Durkheim's Work

Reading on "Durkheim’s Work"

The comparing with Marx and Weber:

Comparing to Marx, and Weber, Durkheim’s work was the least directly involved on a personal level in the great political events of this time, his works are wholly academic in character, more concentred and his theoretical outlooks are more homogeneous and easy to specify than those moulding he work of the other two.

Influences on Durkheim’s
Intellectual position come from French intellectual traditions, with overlapping interpretations which Saint Simon and Comet offered of the decline of feudalism and the emergence of the modern form of society constitute the principal foundation fro the whole of Durkheim’s writing. The main theme of Durkheim’s work is o reconciliation of Comet’s conception of the positive stage of society with Saint-Simon’s partly variant exposition of the characteristics of industrialism.

The notion that society forms an integrated unity which is in some sense comparable to that of a loving organism is one which can be traced back to classical social philosophy. The publication of Darwin’s theory of biological evolution gave an entirely new stimulus to the elaboration of organicist theories.

1885 – 1887, Durkheim’s critical discussion of the work of Schaffle, and lilienfeld and other German social thinkers.


1. One of Schaffles’s the most important contributions, according to Durkheim, is to have outlined a useful morphological analysis of the principal structural components of different forms of society. But Schaffle does not attempt in a direct sense to deduce the properties of social organisation from those of organic life, he insists that the use of biological concepts represents nothing more than a metaphor which can facilitate sociological analysis. Schaffle pointes out that there exists a radical and highly significant discrepancy between life of the animal organism and that of life. Whereas the life of the animal organism is governed mechanically, society is bound together not by a material relation, but by the ties of ideas. The notion of “society as the ideal” is the Schaffle’s main thought. “Society is not simply an aggregate of individuals, but is a being which has existed prior to them more than they influence it, and which has its won life, consciousness, its own interests and destiny.” Schaffle rejects the Rousseau’s hypothetical ‘isolated individual, on the contrary, everything that makes human life higher than the level of animal existence is derived from the accumulated cultural and technological wealth of society. Durkheim continues this line of thought, and treats “collective consciousness” as a composite, the elements of which are individual minds.

2. Differing from the orthodox economic standpoints, which is built upon individualist utilitarianism, that says the main laws of economics would be exactly the same even if neither nations nor states had existed in the word, they suppose only the presence of individuals who exchanges their products, two German economists, Wagner and Schmoller argues that society is a unity having its own specific characteristics which cannot be inferred from those of its individuals members, the organisations of relationships has properties of its own. Therefore, Schmoller shows that economic phenomena cannot be adequately studied in the manner of classical economic theory, as if these were separate from the moral norms and beliefs which govern the life of individuals in society.

3. Durkheim in his “the division of labour” clearly stated that there is no society where economic relationships are not subject to customary and legal regulation, that is to say, a contract is not sufficient unto itself. If it were not for the existence of social norms which provide the framework within which contracts are made, then ‘incoherent chaos’ would reign in the economic world. The regulations which control economic life cannot be explained purely in economic term.

Contrary to the traditional deductive system approach, German scholars have shown the moral rules and actions can and must be studies scientifically, as properties of social organisations. Durkheim affirms that the study of social life must begin with reality, which means the study of concrete forms of moral rules comprised within definite societies. Moral rules are shaped by society, under the pressure of collective needs.

The Rule of Religion

Wundt’s Ethik, Durkheim points out that Wundt’s primary contribution is to have shown the basic significance of religious institutions in society. Durkheim accepts his position of that “religious is a force making for social unity.” Religious is the set of metaphysical speculations on the nature and order of thins, and rules of conduct and moral discipline on the other.

In primitive societies, religion is a strong source of altruism: religious beliefs and practices have the effect of restraining egoism, of inclining man towards sacrifice and disinerestedness. Religious sentiments attach man to something other than himself, and make him dependent upon superior powers which symbolise the ideal. Individualism is the product of society development.

Durkheim points out that the dual character of the regulative effect of religious and other moral rules. The positive attraction to an ideal or set of ideals; constraint, or obligation, the pursuit of moral ends is not always inevitably founded upon the positive valence of ideal.

The Division of Labour

Without accepting the allegation of “wholesale ideas from German”, Durkheim presents the following views

• The importance of ideals and moral unity in the continuity of society


• The significance of the individual as an active agent as well as a passive recipient of social influence.


