... second, the phrase 'unified system' postulates that religius beliefs and rites are not hodgeppodges but are internally ordered. third, the objects of those rites and beliefs acquire their religious status as sacred, or 'set apart and forbidden,' as a result of joint action by people who set them apart and who, by the same stroke, constitute themselves a 'moral community' or 'a Church.' once again, then, religion is social, social, social."

(xxxviii): "...he assumes the Australians to be rationally constituted humans, as are their Parisian contemporaries. there is no question of one's being civilized and the other not, or of the two groups' having different mental constitutions."

(xliii): "...sacredness is eminently a representation collective... as a quality of things--or, rather, as Durkheim insists, a quality superadded to things--sacredness can come to be its real self only within the domain of collective consciousness... sacredness is an aspect of the real that exists only in the mind but cannot possibly exist as the real in only one mind."

(xlvi): "sacredness is not merely a set of peculiar relationships between people and certain designated objects. the very act that constitues those peculiar relationships also relates a designated group of people to one another and sets them apart from others to whom they are not bound and who do not have the same relationship to designated physical objects."

(li): "if durkheim's analysis is right, it suggests that this century's monstrosities in collecitve life arise not from aberrations in human reason but from what is fundamental to it. that analysis also leads to a disturbing suggestion: that the ordinary human agents who serve as raw material for extraordinary abusers of human dignity are, in vast majority, the normal and the the socially responsible... it suggests, finally, that the human nature on which we depend, our social nature, is our uplift and our downfall. the only exit from this dilemma appears to be individualism. but the incompatibility of individualist assumptions with human nature as it can be observed in the real world was chief among Durkheim's discovereies in Formes and throughout his work. what we see, through his theoretical lens of conscience collective, is present in a social world of the real that coannot be arrived at with notions of individual conscience alone... thus, in the end, there is a deep and tragic tension in Durkheim's discoveries."

introduction (1-18)

(1): "i have made a very archaic religion the subject of my research because it seems better suited than any other to help us comprehend the religious nature of man, that is, to reveal a fundamental and permanent aspect of humanity."

(2): "fundamentally, then, there are no religions that are false. all are true after their own fashion: all fulfill given conditions of human existence, though in different ways. granted it is not impossible to rank them hierarchically..." [this last point seems different from what karen fields argued earlier--and generally incommensurate with the thrust of durkheim's move, here.]

(8): "if philosophy and the sciences were born in religion, it is because religion itself began by serving as science and philosophy. further, and less often noted, religion has not merely enriched a human intellect already formed but in fact has helped to form it. men owe to religion not only the content of their knowledge, in significant part, but also the form in which that knowledge is elaborated." [form/content -- here begins the rejoinder to kant and the empiricists]

(9): critical--"the principal categories... are born in and from religion. they are a product of religious thought. this is a point that i will make again and again in the course of this book... the general conclusion of the chapters to follow is that religion is an eminently social thing. religious representations are collective representations that express collective realities; rites are ways of acting that are born only in the midst of assembled groups and whose purpose is to evoke, maintain, or recreate certain mental states of those groups..."

(10): "it is not my time that is organized in this way. it is time that is conceived of objectively by all men of the same civilization. this by itself is enough to make us begin to see that any such organization would have to be collective. and indeed, observation establishes that these indispensable points, in reference to which all things are arranged temporally, are taken from social life. the division into days, weeks, months, ears, etc., corresponds to the recurrence of rites, festivals and public ceremonies at regular intervals."

(12-14): where he makes the rejoinder to kant and the empiricists: "faced with these opposite objections, the intellect remains uncertain. but if the social origin of the categories is accepted, a new stance becomes possible, one that should enable us, i believe, to avoid these opposite difficulties."

