Theory : Émile Durkheim

1. Theory:Émile Durkheim “A society can neither create itself nor recreate itself without at the same time creating an ideal.” (Sociology 156)

2. Sacred and Profane • What distinguishes the sacred form the profane is only heterogeneity, but with an important qualifier: “it is absolute.” (38) • “In all the history of human thought there exists no other example of two categories of things so profoundly differentiated or so radically opposed to one another. The traditional opposition of good and bad is nothing beside this, for the good and the bad are only two opposed species of the same class, namely morals [...] while the sacred and profane have always and everywhere been conceived by the human mind as two distinct classes, as two worlds between which there is nothing in common.” (38)

3. Sacred and Profane • “The sacred thing is par excellence that which the profane should not touch, and cannot touch with impunity.” (40) • “This is not equivalent to saying that a being can never pass from one of these worlds into the other : but the manner in which this passage is effected, when it does take place, puts into relief the essential duality of the two kingdoms. In fact, it implies a veritable metamorphosis.” • Rites of passage • “Appropriate ceremonies are felt to bring about this death and re-birth, which are not understood in a merely symbolic sense, but are taken literally. Does this not prove that between the profane being which he was and the religious being which he becomes, there is a break of continuity?” (39)

4. Definition of Religion • “Thus we arrive at the following 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 one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.” (47)

5. The Totem • The totem “is distinguished by the fact that its name is also the name of a determined species of material things with which it believes that it has very particular relations, the nature of which we shall presently describe ; they are especially relations of kinship.” • “The species of things which serves to designate the clan collectively is called its totem. The totem of the clan is also that of each of its members.” (102) • Thus, coats of arms, flags, logos, religious icons all functionally religious.

6. Piacular Rites • “The term piaculum has the advantage that while it suggests the idea of expiation, it also has a much more extended signification. Every misfortune, everything of evil omen, everything that inspires sentiments of sorrow or fear necessitates a piaculum and is therefore called piacular.” (389)

7. Piacular Rites • “During mourning, men injure themselves to prove that they suffer. By all these signs, the characteristic traits of the piacular rites are to be recognized.” • “But how are they to be explained?” (396) • “One initial fact is constant : mourning is not the spontaneous expression of individual emotions.” (397) • “it may be that in certain particular cases, the chagrin expressed is really felt. But it is more generally the case that there is no connection between the sentiments felt and the gestures made by the actors in the rite.” • Mourning is not a natural movement of private feelings wounded by a cruel loss; it is a duty imposed by the group. One weeps, not simply because he is sad, but because he is forced to weep.” • “It is a ritual attitude which he is forced to adopt out of respect for custom, but which is, in a large measure, independent of his affective state. Moreover, this obligation is sanctioned by mythical or social penalties.” (397)

8. Piacular Rites • The “mythical explanations express the idea which the native has of the rite, and not the rite itself. So we may set them aside and face the reality which they translate, though disfiguring it in doing so.” • Functionalist • “A common misfortune has the same effects as the approach of a happy event : collective sentiments are renewed which then lead men to seek one another and to assemble together.” • Touch, gather close, embrace • “The affective state in which the group then happens to be only reflects the circumstances through which it is passing.” (399)

9. Piacular Rites • “Not only do the relatives, who are affected the most directly, bring their own personal sorrow to the assembly, but the society exercises a moral pressure over its members, to put their sentiments in harmony with the situation.” (399) • “To allow them to remain indifferent to the blow which has fallen upon it and diminished it, would be equivalent to proclaiming that it does not hold the place in their hearts which is due it; it would be denying itself. A family which allows one of its members to die without being wept for shows by that very fact that it lacks moral unity and cohesion: it abdicates; it renounces its existence.” • Exactly the same with any society • When religious believers fast or mortify themselves, it is not because of their own feelings, “If he is sad, it is primarily because he consents to being sad, and he consents to it in order to affirm his faith.” (400)

10. Piacular Rites • “But this change of the affective state can only be a temporary one, for while the ceremonies of mourning result from it, they also put an end to it. Little by little, they neutralize the very causes which have given rise to them. The foundation of mourning is the impression of a loss which the group feels when it loses one of its members.” • “But this very impression results in bringing individuals together, in putting them into closer relations with one another, in associating them all in the same mental state, and therefore in disengaging a sensation of comfort which compensates the original loss. Since they weep together, they hold to one another and the group is not weakened, in spite of the blow which has fallen upon it.” (401) • Mourning passes when the society is again affirmed

