Conclusion
Sociology 100
“Association itself is also an active factor
productive of special effects. In itself it is
therefore something new.”
Origins of Anomy
• “Such is the source of the excitement predominating in this part of
society, and which has thence extended to the other parts. There,
the state of crisis and anomy is constant and, so to speak, normal.”
(256)
– “The man who has always pinned all his hopes on the future and lived
with his eyes fixed upon it, has nothing in the past as a comfort against
the present’s afflictions, for the past was nothing to him but a series of
hastily experienced stages. [...] Weariness alone, moreover, is enough
to bring disillusionment, for he cannot in the end escape the futility of
an endless pursuit.” (256)
– The doctrine of progress exalts this pursuit, but cannot guard against
the experience of anomy (257)
• “Anomy, therefore, is a regular and specific factor in our modern
societies; one of the springs from which the annual contingent [of
suicides] feeds.” (258)
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Anomy and Suicide
• Anomic suicide thus “results from man’s activity’s lacking regulation
and his consequent sufferings.” (258)
– Typified by disgust or disappointment. Also commonly characterized
by violent recriminations against life in general or a specific person.
(293)
– As egoistic suicide is common among intellectual classes, anomic
suicide is typical of the world of commerce and industry. (258)
– Human beings need regulation & restraint
• Durkheim’s theory on divorce & anomic suicide relies on the belief
that men ‘naturally’ require a greater regulation of their sexuality,
while women have weaker sex urges and thus don’t need it as
much. (259-276)
– This asserts as natural a socially constructed relationship, and is less
useful for our purposes.
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Suicide as Sociological
Phenomenon
• “Here at last we are face to face with real laws,
allowing us to attempt a methodological
classification of types of suicide.” (299)
– “The conclusion from all these facts is that the social
suicide-rate can be explained only sociologically.”
– “This is why there is nothing which cannot serve as an
occasion for suicide. It all depends on the intensity
with which suicidogenic causes have affected the
individual.” (300)
– “No unhappiness in life necessarily causes a man to
kill himself unless he is otherwise so inclined.” (306)
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The Social Fact
• “Not merely are there suicides each year, but there are as a general
rule as many each year as in the year preceding. (308)
– “The state of mind which causes men to kill themselves is not purely
and simply transmitted, but—something much more remarkable—
transmitted to an equal number of persons, all in such situations as to
make the state of mind become an act.”
• “Collective tendencies have an existence of their own; they are
forces as real as cosmic forces, though of another sort; they,
likewise, affect the individual from without, though through other
channels. (309)
– “The proof that the reality of collective tendencies is no less than that
of cosmic forces is that this reality is demonstrated in the same way,
by the uniformity of effects.”
• Science
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The Social Fact
• “Individuals by combining form a psychical
existence of a new species, which consequently
has its own manner of thinking and feeling. (310)
– “Of course the elementary qualities of which the
social fact consists are present in germ in individual
minds. But the social fact emerges from them only
when they have been transformed by association
since it is only then that it appears.”
– “Association itself is also an active factor productive of
special effects. In itself it is therefore something new.”
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The Social Fact
• “When the consciousness of individuals,
instead of remaining isolated, becomes
grouped and combined, something in the
world has been altered. (310-311)
– “Naturally, this change produces others, this
novelty engenders other novelties, phenomena
appear whose characteristic qualities are not
found in the elements composing them.”
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Social Cohesion
• “Religion is in a word the system of symbols by means of
which society becomes conscious of itself; it is the
characteristic way of thinking of collective existence.” (312)
– The social fact of religion gives rise to individual states of mind
that could not have existed without it.
– In understanding religion, it is insufficient to only understand
the individual experience of it, as the social experience must
also be comprehended
• “All we mean by affirming the distinction between the
social and the individual is that the above observations
apply not only to religion, but to laws, morals, customs,
political institutions, pedagogical practices, etc. in a word to
all forms of collective life.” (313)
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Social Cohesion
• “Originally society is everything, the individual nothing. (336)
– “Consequently, the strongest social feelings are those connecting the
individual with the collectivity; society is its own aim.
