Durkheim Lecture 4

Nov 6, 2007

Crisis of modern society: a moral crisis, political context of DK’s time:
o Third republic, politically divided into three antagonistic camps
o Conservatives for restoration of monarch, radical socialist fought for revolution against the republic
o DK wanted to develop a secular institutional order for the republic

Main problem is to indentify the possible source of moral crisis in modern society; to identify the structure make up of modern society.

What are the sources of social strife? Lack of regulation.

Part of solution: professional ethnic

Crisis of anomie: state and democracy:
- effort to find solutions to the problems
- How to achieve the dynamic and just society?
- How is social solidarity possible functionally?

Three levels of solution:
1. National- different political camps to swear allegiance to republicanism
2. The social equality in economy and social justice between employees and workers.
3. Educational, restraining the conservative influence of the Catholic Church, secular education to inculcate democratic spirit and individual morality.

Factors to consider:

1. Roles of occupational group, professional ethnic
2. Roles of the state
3. Core value of society- concept of civil religion
4. How do these values being transmitted? Role of education

State: a politically society which is centralized to primitive societies and not well organized.

Political groups are formed by the coming together of a rather large number of secondary groups, subject to the same authority.

Elementary society, according to Sumner,Maine, Fuster de Coulange, is to be an extensive family group made up of all the individuals linked by ties of blood or ties of adoption and placed under the direction of the oldest male ascendant, the patriarch.

The difference between state and political society
- The state is sovereign authority, the agent for society; the state is the highest organ
- Political societies have reached a certain level of complex, they can no longer act collectively save through the interventions of the state.
- State represents the sovereign power, supreme legislative body encompassing all other groups in society.
- The state, however, is not the sum of all political societies, rather a special organ whose reasonability is to work out certain representation which hold good for the collective interests.

(Weber, the state is the only legitimate power to use violence)

We often use “state” not to the instrument of government but the political society as a whole. Since it is to have separate terms for existent things as different as the society and one of its organs, we use “state” more especially to the agents of the sovereign authority and “political society” to the complex group of which the state is the highest organ.

State is different from the administrative bodies, the later are in charge in carrying out change, and the functions are to implement the decision decreed by the state. The difference between the state and the administrative body is clear, just like the difference between the muscular system and the central nervous system.

State is to guide the collective conduct.

The duty of the states to the citizens and vice verse

Two contrasting theories try to give the explanation:

1. Individualistic, expounded and defended by Spence, Kant and Rousseau etc. It exhorts that the purpose of the society is to develop the individuals. And for the sole reason that he is all that there is that is real in society. Kant says that individual has the inborn right, with a moral personality by virtue of which he is endowed with a particular character that calls for respect. The society is to protect and watch over the maintenance of these individual rights.

2. The critique on this theory is that, the sovereign power over individuals is also often lodged in the state. The state, on the strength of the authority, has intervened in fields which by their nature should remain alien to it. It controls religious belief, industry and economy by regulation. This unwarranted spread of its influence can be justified wherever war plays as important part in the life of a people.

3. War has not yet entirely disappeared and there are still threats of international rivalry. So the state, even today still has to preserve a measure of its former prerogative. But the state function has multiplying as society is undergoing the progressive development in the course of evolution. Beside the duty to watch over individual rights. DK suggests that every society has an aim superior to individual aim and unrelated to them. It is state’s duty to carry out its social aim. While individual should be an instrument for putting into efforts to the glory of the society.

Three types of societies with different civic duties are defined by DK in terms of communication between sovereign and society. “They all lie intermediate between two contrasting schemes. At one extreme, the government consciousness is as isolated as possible from the rest of society and has a minimum range “communication between society and political society; government and subjects of governing.”

1. aristocracy
2. democracy
3. monarchy

Democracy is defined as “extension of government consciousness”. The closer communication becomes between government consciousnesses and the rest of society, the more government consciousness including state opinion and awareness expands, and the more democratic the society will be.

DK’s concept of modern state is different from Weber’s.

While Weber conceives state in term of power and territory, for DK, the most important features is integrative function as both “protector of the collective ideal” and “protector of the rights of the individual”

Just like there is no freedom of will without morality; there is no freedom as human right without state.

Function of the state, though vary historically, is external, against violence and aggression; and internal, maintain the peaceful and moral state. “Since malaise of modern world in ultimately moral in nature, state must play a moral as well as economic role.”

Moral role of the state:
1. force of a higher order, capable of containing them and curbing the excesses
2. To keep a rein on inequality and injustice
3. To take account of the general needs being subordinated to individual interest

Patriotism: a sentiment that attaches the individual to a political society.
Nationalism: an extreme form of patriotism. Flags as totem and symbol of power

DK’s concept of modern industrial society:

o It is a normal developing stage as evolutionary universal, neither did he lost hope to achieve social cohesion, like Marx’s predication; nor as "the disenchantment of modern life” as Weber stated.
o Social cohesion is based upon collective sentiment and belief, collective effervescence; to forge cohesion by establishing professional ethnic, civic and moral value, encouraging individuals to participate in rituals and ceremonies.
o Civic religion has replaced the traditional religion as core culture value which defines the social identity of society and specifies the regulating norm for the social integration.
o Moral education is main part of secondary education. The purpose is to enable every child to adapt social environment, to teach students social core values. Thus, the teachers are like priests. (note that the differences from Weber, and Marx)

Vision for future society:

By establishing the core shared social values, DK hoped:
o To overcome economic anomie the modern life.
o To finally achieve the organic solidarity, in the long run, the division of labour will not lead to the decline of morality, but rather the decentralization of social life and differentiated regulation.
o The new form of social collective consciousness will emerge and develop.