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    Philosopher's View On Religion: Émile Durkheim

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    Émile Durkheim was a founder of sociology who argued that society is the primary actor in human life rather than individuals. He studied religion and believed the most basic form was totemism, in which Australian tribes worshipped symbols like animals and plants that represented their society. Durkheim concluded that the sacred quality found in religious objects and rituals originated not from the objects themselves but from representing society as a whole. He saw religion as serving a social function of reinforcing societal cohesion and values.

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    Philosopher's View On Religion: Émile Durkheim

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    iMaibelle Belle
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    Émile Durkheim was a founder of sociology who argued that society is the primary actor in human life rather than individuals. He studied religion and believed the most basic form was totemism, in which Australian tribes worshipped symbols like animals and plants that represented their society. Durkheim concluded that the sacred quality found in religious objects and rituals originated not from the objects themselves but from representing society as a whole. He saw religion as serving a social function of reinforcing societal cohesion and values.

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    Émile Durkheim was a founder of sociology who argued that society is the primary actor in human life rather than individuals. He studied religion and believed the most basic form was totemism, in which Australian tribes worshipped symbols like animals and plants that represented their society. Durkheim concluded that the sacred quality found in religious objects and rituals originated not from the objects themselves but from representing society as a whole. He saw religion as serving a social function of reinforcing societal cohesion and values.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    96 views21 pages

    Philosopher's View On Religion: Émile Durkheim

    Uploaded by

    iMaibelle Belle
    Émile Durkheim was a founder of sociology who argued that society is the primary actor in human life rather than individuals. He studied religion and believed the most basic form was totemism, in which Australian tribes worshipped symbols like animals and plants that represented their society. Durkheim concluded that the sacred quality found in religious objects and rituals originated not from the objects themselves but from representing society as a whole. He saw religion as serving a social function of reinforcing societal cohesion and values.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Download as pdf or txt
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    The key takeaways are that Durkheim viewed society as the primary actor in human life and the origins of religion. He believed that religion originated from society and served to unite individuals under shared symbols and values.

    Durkheim argued that religion originated from society and served to unite individuals under shared symbols and values. He believed that the totem, or clan symbol, represented society and was sacred due to its central role in clan gatherings and the taboos surrounding it. The totem unified the clan by allowing them to think of and worship themselves as a group.

    Durkheim defined the sacred as things that pertain to society as a whole, like the clan totem. The totem was sacred because of its central place in clan gatherings and the taboos surrounding it.

    Philosopher’s View on Religion

    Émile Durkheim
    “Society’s Mirror”
    PHI 100
    PREPARED BY: JOVANI D. TUBIONA
    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality
    2
    Émile Durkheim
    Society’s Mirror
    (1858-1917)
    Émile Durkheim 3
    (1858-1917)

    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality


    Society’s Mirror

    ► Scope:
    ► É mile Durkheim (1858–1917), like Auguste Comte, is sometimes regarded as the
    founder of sociology. In contrast to Comte and Marx, who analyzed society as a
    system within which individuals thought and acted, Durkheim came to see society
    as an actor in its own right, producing effects that could not be explained solely in
    reference to individuals. In fact, he reversed the usual understanding and claimed
    that society is the primary actor in human life, and much of what individuals do
    and believe is derived from the life of society as a whole, not vice versa.
    Émile Durkheim 4
    (1858-1917)

    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality


    Society’s Mirror

    ”Society is the primary actor in human life.”


    Émile Durkheim 5
    (1858-1917)

    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality


    Society’s Mirror

    ► Using materials describing life among Australian tribal cultures, Durkheim


    believed he found the most basic form of religion: the worship of totems during
    tribal gatherings. He believed that the totem was a symbol for society itself, and
    the means by which society envisioned itself and imposed its exigencies on its
    individual members.
    Émile Durkheim 6
    (1858-1917)

    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality


    Society’s Mirror

    Totem Pole from Tlingit Australian Aborigines


    and Haida tribes.
    Émile Durkheim 7
    (1858-1917)
    Society’s Mirror

    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality


    ► Outline
    1. É mile Durkheim was one of the founders of the academic discipline of sociology.
    A. He took interest in all aspects of society and found social factors at work in the most
    private phenomena. An early study of suicide showed that some external social factors
    were involved in the decision to end one’s life.
    B. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, a study of religion, is Durkheim’s magnum
    opus. The book outlines a sociological theory of religion based on ethnographic material
    about aboriginal tribes in Australia.
    Émile Durkheim 8
    (1858-1917)
    Society’s Mirror

    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality


    II. Durkheim was not satisfied with previous theories of religion because they focused
    attention only on individuals, paid no attention to the social factors of religion, and
    failed to account for religious behavior.
    A. He addressed this concern in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.
    B. He noted that in religious situations, people acted in specific ways with regard to their
    community and ritual objects.
    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality
    9
    Émile Durkheim
    Society’s Mirror
    (1858-1917)
    Émile Durkheim 10
    (1858-1917)
    Society’s Mirror

    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality


    C. Previous definitions of religion as the belief in supernatural powers personifying
    natural phenomena (naturism) or the belief in detached spirits (animism) did not
    adequately explain this behavior.
    1. Many of the objects of totemic religion, such as cockatoos or certain plants, were not
    frightening or even hunted as game. This contradicted the theory that the first impetus for
    religious reflection was the human encounter with the terrors of nature.
    2. Both naturism and animism presented religion as bad science that gave false knowledge
    and could not account for the power and durability of religion. Durkheim denied that
    religion was false in the ordinary sense.
    D. Durkheim noted that religious behavior was first of all a social behavior and so
    must have a social basis.
    Émile Durkheim 11
    (1858-1917)

