Emile Durkheim
Emile Durkheim
David Émile Durkheimwas a French sociologist, social psychologist and philosopher. He formally established the academic discipline and—with Karl Marx and Max Weber—is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology...
ProfessionTeacher
Date of Birth15 April 1858
religious reality representation
Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.
environment relation contact
A person is not merely a single subject distinguished from all the others. It is especially a being to which is attributed a relative autonomy in relation to the environment with which it is most immediately in contact.
taken character sadness
Man could not live if he were entirely impervious to sadness. Many sorrows can be endured only by being embraced, and the pleasure taken in them naturally has a somewhat melancholy character.
order voice giving
Although our moral conscience is a part of our consciousness, we do not feel ourselves on an equality with it. In this voice which makes itself heard only to give us orders and establish prohibitions, we cannot recognize our own voices; the very tone in which it speaks to us warns us that it expresses something within us that is not of ourselves.
cheerful morality found
Too cheerful a morality is a loose morality; it is appropriate only to decadent peoples and is found only among them.
feelings variables limits
It is not human nature which can assign the variable limits necessary to our needs. They are thus unlimited so far as they depend on the individual alone. Irrespective of any external regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.
men class luxury
It is too great comfort which turns a man against himself. Life is most readily renounced at the time and among the classes where it is least harsh.
character names historical
There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.
feelings capacity force
Irrespective of any external, regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.
christian country thinking
The Christian conceives of his abode on Earth in no more delightful colors than the Jainist sectarian. He sees in it only a time of sad trial; he also thinks that his true country is not of this world.
religious loss men
Man seeks to learn, and man kills himself because of the loss of cohesion in his religious society; he does not kill himself because of his learning. It is certainly not the learning he acquires that disorganizes religion; but the desire for knowledge wakens because religion becomes disorganized.
sadness mean facts
It is a quite remarkable fact that the great religions of the most civilized peoples are more deeply fraught with sadness than the simpler beliefs of earlier societies. This certainly does not mean that the current of pessimism is eventually to submerge the other, but it proves that it does not lose ground and that it does not seem destined to disappear.
firsts facts fundamentals
The first and most fundamental rule is: Consider social facts as things.
sick healthy desire
A monomaniac is a sick person whose mentality is perfectly healthy in all respects but one; he has a single flaw, clearly localized. At times, for example, he has an unreasonable and absurd desire to drink or steal or use abusive language; but all his other acts and all his other thoughts are strictly correct.