And now, something to bore you all...
David C. White
Dr. Anthony Mansueto
Silk Roads and Silicon Superhighways
February 14, 2010
Analysis Paper One
Elementary Forms of Religious Life by Emile Durkheim
Emile Durkheim began his work during a particularly tumultuous time in French history although it might be difficult to find a time in French history that was not particularly tumultuous. However, the 1870’s, when Durkheim was writing, saw extraordinary change sweep over French society. The French had just suffered a humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War at the hands of the rapidly coalescing German Second Reich. The working classes of Paris had revolted against the newly instituted Third Republic and briefly attempted the creation of a radically socialist government known as the Paris Commune. This experiment in radical socialism was short-lived before the Third Republic successfully stamped out the revolt.
Durkheim was a supporter of the Third Republic, the first truly secular democracy in France. As a French Jew he knew the difficult relationship French society had had with religion and with religious minorities in particular. The sixteenth century had seen the nation torn asunder by the French Wars of Religion. The minority Protestant Huguenots, after achieving control of the French throne had established the precedent of religious tolerance with the Edict of Nantes. The French Revolution of 1789 and the cult of reason that followed attempted to decisively secularize French society even going so far as renaming the Cathedral of Notre Dame the Temple of Reason and persecuting the Catholic Church. The pendulum swung the other way when Napoleon Bonaparte restored the Catholic faith for both political expediency and social cohesion.
Durkheim himself witnessed the anti-Semitic frenzy that surrounded the Dreyfus Affair in the 1890’s when a prominent Jewish military officer was falsely accused of betraying military secrets to Germany. Durkheim, a committed secularist and supporter of the Third Republic had seen firsthand the troubled relationship France had had with organized religion and with religious minorities. It was in this context that Durkheim began to study the problem of how to define a moral philosophy in a secular society.
Moral philosophies throughout human history had most often originated from cultural religious traditions. Durkheim, in his 1911 work Elementary Forms of Religious Life, began a thorough study of religion in order to answer a couple of perplexing questions. One, what was the cause of the growing suicide rate in France? Secondly, in a truly secular society how does one attain transcendental meaning? And finally, why does cultural effervescence happen when and the way it does?
Durkheim began his study by researching the traditions of some of the oldest religious traditions on Earth, especially the totemic rituals of Australia’s native aborigines. It was Durkheim’s contention that the fundamental truths about the nature of totemic religion would be consistent with the fundamental truths of all religions. Durkheim found that aboriginal religion was totemic in nature meaning that the belief construct was a collective representation of society. Totemic religion is highly liturgical and ritualistic. These rituals sought to recreate a phenomenon Durkheim termed cultural effervescence. Cultural effervescence are moments in history when society seems to act as a unified whole toward one goal in one accord yet in a way that is spontaneous and often non-hierarchical in structure.
In attempting to discover why cultural effervescence happened when and where it does many sociologists had attempted a rational approach to the question. Durkheim believed this approach to studying religion and cultural effervescence was flawed. His argument was that religion could not be analyzed scientifically because religion itself is not about thought or conceptions of knowledge. Religion is an organic structure of action and in his words something “to aid us to live.” Durkheim, despite being a committed secularist, presupposed a transcendental aspect to religion that could not be explained through logical analysis. Durkheim held that in attempting to study the basics of any religion one must give great attention to the metaphysical properties of ideas.
Durkheim paid great respect to the legitimacy of cultural effervescence. His thesis rested on the principle that “the unanimous sentiment of the believers of all times cannot be purely illusory.” The tie between religion and society was a reciprocal. Society must always be in action and to be in action society must act in common and religion was the conduit, in Durkheim’s view, that allowed society to work in common to gain consciousness of itself. He believed that all areas of human thought, including scientific thought originated in religion. Durkheim even went as far as to say that all the great social institutions of society originated in religious institutions. In Durkheim’s words “the idea of society is the soul of religion.”
Despite being a rational sociologist Durkheim left plenty of room for mysticism in his analysis of religion’s role in society. He called this “mystic mechanics.” Durkheim warned social theorists not to discount transcendentalism and mysticism in the study of religion. In his view there were some aspects of religion that could never be explained away with logical syllogisms and rational diagrams.
Durkheim also believed it was helpful to study religion because society is made in religion’s image. These reflections were holistic. Both positive and negative characteristics of religion were reflected in society. Religion clarifies and systemizes the goals and dreams of society at large. Religion presents an avenue for men to come into contact with the sacred which Durkheim defined as “something added to and above the real.” Without contact with the sacred men’s lives become meaningless leading to nihilism, self-annihilation and ultimately self-destruction in the form of suicide. With the death of the individual comes the death of the society because Durkheim says all societies need an ideal that helps form its idea of itself.
Religion, in Durkheim’s view, is therefore essential to the survival of society. It is not something to be swept away into the dust bin of history or mythology. Religion is the origin of collective effervescence and allows societies to act in common. It allows men to act. Durkheim was certainly aware of the destructive forces of religion in society. But he believed that the state could harness the positive benefits of religion to bring meaning to civilization and serve as a support for progress.