(16-17): key--"society cannot leave the categories up to the free choice of individuals without abandoning itself... we feel that we cannot abandon ourselves to them without our thought's ceasing to be really human... thus the necessit with which the categories press themselves is not merely the effect of habits whose yoke we could slip with little effort; nor is that necessity a habit or a physical or metaphysical need, since the categories change with place and time; it is a special sort of moral necessity that is to intellectual life what obligation is to the will."

book one

(24): religion cannot be sought in the supernatural, because the supernatural/natural antinomy is emphatically modern. "to be able to call certain facts supernatural, one must already have an awareness that there is a natural order of things, in other words, that the phenomena of the universe are internally linked according to necessary relationships called laws."

(27): neither can it be defined by the idea of divinity (see buddhism discussion on next page)

(33-34): important--definition of religion as a "system", which consists of beliefs and rites and a sacred/profane classification, of them [here it is appropriate to raise the concerns about how religions ossify and are cast off--how, in other words, there is development? since this, as a classically structuralist position, explains everything in a state of stasis...]

(38): "sacred things are things protected and isolated by prohibitions; profane things are those things to which the prohibitions are applied and that must keep at a distance from what is sacred."

(41): the Church--"...a society whose members are united because they imagine the sacred world and its relations with the profane world in the same way, and because they translate this common representation into identical practices, is what is called a Church..."

(42): important--"a Church is not simply a priestly brotherhood; it is a moral community made up of all the faithful, both laity and priests..."

(44): definition--"a religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden--beliefs and practices which unite into on e single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them."

(44): "the second element thus holds a place in my definition that is no less essential than the first: in showing that the idea of religion is inseparable from the idea of a Church, it conveys the notion that religion must be an eminently collective thing."

(45-67): not animism, as a theory for why religion emerges

(68-83): not naturism

(84-85): "since, in themselves, neither man nor nature is inherently sacred, both acquire sacredness elsewhere."

(91): "first, for the sociologist as for the historian, social facts exist in relationship with the social system to which they belong; hence they cannot be understood apart from it..."

(91-92): "the comaprative method would be impossible if social types did not exist, and it cannot be usefully applied except within the same type." [the place to ask, again, about the 'social type' vs. 'ideal type' method]

book two

(100): two essential traits of the clam: 1. a bond of a particular sort, because they bear the same name. 2. the name it bears is also that of a definites species of material things with which it thinks it has a special relationship...

(118): "thus, while the totem is a collective label, it also has a religious character. in fact, things are classified as sacred and profane by reference to the totem. it is the very archetype of sacred things."

(124): "this sacredness stems from one cause: it is a material representation of the clan..." [even if he means 'literally material' here, this still gives us an opportunity to ask about how his position here, and in general, resembles historical materialism.]

(145-146): e.g., how the idea of 'genus', or 'class' is born as a result of clan organization--"thus we have our first opportunity to test the proposition put forward at the beginning of this work and to assure ourselves that the fundamental notions of the intellect, the basic categories of thought, can be the product of social factors. the preceding shows that this is indeed the case for the notion of category itself."

(148): "in all probability, then, we would never have thought of gathering the beings of the universe into homogeneous groups, called genera, if we had not had the example of human societies before our eyes--if, indeed, we had not at first gone so far in making things members of the society of men..."

(156): "in sum, totemic organization as just described clearly must result from a sort of consensus among all the members of the tribe, without distinction. each clan cannot possibly have developed its beliefs in an absolutely independent manner; the cults of the various totems complement one another exactly, and so they must necessarily have been in some sense adjusted to one another." [here, must interrogate what work is being done by the notion of "consensus" -- this, again, is durkheim's strong (methodological-philosophical) bias in favor of non-contradiction, resolved tensions, etc.]

(191): the 'force'--"totemism is not the religion of certain animals, certain men, or certain images; it is the religion of a kind of anonymous and impersonal force that is identifiable in each of these beings but identical to none of them."

(192): "when i speak of these principles as forces, i do not use the word in a metaphorical sense; they behave like real forces."

(202): "that way of imagining religious things is by no means inherent in their nature. at the origin and basis of religious thought, we find not definite and distinct objects or beings that in themselves possess sacredness but indefinite powers and anonymous forces."

