French social theorist, who was one of the pioneers in the development of modern sociology. Durkheim was born in France, a descendant of a distinguished line of rabbinical scholars. DURKHEIM grew up and studied to be a rabbi[1] until the age of 13. He then converted to Catholicism. In his later teens he was always interested in Religion. He graduated from the École Normale Supérieure in Paris in 1882 and then taught law and philosophy. In 1887 he began teaching sociology, first at the University of Bordeaux and later at the University of Paris.

He wrote his dissertation on the “division of labor” in 1893. In 1894, he Published “Rules of Sociological Method”. In 1895 , “Suicide: A Study in Sociology” and in 1898, Durkheim founded the first French sociological journal.

The main concern of Durkheimian sociology was no doubt, to heal French society. Destruction of the Paris Commune during Durkheim’s life this was the major event in history. Working class felt betrayed by the aristocracy. He saw his contribution to society in the form of an attempt to find a science of society.  Durkheim was a member of the solidarist movement[2] .Durkheim saw anti-Semitism[3] as a moral illness, which reflected a lack of morality. In 1912 he published his Elementary forms of the religious Life. Durkheim died in 1917 leaving many works and essays unfinished.

Durkheim is also considered as father of structural-functional theory. Durkheim was the first academic sociologist as a sociologist. Durkheim referred to his dedication to the field as a “moral calling.”  Durkheim believed that sociology was absolutely necessary for improving society and for solving the major social problems that confronted France in particular and all modern societies in general.  For Durkheim modern society was in a state of “moral anarchy,” “disunity”, “disorganization,” and “decadence”.  Sociology was to serve as a tool for diagnosing and analyzing social problems or “pathologies” and for finding their solutions or “cures”. By using positivistic scientific methods of defining, observing, comparing, and formulating laws, Durkheim argued, sociology could show how to develop a better society.  In the preface to his first major book, Durkheim wrote:

“Although we set out primarily to study reality, it does not follow that we do not wish to improve it; we should judge our researches to have no worth at all if they were to have only a speculative interest.  If we separate carefully the theoretical from the practical problems, it is not to the neglect of the latter; but on the contrary, to be in better position to solve them.”

Influences on Durkheim

Durkheim’s conception of modern society in a state of “crisis” and as needing a sociological cure, seems to derive from three major phenomena in the French society of Durkheim’s youth.

Firstly, The defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War. In 1870 French war against Prussia and its allied German states culminated in a French defeat, Durkheim’s home town of Epinal was captured and occupied by German troops.  The experience of defeat and occupation had a profound effect on the lives of the members of the Jewish community of that town, including that of young Durkheim. Up until that time, the Jews of eastern France had been treated with almost complete toleration.  With the occupation of Epinal, however, outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence and accusations occurred. By his late teens, he interpreted the attacks on the Jewish community as an occurrence resulting from a widespread lack of moral unity and purpose. 

Secondly, persistent economic and industrial conflicts and problems.  The industrialization of France had occurred very rapidly.  By the time of Durkheim’s youth, there were large populations of factory workers in Paris and a number of other large cities.  Competition between industrial enterprises, as described by Durkheim, was vicious; relationships between employers and employees were antagonistic and, on occasion, violent.  The most extreme violence of this kind occurred toward the end of the Franco-Prussian War, when a large number of workers seized Paris and established a separate egalitarian republic known as the Paris Commune.  The French government ruthlessly crushed the Commune and killed some 60,000 working-class inhabitants.  After these events Durkheim saw relationship between owners and employees as crisis-ridden.  He believed owners were disregarding the workers’ basic needs; consequently, the workers became increasingly attracted to violent revolutionary movements and ideologies.

Thirdly, Military defeat and economic oppositions were combined with political disunity and instability in the France of Durkheim’s youth.  The great French Revolution of 1789, the rise of the dictatorship of Napoleon, and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy after Napoleon’s final military defeat which ended in a revolution in 1848 that established the Second Republic.  Short-lived, the Second Republic was taken over the Emperor Napoleon III, who lost his throne with the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. Durkheim grew up in what was called the Third Republic, which was established after the war. The Third Republic was built on a history of political change and disorder.  There was sharp divisions in the country among the adherents of capitalist democracy, monarchy, and socialism.  Political disputes and disagreements were used by those wishing to place blame for the French defeat, economic conflict, and inflation.  This state of affairs indicated to Durkheim that France had lost the feeling of a common purpose and an underlying moral unity. 

In search of a doctrine that could provide such a common purpose and unity, nineteen-year-old Emile Durkheim left Epinal to continue his education in Paris.

 In order to understand and ultimately to overcome this moral disunity, which he saw pervading modern societies in general, Durkheim turned toward sociology and a scientific analysis of society.

Intellectual Roots

Although he admired and was influenced by a number of his instructors, such as the historian Fustel de Coulanges (1830-1889) and the philosopher Emile Boutroux(1845-1921)[4], Durkheim chose to follow a different intellectual path: that of sociology. 

Although Durkheim borrowed insights and ideas from traditional philosophy and history, he believed that to improve society one first needed to investigate it from a positive scientific, empirical perspective.  The field of study to which he turned was, of course, sociology.

The writings that most influenced him were those of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), and Charles Renouvier (1815-1903).

Kant had been one of the great German moral philosophers.  His interests in demonstrating what actions were necessary for a moral social existence were in harmony with Durkheim’s own. Kant was concerned with age-old problems of morality in society Saint-Simon, one of Comte’s teachers, saw modern society as different from all previous societies. He argued that industrial organization, employment, and relationships increasingly affect the whole of people’s lives. Durkheim accepted this argument and believed that sociology must study social and moral phenomena in terms of the essentially industrial nature of society. 

Apart from these from the French Enlightenment tradition[5], Durkheim incorporated ideas of individualism, individual liberties, specialization, democracy, scientific rationality, and secular social examination.  Combined with these philosophical influences, Durkheim was also influenced by the sociological ideas of Comte and Spencer. Although Durkheim disagreed with aspects of both men’s sociological writings, he nonetheless built on sociological insights from each.  Durkheim believed that Comte’s “religion of humanity” and his focus on “sociological priests” were nonscientific and unacceptable.  Yet Durkheim did borrow from Comte’s ideas about social and moral order, Comte’s focus on both social structure and social change, and Comte’s arguments for the existence of a science of society.

Similarly, Durkheim borrowed selectively from Herbert Spencer’s thought.  He was impressed by Spencer’s conceptions of social evolutionary “societal types” based on increasing size, level of complexity, differentiation, and integration.  Durkheim formulated his own conceptions of “societal types” or “species” in reference to those of Spencer.  On the other hand, Durkheim found Spencer’s emphasis on utilitarian action unacceptable on both moral and scientific grounds.

Additional influences on Durkheim included the writings of Wundt[6] and Renouvier[7].Durkheim claimed that the experimental approach that Wundt showed could be used at the individual level of existence, could also be used at the social level.