Some Quotable Quotes from Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

The Two Ideal Types in The Division of Labor in Society

I. Initial Condition Mechanical Solidarity
A) Tribal Segmental Societies (i.e., the horde, clan, etc.)
- Based on Similarity
B) External Index Repressive Sanctions (penal law)
C) Strong Collective Conscience (weak personal conscience)
- Volume: Virtually all members affected
- Intensity: Believed with general fervor
- Rigidity: Clearly defined; concrete and specific; tradition
- Content: Explicitly religious
D) Morality Privileges the good of society
E) Analogous to Spencers militant societies and Tonnies
Gemeinschaft
[see Herbert Spencer, The Study of Sociology (1891) and
Ferninand Tonnies, Community and Society (1887)]
** Independent Variable Increased Dynamic/Moral Density
A) A product of increased material density (intra-societal
relations) and social volume (population size)
B) Generates (via Darwinian mechanisms) the division of labor.
II. Dependent Variable Organic Solidarity
A) Modern Organized Societies
B) Bases on Difference
C) External Index Restitutive Sanctions (civil, commercial,
administrative, constitutional law)
D) Weakened Collective Conscience (strengthened personal
conscience)
- Volume: More limited in the members affected
- Intensity: Adherent to with less fervor
- Rigidity: Inchoately defined; abstract and general; conscience
- Content: Increasingly secular; moral individualism.
E) Morality Privileges the rights of the individual (i.e., the cult of
the individual)
F) Analogous to Spencers industrial societies and Tonnies
Gesellschaft
The Moral Problem of Organic Solidarity
Profound changes have occurred in the structure of our societies in a
very short time. They have become free from the mechanical type
with a rapidity and in proportions that are without historical parallel.

As a result, the morality which corresponds to that social type has

regressed, but without the other developing fast enough to fill the
ground the first left vacant in our consciences. Our faith has been
disturbed; traditions has lost its sway; individual judgment has
become free of collective judgment. But on the other hand, the
functions that have been dissociated in the curse of the upheaval
have not had the time to adjust to one another, the new life that has
emerged as if suddenly has not been able to become completely
organized, and above all it has not been organized in such a way as to
satisfy the need for justice that has become more intense in our
hearts.
- The Division or Labor in Society
(1893)
The Individual and the Force of Society
At any given moment the moral constitution of society established the
contingent of voluntary deaths. There is, therefore, for each people a
collective force of a definite amount of energy, impelling men to selfdestruction. The victims act which at first seem to express only his
personal temperament are really the supplement and prolongation of
a social condition which they express externally.
- Suicide
(1897)
The Divinization of Society
So if it [the totem] is at once the symbol of the god and of the society,
is that not because the god and the society are only one? How could
the emblem of the group have been able to become the figure of this
quasi-divinity, if the group and the divinity were two distinct realities?
The god of the clan, the totemic principle, can therefore be nothing
else than the clan itself, personified and represented to the
imagination under the visible form of the animal or vegetable which
serves as totem.
- The Elementary Forms of the Religious
Life (1912)
The Moral Authority of Society:
Since it [society] has a nature which is peculiar to itself and different
from our individual nature, it pursues ends which are likewise special
to it; but, as it cannot attain them except through our intermediacy, it
imperiously demands our aid. It requires that, forgetful of our
interests, we make ourselves its servitors, and it submits us to every
sort of inconvenience, privation and sacrifice, without which social life
would be impossible. It is because of this that at every instant we are
obliged to submit ourselves to rules of conduct and of though which
we have neither made nor desired, and which are sometimes even
contrary to our most fundamental inclinations and instincts the
empire which it holds over consciences is due much less to the

physical supremacy of which it has the privilege than to the moral

authority with which it is invested. If we yield to its orders, it is not
merely because it is strong enough to triumph over our resistance; it
is primarily because it is the object of a venerable respect.
- The Elementary Forms of the Religious
Life (1912)
Social Solidarity ad the Efficacy of Religious Rituals:
Of course men would be able to live without gods, but, on the other
hand, the gods would die if their cult [i.e., rituals] were not rendered
it is not the material oblations which bring about this regeneration by
their own virtues; it is the mental states which these actions, though
vain in themselves, accompany or reawaken. The real reason for the
existence of cults, even of those which are the most materialistic in
appearance, is not to be sough in the acts which they prescribe, but in
the internal and moral regeneration which these acts aid in bringing
about. The things which the worshipper really gives his gods are not
the foods which he places upon the altars, nor the blood which he lets
flow from his veins: it is his thought.
- The Elementary Forms of the Religious
Life (1912)
The Hope of New Social Forms in Religion:
In short, the former gods are growing old or dying, and others have
not been born. This is what voided Comtes attempt to organize a
religion using old historical memories, artificially revived. It is life
itself, and not a dead past, that can produce a living cult. But the
state of uncertainty and confused anxiety cannot last forever. A day
will come when our societies once again will know hours or creative
effervescence during which new ideals will again spring forth and new
formulas emerge to guide humanity.
- The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
(1912)