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