Emile Durkheim

"The determining cause of a social fact should be sought among the social facts preceding it and not among the states of individual consciousness"  (1950, p. 110).
[My] "principal objective [is] . . .to extend scientific rationalism to human behavior" (1951, p. xxxix).

On Anomie

"The more one has, the more one wants, since satisfactions received only stimulate instead of filling needs"  (1951, p. 248).

On Religion

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 in one single community called a Church, all those who adhere to them"  (1954, p. 47).

"The believer who has communicated with his god is not merely a man who sees new truths of which the unbeliever is ignorant; he is a man who is stronger. He feels within him more force, wither to endure the trials of existence, or to conquer them" (1954, p. 416).

"At the roots of all our judgments there are a certain number of essential ideas which dominate all our intellectural life; they are what the philosophers since Aristotle have called the categories of the understanding: ideas of time, space, class, numbers, cause, substance, personality, etc. They correspond to the most universal properties of things. They are like the solid frame which encloses all thought; . . .They are like the framework of intelligence. Now when primitive religious beliefs are systematically analyzed, the principal categories are naturally found. They are born in religion and of religion; they are a product of religious thought" (1954, p. 9).

"Thus there is something eternal in religion which is destined to survive all the particular symbols in which religious thought has successively enveloped itself. There can be no society which does not feel the need of upholding and reaffirming at regular intervals the collective sentiments and the collective ideas which make its unity and its personality. Now this moral remaking cannot be achieved except by the means of reunions, assemblies, and meetings where the individuals, being closely united to one another, reaffirm in common their common sentiments; hence come ceremonies which do not differ from regular religious ceremonies, either in their object, the results which they produce, or the processes employed to attain these results. What essential difference is there between an assembly of Christians celebrating the principal dates in the life of Christ, or of Jews remembering the exodus from Egypt or the promulgation of the decalogue, and a reunion of citizens commemorating the promulgation of a new moral or legal system or some great event in the national life?" (1954, p. 427).

[Religion is] "an eminently collective thing" (1954, p.47).

"We must discover the rational substitutes for these religious notions that for a long time have served as the vehicle for the most essential moral ideas" (1961, p. 9).

On Society as God

"Society is not at all the illogical or a-logical, inherent and fantastic being which has too often been considered.  Quite on the contrary, the collective consciousness is the highest form of psychic life, since it is the consciousness of consciousness.  Being placed outside of and above individual and local contingencies, it sees things only in their permanent and essential aspects, which it crystallizes into communicable ideas.  At the same time that it sees from above, it sees farther; at every moment of time it embraces all known reality; that is why it alone can furnish the minds with the moulds which are applicable to the totality of things and which make it possible to think of them" (1954, p.444).

On Social Structure

"But if there is one fact that history has irrefutably demonstrated it is that the morality of each people is directly related to the social structure of the people practicing it.  The connection is so intimate that, given the general character of the morality observed in a given society and barring abnormal and pathological cases, one can infer the nature of that society, the elements of its structure and the way it is organized.  Tell me the marriage patterns, the morals dominating family life, and I will tell you the principal characteristics of its organization" (1961, p. 87).

On Crime

"Where crime exists, collective sentiments are sufficiently flexible to take on a new form, and crime sometimes helps to determine the form they will take.  How many times, indeed, it is only an anticipation of future morality--a step toward what will be"  (1950, p. 71).

"Crime brings together upright consciences and concentrates them"  (1960, 103).

On Mechanical and Organic Solidarity

"Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of labor. The individual is socialized in the first case, because, not having any real individuality, he becomes, with those whom he resembles, part of the same collective type; in the second case, because, while having a physiognomy and a personal activity which distinguishes him from others, he depends upon them in the same measure that he is distinguished from them, and consequently upon the society which results from their union" (1960, p. 226).

"The other (mechanical solidarity) is strong only if the individual is not. Made up of rules which are practiced by all indistinctly, it receives from this universal, uniform practice an authority which bestows something superhuman upon it, and which puts it beyond the pale of discussion. The co-operative society, on the contrary, develops in the measure that individual personality becomes stronger. As regulated as a function may be, there is a large place always left for personal initiative" (1960, pp. 228-229).

On the Division of Labor

"Even where society relies most completely upon the division of labor, it does not become a jumble of juxtaposed atoms, between which it can establish only external, transient  contacts.  Rather the members are united by ties which extend deeper and far beyond the short moments during which the exchange in made.  Each of the functions they exercise is, in a fixed way, dependent upon others, and with them forms a solidary system.  Accordingly, from the nature of chosen task permanent duties arise.  Because we fill some certain domestic or social function, we are involved in a complex of obligations from which we have no right to free ourselves.  There is, above all, an organ upon which we are tending to depend more and more; this is the State.  The points at which we are in contact with it multiply as do the occasions when it is entrusted with the duty of reminding us of the sentiment of common solidarity"  (1960, p. 227).

"Because the individual is not sufficient unto himself, it is for society that he works. Thus is formed a very strong sentiment of the state of dependence in which he finds himself. He becomes accustomed to estimating it at its just value, that is to say, in regarding himself as part of a whole, the organ of an organism. Such sentiments naturally inspire not only mundane sacrifices which assure the regular development of daily social life, but even, on occasion, acts of complete self-renunciation and wholesale abnegation" (1960, p. 228).

On Functionalism

"When . . . the explanation of a social phenomenon is undertaken, we must seek separately the efficient cause which produces it and the function it fulfills.  We use the word "function," in preference to "end" or "purpose," precisely because social phenomena do not generally exist for the useful results they produce.  We must determine whether there is a correspondence between the fact under consideration and the general needs of the social organism, and in what this correspondence consists, without occupying ourselves with whether it has been intentional or not"  (1950, 95).

"The determination of function is . . . necessary for the complete explanation of the phenomena. . . .To explain a social fact it is not enough to show the cause on which it depends; we must also, at least in most cases, show its function in the establishment of social order"  (1950, 97).

Sources:

Durkheim, Emile.  1953 ( ) Sociology and Philosophy.  New York: The Free Press.

Durkheim, Emile.  1954 ( ) The Elementary forms of the Religious Life. Translated by J.W. Swain.  New York:  The Free Press.

Durkheim, Emile. 1960 ( ) The Division of Labor in Society.  Translated by George Simpson. New York:  The Free Press.

Durkheim, Emile.  1956 ( ) Education and Sociology.  Translated by S.D. Fox.  New York:  The Free Press.

Durkheim, Emile.  1961 ( ) Moral Education:  A Study in the Theory and Application of the Sociology of Education.  Translated by E. K. Wilson and H. Schnurer.  New York:  The Free Press.

Durkheim, Emile.  1950. ( ) The Rules of Sociological Method.  Translated by S. A. Solovay and J.H. Mueller.  New York:  The Free Press.

Durkheim, Emile.  1951. ( ) Suicide:  A Study in Sociology.  Translated by J. A. Spaulding and G. Simpson.  New York:  The Free Press.