    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality


    Society’s Mirror

    Animism - ”religion of spirits”


    Naturism – religion bound in
    perception
    Émile Durkheim 12
    (1858-1917)
    Society’s Mirror

    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality


    E. He identified the basis of religion as a way of looking at reality that dichotomized
    it into the sacred and the profane.
    1. The “sacred” was a quality found in things that represented the values and motivations
    of society in toto.
    2. The “profane” elicited behaviors that were directed at purely private ends, with no
    reference to the values and needs of society.
    3. The two constituted a radical dichotomy: if something was sacred, then it was not
    profane, and vice versa.
    F. Durkheim declared religion “an eminently social thing.”
    Émile Durkheim 13
    (1858-1917)
    Society’s Mirror

    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality


    III. Durkheim’s procedure was to find out how “the sacred” operated in the simplest
    form of religion known in his day: totemism.
    A. Totemism referred to both a form of religion and a form of social organization.
    1. Within large tribes, one found smaller subdivisions. Each tribe had its own
    totem animal or plant that gave the tribe its identity and served as an idol.
    2. Individuals were known by their clan. The clan totem formed the focal point of
    worship.
    Émile Durkheim 14
    (1858-1917)
    Society’s Mirror

    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality


    B. Totem plants and animals lacked majesty or utility, yet they were treated as sacred.
    1. Fieldworkers noted that totems, with their own unique taboos, demanded respect and
    avoidance in specific ways.
    2. Totems served as focal points in religious rituals.
    3. Totems identified clan and sub-clan groups (e.g., the cockatoo clan).
    Émile Durkheim 15
    (1858-1917)
    Society’s Mirror

    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality


    C. Durkheim sought to explain that this quality of the sacred could not be found in
    any particular thing in the world.
    1. If a cockatoo was sacred to the cockatoo clan, no individual cockatoo contained this
    quality.
    2. No particular realistic depiction of a cockatoo was sacred in and of itself.
    3. Primitive societies used free-floating words to indicate sacredness.
    4. Durkheim described the sacredness of things in clan-based societies as the “totemic
    principle,” a quality that did not inhere in things but could be imputed to them in specific
    situations.
    Émile Durkheim 16
    (1858-1917)
    Society’s Mirror

    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality


    D. This analysis led Durkheim to search elsewhere for the source of the totemic
    principle and its sacred power.
    1. Through a chain of equivalences, he came to identify the totemic principle with society
    itself.
    2. He established that the sacred was found in things that pertained to society as a whole.
    3. He showed that the clan totem was sacred due to the central place it held in clan
    gatherings and the taboos that surrounded it.
    Émile Durkheim 17
    (1858-1917)
    Society’s Mirror

    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality


    4. He saw the totem as a symbol of society itself, serving as a unifying symbol by
    which the clan could think of and worship itself. This explains why blasphemy, the
    breaking of taboos or the casual treatment of religious objects, elicits fierce reprisals
    against those who commit it.
    5. Durkheim admired Auguste Comte for his belief that society is a reality that
    exists at its own level and generates its own phenomena that can only be studied
    sociologically. Durkheim turned Comte’s idea of a “religion of the Great Being”
    upside down by asserting that the worship of humanity rather than gods was what
    religion had been doing all through human history.
    Émile Durkheim 18
    (1858-1917)
    Society’s Mirror

    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality


    IV. This social origin of religion came to explain other phenomena as well.
    A. Piacular rites, or rites of repentance and rededication, were meant to reorient
    individuals to their identity as members of a group. When an individual strayed from
    the group’s values (sinned), piacular rites might take the form of confession,
    repentance, and reinstatement.
    B. Even the soul was nothing more than the sum of social identity and values
    injected into the individual—an idea comparable to Freud’s idea of the superego.
    Émile Durkheim 19
    (1858-1917)
    Society’s Mirror

    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality


    V. Durkheim’s theory continues to be widely influential but not above criticism.
    A. It is monocausal, meaning that Durkheim does not claim his theory covers only the social
    aspects of religion but explains religion in toto.
    B. It is a bit circular.
    C. It pays no attention to the actual ideational contents of religion.
    D. It is reductionist, meaning that the theory does not accept that religion is a valid reality in its
    own right but instead sees religions as a function of social processes that should be reduced to
    sociological explanations.
    E. It does not allow for hermits to find a place as an object of study for the scholar of religion.
    F. Its applicability to more advanced societies is questionable.
    G. Its Australian ethnography has been roundly criticized.
    Émile Durkheim 20
    (1858-1917)
    Society’s Mirror

    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality


    VI. These criticisms do not detract from the power of Durkheim’s ideas.

    Suggested Reading:
    ► É mile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.
    Daniel Pals, Eight Theories of Religion.
    J. Samuel Preus, Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud.
    Émile Durkheim 21
    (1858-1917)

    PHI 100 - Religions, Religious Experiences and Spirituality


    Society’s Mirror

    Questions to Consider:
    ► 1. How much understanding does Durkheim’s theory shed on the religion of our
    more complex and multicultural society?

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