Emile Durkheim: How is social order possible?

If we turn to the classical period of sociology in France, the preeminent figure by far is Emile Durkheim (1858-1917). For a period of about twenty years, Durkheim occupied the chair of sociology at the Sorbonne which had been specially created for him. He not only shaped French sociology in a decisive way during this period, but was a very important figure in French intellectual and even political life, far beyond the limits of the discipline of sociology. He actively participated in the major intellectual and political crises of France during that period. This was a period of considerable political turmoil, that of the Third Republic, in which France was clearly divided into two political camps, the Left and the Right. The former represented the ongoing faith in the ideals of the Revolution, the latter the continuing conservative resistance to it.

Durkheim was very clearly identified with the Left, though it must be emphasized that at that time this did not as yet have the socialist connotation which this term would have today – Left meant republican, progressive, anti-clerical. The conflict came to a head during Durkheim’s lifetime during the famous Dreyfus affair, which seemed to split France right down the middle. Durkheim, as a Jew (he was a descendant of a long line of Alsatian rabbis), felt this conflict even more sharply than did others. When the conflict ended with a clear victory for the Left, ratified in the separation of church and state of 1905, Durkheim became an important figure in government circles as well as in academic ones. When, after 1905, religious instruction was banished from the government schools, Durkheim was called upon to form a commission which was to investigate the following question: How was one to instruct children in morality in the absence of traditional religious instruction? Durkheim strongly felt that sociology would have an important answer to this question, and indeed succeeded in establishing sociology as an important discipline in the curriculum. In other words, sociology became a kind of secular catechism (not too dissimilar from what, in American secondary-school education, is known as civics). It is not difficult here to see the continuation of the Comtean concern. Sociology, to be sure, was conceived of as a science, but it was also more than a science: it was part of a secular, humanistic creed which, it was believed, would have direct and important consequences for morality and politics.

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