(208): key--"it follows from the same analysis that the totem expresses and symbolizes two different kinds of things. from one point of view, it is the outward and visible form of what i have called the totemic principle or god; and from another, it is also the symbol of a particular society that is called the clan. it is the flag of the clan, the sign by which each clan is distinguished from the others... thus, if the totem is the symbol of both the god and the society, is this not because the god and the society are one and the same?... thus the god of the clan, the totemic principle, can be none other than the clan itself, but the clan transfigured and imagined in the physical form of the plant or animal that serves as totem." [here we have the loose contours of an important contribution, definitely--but i want to know much more about the nature of the link. what kind of a totemic principle is produced by different kinds of society? and isn't it unavoidable that this principle is produced by specific sectors of society? where is the consensus, emile? the fact that people reproduce something does not mean that they produced it? of course he will no accept this as an intelligible question. partly, of course, this entire line of questioning is complicated by his methodology--he is using 'primitive communism' to explain highly stratified societies. surely, stratification will begin to matter as we interrogate the notion of 'consensus'?]

(208): "society in general, simply be its effect on men's minds, undoubtedly has all that is required to arouse the sensation of the divine. a society is to its members of what a god is to its faithful."

(209-211): notion of 'moral authority' -- which we attribute to the 'divine' but is, in actual fact, something that society exerts upon us.

(214): "because we feel the weight of them, we have no choice but to locate them outside ourselves..."

(215): "just as society consecrates men, so it also consecrates things, including ideas..." [what is the nature of this agency?]

(223): "because the religious force is none other than the collective and anonymous force of the clan..."

(224): "such moral powers do not express the manner in which natural things affect our senses but the manner in which the collective consciousness affects individual consciousness."

(226): important--again, an exceedingly strong, stable conception of hegemony (and, then, where to for resistance?) -- "each individual carries the whole in himself. it is part of him, so when he yields to its promptings, he does not think he is yielding to coercion but instead doing what his own nature tells him to do." [this is what craig was saying--durkheim will not be helpful if we want to understand rebellion. but if we want to understand restraint/passivity, he's our man. to an extent, of course]

(227): "religion is first and foremost a system of ideas by means of which individuals imagine the society of which they are members and the obscure yet intimate relations they have with it. such is its paramount role."

(229): important, and demonstrates his interesting insistence on seeing the modern and primitive together--"even though purely ideal, the powers thereby conferred on the object behave as if they were real. they determine man's conduct with the same necessity as phsycial forces. the Arunta who has properly rubbed himself with his churinga feels stronger; he is stronger... the soldier who falls defending his flag certainly does not believe he has sacrificed himself to a piece of cloth. such things happen because social thought, with its imperative authority, has a power that individual thought cannot possibly have. by acting on our minds, it can make us see things in the light that suits it..." [there is, perhaps, a positive project here, in deconstruction of this social (arbitrary?) authority? though, in durkheim, the tragic would re-assert itself, no doubt.]

(230): "the sacredness exhibited by the thing is not implicated in the intrinsic properties of the thing. it is added to them. the world of the religious is not a special aspect of empirical nature. it is superimposed upon nature."

(233): "we know, in fact, that social phenomena are born not in the individual but in the group. no matter what part we may play in their genesis, each of us receives them from without." [what would it mean to introduce the notion of class, here?]

(238): "we know furthermore that these religious ideas are the outcome of definite social causes... thus, it is social requirements that have fused together ideas that at first seem distinct..." [again, this is society in the abstract, not class society in the concrete. what would it mean to perform that transformation?]

(240): "...there is no gulf between the logic of religious thought and the logic of scientific thought..."

(242-275): inquiring after the soul -- see 265, where he writes, "the idea of the soul is a particular application of the bleifs relative to sacred things. in this way may be explained the religious character this idea has displayed ever since it appeared in history and that it still has today. the soul has always been considered a sacred thing; in this respect it is opposed to the body, which in itself is profane."