• The dual nature of the attachment of the individual to society, as involving both obligation and positive commitment to ideals


• The concept of an organisation of units, theory of anomie.

Those are rudiments of his later theory of religion.

The main proposition developed in The division of labour is that modern society is not, in spite of the declining significance of traditional moral beliefs, inevitably tending towards disintegration. It is a normal state of the differentiated division of labour in organic stability.

The main substantive problem of his concern in The division of labour is the relationship between individual and society. On the one hand, the development of modern society is associated with the expansion of individualism; on the other hand, there are other contradictory moral trends “universally developed individual” which are also strong. To understand of source of these apparently contradictory moral ideals, Durkheim suggests that one has to analysis the causes and effects of the expansion of the division of labour.

The cause of expansion of division of labour:

Division of labour is not a new phenomenon, nor does it happen only in economic sphere, but also in all sectors of contemporary societies, and all other areas of social life. The increase of social differentiation which is characteristic of the process of development from tradition to modern forms of society can b compared to certain biological principles. The more specialised the functions of the organism, the higher its level on the evolutionary scale. Durkheim applies this into the development of the division of labour and its relationship to the moral order.

While social solidarity is not easy to measure by internal fact, we can use external index to symbolise it. The legal code is an index can be used. When a stable form of social life exists, moral rules eventually come to be codified in the shape of law. The function of law is to define as a rule of conduct which is sanctioned, and there are two types of “sanction” :- 1) repressive sanction, which is in penal law, consist in the imposition of some kind of suffering upon the individual as a punishment for his transgression.; 2) restitutive sanction, involves restoration, the re-establishment of relationships as the were before the law was violated.

Penal law is to say there is punishment, while civil law is to say there is duty.

The predominance of penal law within the juridical system of a given society necessarily presupposes the existence of a strong defined conscious collective, of beliefs and sentiments shared in common by the members of the society.
Punishment consists above all in an emotive response to a transgression, not only confined to the guilty, but also to those who are closely connected to the guilty party. The primary function of punishment is to protect and reaffirm the conscience collective in the face of acts which question its sanctity. In the most primitive forms of society all law is repressive.
Society which is based on mechanical solidarity have an aggregate or segmental structure, they consist of social groups are very similar to each other in their internal organisation. The society is dominated by the existence of a strongly formed set of sentiments and beliefs shared by all members of the community; there is little scope of differentiation between individuals.

The progressive displacement of repressive by the restitutive law is an historical trend which is correlated with the degree of development of society. The higher level of social development, the greater the relative proportion of restitutive laws within the juridical structure. The very existence of restitutive law presupposes the prevalence of a differentiated division of labour, since it covers the rights of individuals, either over private property, or over other individuals who are in a different social position from themselves.

The second type of social cohesion is ‘organic solidarity’. Here solidarity stems from the functional interdependence in the division of labour, unlike mechanical solidarity, where the collective consciousness is the basis of societal cohesion, presupposes not identity but difference between individuals in their beliefs and actions. The growth of organic solidarity and the expansion of the division of labour are hence associated with increasing individualism.

Melancholy suicide increasing shows that in contemporary societies that societal differentiation does not inevitably produce an increase in the general level of happiness. We do know however that the development of the division of labour goes hand in hand with disintegration of the segmental type of social structure. For this happen, the new relationship is formed to bring separate groups into contact, this differing modes of life and belief of such societies, breaks down the once isolated homogeneity of each group, stimulates economic and cultural exchanges. Division of labour thus increases as there are more individuals sufficiently in contact to be able to act and react upon one to another. Durkheim calls the frequency of such contact moral or dynamic density.

Individualism and anomie

The growth of division of labour is not inevitably associated with increasing of individualism that is with disruption in social cohesion, what explains the conflicts in modern society? Though facing difficult, Durkheim offered explanation as such: “that division of economic functions has temporarily outstripped the development of appropriate moral regulation.” The modern state is an anomic state. Durkheim suggested “the forced division of labour provides the functioning of organic solidarity”. The conflicts can be obviated only if the division of labour is coordinated with the distribution of talents and capacities, and if the higher occupational positions are not monopolised by a privileged class.