• “As societies become greater in volume and complexity, individual
differences multiply, and the moment approaches when the only
remaining bond among the members of a single human group will
be that they are all men.
– “Since human personality is the only thing that appeals unanimously
to all hearts, since its enhancement is the only aim that can be
collectively pursued, it inevitably acquires exceptional value in the
eyes of all. It thus rises far above all human aims, assuming a religious
nature.”
– Human rights as ‘religious’
– ‘Religion broadly (functionally) understood
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Social Cohesion
• “Under these conditions suicide must be classified among
immoral acts; for in its main principle it denies the religion
of humanity. (337)
– “Society is injured because the sentiment is offended on which
its most respected moral maxims today rest, a sentiment almost
the only bond between its members, and which would be
weakened if this offense could be committed with impunity.
– “How could this sentiment maintain the least authority if the
moral conscience did not protest its violation? From the
moment that the human person is and must be considered
something sacred, over which neither the individual nor the
group has free disposal, any attack on it must be forbidden.”
– An attack on the ‘religious’ foundations of modern society in the West
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Two Questions
• 1. Should the present state of suicide among be considered
normal or abnormal?
• 2. What attitude ought societies take toward suicide?
– “Now there is no known society where a more or less developed
criminality is not found under different forms. [...] We must
therefore call crime necessary and declare that it cannot be
non-existent, that the fundamental conditions of social
organization, as they are understood, logically imply it.
Consequently, it is normal.” (362)
– “If it is normal that there should be crimes, it is normal that they
should be punished. Punishment and crime are two terms of an
inseparable pair. [...] Every abnormal relaxation of the system of
repression results in stimulating criminality and giving it
abnormal intensity.” (363)
• Biological metaphor & equilibrium
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Two Questions
• “Let us apply these ideas to suicide.” (363)
• Suicide never a matter of indifference to law
• Morality & law may encourage or mandate it (altruistic,
363)
• But societies that elevate the individual human being will
forbid it & work to minimize the suicide rate
– Unless social equilibrium is disturbed (364)
• Too much emphasis on the value of the individual, not enough on that
of society produces a rise in egoistic suicides
• The tumult of progress and the ethic of perfection produces anomy
– “Our excessive tolerance with regard to suicide is due to the fact
that, since the state of mind from which it springs is a general
one, we cannot condemn it without condemning ourselves; we
are too saturated with it not partly to excuse it.” (372)
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Meaning & Suicide
• The altruistic current in society has atrophied as
the egoistic and anomic currents have
strengthened.
– “Thus, the only remedy for the ill [of suicide in the
West] is to restore enough consistency to social
groups for them to obtain a firmer grip on the
individual, and for him to feel himself bound to them.
He must feel himself more solidary with a collective
existence which precedes him in time, which survives
him, and which encompasses him at all points. (373374)
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Meaning & Suicide
• “Life will resume meaning in his eyes, because it
will recover its natural aim and orientation.” (374)
• But what groups could accomplish this?
– Not the state
• Too big to feel solidarity except in emergency (374)
– Not religion
• It can no longer repress & bind thought, and its inability to
do so means that the tide of free inquiry is irresistible (375)
– Not the family
• It has become impermanent due to divorce and mobility,
and besides, no longer means what it once did (ancestral
name, honor, lands, reputation, etc.) (376-378)
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A More Integrated Future?
• Besides these societies, “there is one other of which no
mention has yet been made; that of all workers of the
same sort, in association, all who cooperate in the
same function, that is, the occupational group or
corporation.” (378)
• Permanent
• Ever-present
• Life-encompassing
– Guilds
• Requires a basic reorganization of society
– SPOILER ALERT:
• This never happens, but the point is that this is what Durkheim
thinks is missing from modern society in the West
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