(276-279): inquiring after spirits and gods, beginning to track religion as it becomes steadily more complex

book three

(303): role of rites--"by definition, sacred beings are beings set apart. what distinguishes them is a discontinuity between them and profane beings. normally, the two sorts of beings are separate from one another. a whole complex of rites seeks to bring about that separation, which is essential..."

(304): introducing the notion of 'taboo'--"the institution in accordance with which certain things are withdrawn from ordinary use."

(312-313): generally-speaking, we see that sacred and profane life cannot exist at the same time, or same space

(316): asceticism

(400): taking it too far? -- "there is no relationship between the feelings felt and the actions done by those who take part in the rite." [here discussing funeral rites, which seems a classic overstatement]

conclusion

(418): seeing the study of primitive society as the opening phase of an inductive investigation

(420): "the cult is not merely a system of signs by which the faith is outwardly expressed; it is the sum total of means by which that faith is created and recreated periodically."

(420): footnote william james -- "like a recent apologist of faith, i accept that religious belief rests on a definite experience, whose demonstrative value is, in a sense, not inferior to that of scientific experiments..."

(421): "i have shown what moral forces it develops and how it awakens that feeling of support, safety, and protective guidance which binds the man of faith to its cult." [here we are deepening the arg re: consensus -- does it serve a personal need, also, and not just a social need?]

(421): "as i have shown, even collective ideas and feelings are possible only through the overt movements that symbolize them. thus it is action that dominates religious life, for the very reason that society is its source."

(421): "along the way, i have established that the fundamental categories of thought, and thus science itself, have religious origins... in short, then, we can say that nearly all the great social institutions were born in religion. for the principal features of collective life to have begun as none other than various features of religious life it is evident that religious life must necessarily have been the eminent form and, as it were, the epitome of collective life."

(422): interesting--echoes of discipline and punish, without any of the political implications--"in the end, the point is not to exert a kind of physical constraint upon blind, and, more than that, imaginary forces but to reach, fortify, and discipline consciousness."

(424): quite ambitious--the distinction between the real and the ideal can only be explained by my framework, he's arguing--"since what defines the sacred is that the sacred is added to the real. and since the ideal is defined in the same way, we cannot explain the one without explaining the other."

(424): "thus the formation of an ideal is by no means an irreducible datum that eludes science. it rests on conditions that can be uncovered through observation. it is a natural product of social life."

(425): "it is in the school of collective life that the individual has learned to form ideals. it is by assimilating the ideals worked out by society that the individual is able to conceive of the ideal."

(426): key, why my theory is not historical materialism--"in pointing out an essentially social thing in religion, i in no way mean to say that religion simply translates the material forms and immediate vital necessities of society into another language. i do indeed take it to be obvious that social life depends on and bears the mark of its material base, just as the mental life of the individual depends on the brain... but collective consiocusness is something other than a mere epiphenomenon of its morphological base, just as individual consciousness is something other than a mere product of thenervous system. if collective consciousness is to appear, a sui generis synthesis of individual consciousness must occur... they mutually attract one another... none of these combinations is directly commanded and necessitated by the state of the underlying reality.." [unless i am misinterpreting, this seems at odds with the presentation, earlier. isn't he giving an unreasonable autonomy to the individual, here? and anyway this is theoretical very unsatisfactory--the collective consciousness emerging more-or-less randomly, as product? doesn't make any scientific sense. why is it that, confronted with marxism, these people are afraid to defend themselves properly? he has eschewed the possibility of generalization, neglecting that this is what his study has done, throughout.]

(427): "we can now judge the worth of the radical individualism that is intent on making religion out to be a purely individual thing: it misconceives the fundamental conditions of religious life... the only hearth at whcih we can warm ourselves morally is the hearth made by the company of our fellow men."