11. Religion as Social Coherent • For Durkheim, religion is not about ideas. He says that believers “feel that the real function of religion is not to make us think, to enrich our knowledge, nor to add to the conceptions which we owe to science others of another origin and another character, but rather, it is to make us act, to aid us to live.” • “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.” (416) • “The first article in every creed is the belief in salvation by faith. But it is hard to see how a mere idea could have this efficacy. An idea is in reality only a part of ourselves ; then how could it confer upon us powers superior to those which we have of our own nature?” (416-17)

12. Religion as Social Coherent • “The cult is not simply a system of signs by which the faith is outwardly translated; it is a collection of the means by which this is created and recreated periodically. Whether it consists in material acts or mental operations, it is always this which is efficacious.” (417) • “Even if the impressions which the faithful feel are not imaginary, still they are in no way privileged intuitions; there is no reason for believing that they inform us better upon the nature of their object than do ordinary sensations upon the nature of bodies and their properties.” (418) • This social experience “is the universal and eternal objective cause of these sensations sui generis out of which religious experience is made, is society. We have shown what moral forces it develops and how it awakens this sentiment of a refuge, of a shield and of a guardian support which attaches the believer to his cult. • “It is that which raises him outside himself ; it is even that which made him. For that which makes a man is the totality of the intellectual property which constitutes civilization, and civilization is the work of society. (418)

13. Religion as Social Coherent • “We have established the fact that the fundamental categories of thought, and consequently of science, are of religious origin.” (418) • “It may be said that nearly all the great social institutions have been born in religion. [...] If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.” (419) • Religion is society’s self-conception, and creates the social ideal that creates solidarity in shared striving toward it (420) • “Now these aspirations have their roots in us; they come from the very depths of our being; then there is nothing outside of us which can account for them. Moreover, they are already religious in themselves; thus it would seem that the ideal society presupposes religion, far from being able to explain it.” (420)

14. Religion as Social Coherent • “The formation of the ideal world is therefore not an irreducible fact which escapes science; it depends upon conditions which observation can touch; it is a natural product of social life. • “For a society to become conscious of itself and maintain at the necessary degree of intensity the sentiments which it thus attains, it must assemble and concentrate itself.” • “A society can neither create itself nor recreate itself without at the same time creating an ideal.” • “The ideal society is not outside of the real society ; it is a part of it. Far from being divided between them as between two poles which mutually repel each other, we cannot hold to one without holding to the other.” (422) • Religion is society thinking of itself

15. Religion as Social Coherent • “Thus the collective ideal which religion expresses is far from being due to a vague innate power of the individual, but it is rather at the school of collective life that the individual has learned to idealize.” (423) • “We are now able to appreciate the value of the radical individualism which would make religion something purely individual: it misunderstands the fundamental conditions of the religious life.” • “A philosophy may well be elaborated in the silence of the interior imagination, but not so a faith. For before all else, a faith is warmth, life, enthusiasm, the exaltation of the whole mental life, the raising of the individual above himself. Now how could he add to the energies which he possesses without going outside himself?” (425)

16. Religion as Social Coherent • “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.” • “If we find a little difficulty to-day in imagining what these feasts and ceremonies of the future could consist in, it is because we are going through a stage of transition and moral mediocrity.” • “The great things of the past which filled our fathers with enthusiasm do not excite the same ardour in us, either because they have come into common usage to such an extent that we are unconscious of them, or else because they no longer answer to our actual aspirations ; but as yet there is nothing to replace them.” (427)

17. Religion as Social Coherent • “But this state of incertitude and confused agitation cannot last for ever. A day will come when our societies will know again those hours of creative effervescence, in the course of which new ideas arise and new formulae are found which serve for a while as a guide to humanity.” (427-28) • The French Revolution ushered in a new set of rites and ceremonies, and though they faded with the revolutionary faith, this project “enables us to imagine what might have happened in other conditions ; and everything leads us to believe that it will be taken up again sooner or later. There are no gospels which are immortal, but neither is there any reason for believing that humanity is incapable of inventing new ones.” (428)