Sociology 303
Sociological Theory
Fall 2003
Dr. Scott Schaffer

Week 11 Discussion Questions – Durkheim, Religion, and Moral Codes (OMS pp. 147-end)

Due Date: Thurs Nov 6/2003 for discussion in class.

Below are four statements that Durkheim has made with regard to the relationship between the division of labor, social solidarity, and the moral code, and social balance itself. Your task is to figure out how he develops the argument to support these statements or the importance of these statements for his overall argument, keeping track of page numbers and passages to support those claims and figuring out how this evidence supports the argument. Also, be sure to discuss how these quotes relate to the Berlin essays on the issues of freedom.

1. “Not only is individualism not anarchical, but it henceforth is the only system of beliefs which can ensure the moral unity of the country. … Now everything converges in the belief that this religion of humanity, of which the individualistic ethic is the rational expression, is the only one possible. … Thus, we make our way, little by little, toward a state, nearly achieved as of now, where the members of a single social group will have nothing in common among themselves except their humanity, except the constitutive attributes of the human person (personne humaine) in general.” (pp. 50-51)

2. “In so far as societies do not reach certain dimensions nor a certain degree of concentration, the only psychic life which may be truly developed is that which is common to all the members of the group, which is found identical in each. But, as societies become more vast and, particularly, more condensed, a psychic life of a new sort appears. Individual diversities, at first lost and confused amidst the mass of social likenesses, become disengaged, become conspicuous, and multiply. … Particular personalities become constituted, take conscience of themselves. Moreover, this growth of psychic life in the individual does not obliterate the psychic life of society, but only transforms it. It becomes freer, more extensive, and as it has, after all, no other bases than individual consciences, these extend, become complex, and thus become flexible.” (p. 131)

3. “To be a person is to be an autonomous source of action. Man acquires this quality only in so far as there is something in him which is his alone and which individualizes him, as he is something more than a simple incarnation of the generic type of his race and his group. It will be said that he is endowed with free will and that is enough to establish his personality. But although there may be some of this liberty in him, an object of so many discussions, it is not this metaphysical, impersonal, invariable attribute which can serve as the unique basis for concrete personality, which is empirical and variable with individuals.” (pp. 140-41)

4. “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.” (p. 201)