(429): "there can be no society that does not experience the need at regular intervals to maintain and stregnthen the collective feelings and ideas that provide its coherence and its distinct individuality." [this opens up grounds for a study of 'nationalism' as a durkheimian study of religion, certainly--he does this and more throughout his work]

(429): speaking of unjust inequalities. my my (remember, this is his last work)

(430): french revolution, and why "it instituted a whole cycle of celebrations in order to keep the principles that inspired it eternally young."

(430): "religion is not only a system of practices but also a system of ideas whose object is to express the world..."

(431): science, and religion; the same goal, hence a (limited) incompatibility (see below, also) -- "in this regard, both pursue the same goal; scientific thought is only a more perfected form of religious thought. hence it seems natural that religion should lose ground as science becomes better at performing its task... although the offspring of religion, science tends to replace religion in everything that involves the cognitive and intellectual functions."

(432): science and religion, con't -- "science is said to deny religion in principle. but religion exist; it is a system of given facts; in short, it is a reality. how could science deny a reality? furthermore, insofar as religion is action and insofar as it is a means of making men live, science cannot possibly take its place. although science expresses life, it does not create life, and science can very well seek to explain faigh but by that very fact presupposes faith. hence there is conflict on only a limited point."

(434): "the basic material of logical thought is concepts. to try to discover how society could have played a role in the genesis of logical thought therefore amounts to asking how it can have taken part in the formation of concepts."

(435): change, in concepts (when there is some imperfection) -- can this take us away from what is otherwise a theory of stasis?

(435): the 'concept' is always an emphatically social thing -- "it is common to all because it is the work of the community."

(436): moreover, "concepts are not abstract things that have reality only in particular circumstances. they are [collective] representations just as concrete as any the individual can make of his own environment, for they correspond to the way in which the special being that is society thinks about the things of its own experience..." [again the question of society's agency]

(437): thus, "we can now begin to see society's share in the origin of logical thought. logical thought is possible only when man has managed to go beyond the fleeting representations he owes to sense experience and in the end to conceive a whole world of stable ideals, the common ground of intelligences..." (conditions for truth, he adds are two--impersonality and stability)

(438): here, oddly, a narrative of primitive-to-civilized is re-asserting itself (but it is sort of a meta- realm, so more forgivable, perhaps)

(440): "to say that concepts express the manner in which society conceives of things is also to say that conceptual thought is contemporaneous with humanity."

(441-442): key, answering why and how the categories are social, in origin, through the notion of totality--"above all, there is no individual experience, no matter how broad or prolonged, that could make us even suspect the existence of a whole genus embracing the universality of beings, and in which the other genera would be only species coordinated among, or subordinated to, one another. this notion of the whole, which lies at the basis of the classifications i have cited, cannot come to us from the individual himself, who is only a part of the whole and never comes in contact with more than an infinitesmal part of oreality... since the role of the categories is to encompass all the other concepts, the category par excellence would indeed seem to be the very concept of totality."

(443): "the concept of totality is but the concept of society in abstract form."

(443-444): "there is another reason... the relationships they express could not become conscious relationships except in and through society..."

(444): "society is possible only if the individuals and things that make it up are divided among different groups... and if those groups themeselves are classified in relation to one another..."

(445): "to summarize, society is by no means the illogical or alogical, inconsistent, and changeable being that people too often like to imagine. quite the contrary, the collective consciousness is the highest form of psychic life, for it is a consciousness of consciousness. being outside and above individual and local contingencies, collective consciousness sees things only in their permanent and fundamental aspect..."

(446): important--to the extent that there is dynamism in his picture, it is geometric--in other words, society will grow grow grow, until these concepts are stretched and need to be re-fit. it is not, though, that there is conflict.

(447): "the mystery dissolves once we have acknowledged that impersonal reason is but collective thought by another name. collective thought is possible only through the coming together of individuals..."

(448): "a new way of explaining man becomes possible as soon as we recognize that above the individual there is society, and that society is a system of active forces--not a nominal being, and not a creation of the mind..."