On the Necessity of Re-engaging the Classical Greek and Latin Literatures: Lessons from Emile Durkheim’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Evolution of Educational Thought</Emphasis>

Although much overlooked by both sociologists and educators, Emile Durkheim’s The Evolution of Educational Thought (EET; lectures from 1904–1905) not only provides extended insight into the developmental flows and disjunctures of Western education and scholarship from the classical Greek era to Durkheim’s own time but also indicates the fundamentally sociological nature of these transformations. As well, and in contrast to the more heavily structuralist, Cartesian rationalist approach that Durkheim adopts in his earlier, better known works (especially The Division of Labor in Society, Rules of the Sociological Method, and Suicide), Durkheim’s EET may be better characterized as a historically informed, sociological pragmatist approach to the study of education as a humanly engaged process. Given the extended amount of material covered in EET and the necessity of establishing in some detail Durkheim’s position on the development of educational thought over the preceding 2000 years, it has been necessary to divide this material into smaller packages for the purpose of presentation. In the first six chapters of EET Durkheim addresses (a) the Greek and Latin foundations of educational thought in France, (b) the role that the early Christian church assumed in shaping and preserving education and scholarship, and (c) the nature and emphasis of the Carolingian Renaissance (8^th and 9^th centuries), along with its relevance for the development of universities in Europe. Following (1) an introduction to Durkheim’s EET, (2) a synopsis of the first six chapters of EET, and (3) a highly compacted overview of the remaining 21 chapters of this volume, this paper concludes with (4) a commentary on the necessity of attending to the historical development of Western social thought for a sociological analysis of knowing and acting. An epilogue briefly considers (5) some ways that sociologists, classicists, and other students of the human condition may contribute to this exceptionally consequential venture     

Durkheim's Pragmatism Lectures: A Contextual Interpretation

This article attempts to understand Émile Durkheim's 1913–14 lectures on pragmatism and sociology by situating them in the socio-intellectual context of the time. An analysis of books and journal articles from the period reveals that the ideas of the Anglo-American pragmatic philosophers Charles Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and F.C.S. Schiller were very popular in pre-World War I France. The French term le pragmatisme , however, was used to refer not only to the thought of these philosophers, but also to the work of French thinkers, such as Henri Bergson and the Catholic Modernists Maurice Blondel and Édouard Le Roy, who wrote extensively about human action. Pragmatism, because of its associations with Bergsonian spiritualism and the theology of the Modernists, came to have religious connotations for many French intellectuals. Durkheim had a similar understanding of pragmatism and his critique of the pragmatists cannot be fully grasped unless these religious connotations are considered. The article concludes by discussing several implications of this interpretation for sociological theory.     

Durkheim's contribution to the sociological analysis of history

Emile Durkheim has long been viewed as one of the founders of the so-called variables-oriented approach to sociological investigation. This view ignores his considerable achievements using the methodology of “case-based” historical analysis, most prominent among them, his lectures on the history of French education (The Evolution of Educational Thought).In this paper I first outline the intimate relationship that Durkheim envisioned between historical and sociological investigation. I then turn to his work on French education for substantive illustrations of his approach. Finally, I explore certain points of intersection between Durkheim's approach to history and present-day concerns, especially in regard to the role of culture in history and the opposition between prospective and retrospective (“teleological”) strategies of historical analysis.     

Examining Community Life “in the Making”: Emile Durkheim’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Moral Education</Emphasis>

Although often overlooked in sociological circles, Emile Durkheim’s (1902–1903) Moral Education provides an important cornerstone in the quest to understand community life. Not only does Moral Education give a vibrant realism to the sociological venture in ways that Durkheim’s earlier works (1893, 1895, 1897) fail to achieve, but in addressing discipline, devotion, and informed reasoning as humanly engaged, collectively accomplished fields of activity Emile Durkheim also provides an exceptionally consequential baseline analysis of human knowing and acting. Notably as well, focusing on the organizational, intersubjectively achieved features of elementary education, Durkheim’s Moral Education lays bare the interactional nature of the moral order of community life. Indeed, as a sustained analysis of the way of life of a group of people collectively participating in the educational process, this text addresses the most basic features of people’s relations to one another and the broader society in which they find themselves. Much more than an account of childhood socialization, Durkheim’s Moral Education also presages the more thoroughly humanist sociology that Durkheim develops in The Evolution of Educational Thought (1904–1905), The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912) and Pragmatism and Sociology (1913–1914).     

Durkheim and Pragmatism: An Old Twist on a Contemporary Debate

Durkheim's lectures on pragmatism, given in 1913–14, constitute both a significant critique of pragmatism and a clarification of Durkheim's own position. Unfortunately, these lectures have received little attention, most of it critical. When they have been taken seriously, the analysis tends to focus on their historical context and not on the details of Durkheim's actual argument. This is partly because the tendency to interpret Durkheim's theory of knowledge in idealist terms makes a nonsense of his criticisms of pragmatism. It is also due to a lack of serious appraisal of the lectures as a series of arguments in their own right.     

Reconsidering Durkheim's Assessment of Tarde: Formalizing a Tardian Theory of Imitation,Contagion, and Suicide Suggestion

Emile Durkheim summarily rejected Gabriel Tarde's imitation thesis, arguing that sociology need only concern itself with social suicide rates. Over a century later, a burgeoning body of suicide research has challenged Durkheim's claim to a general theory of suicide as 4 decades worth of evidence has firmly established that (1) there is a positive association between the publicization of celebrity suicides and a spike in the aggregate suicide rate, (2) some social environments are conducive to epidemic‐like outbreaks of suicides, and (3) suicidal ideas or behavior spreads to some individuals exposed to a personal role model's suicidal behavior—for example, a friend or family member. Revisiting Tarde, the article examines why Tarde's theory deserves renewed attention, elucidates what he meant by imitation, and then formalizes his “laws” into testable theses, while suggesting future research questions that would advance the study of suicide, as well as other pathologies. Each “law” is elaborated by considering advances in contemporary social psychology as well as in light of its ability to supplement Durkheim's theory in explaining the “outlier” cases.     

The social world as will and idea: Schopenhauer's influence upon Durkheim's thought

The starting-point for this analysis is a remark made by André Lalande. that Durkheim was so enamoured with Schopenhauer's philosophy that his students nicknamed him ‘Schopen’. The intellectual context shared by Schopenhauer and Durkheim is explored, especially with regard to the opposition between the id-like ‘will’ and the mind. Schopenhauer's influence upon Durkheim's contemporaries is examined briefly. Then, this new context for apprehending Durkheim's thought is applied to selected problems in Durkheimian scholarship, problems that have to do with the dualism of human nature, perception, the unconscious and the unity of knowledge relative to the object-subject debate. The implications for sociological theory are also discussed.     

Classical sociology and cosmopolitanism: a critical defence of the social

It is frequently argued that classical sociology, if not sociology as a whole, cannot provide any significant insight into globalization, primarily because its assumptions about the nation-state, national cultures and national societies are no longer relevant to a global world. Sociology cannot consequently contribute to a normative debate about cosmopolitanism, which invites us to consider loyalties and identities that reach beyond the nation-state. My argument considers four principal topics. First, I defend the classical legacy by arguing that classical sociology involved the study of 'the social' not national societies. This argument is illustration by reference to Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons. Secondly, Durkheim specifically developed the notion of a cosmopolitan sociology to challenge the nationalist assumptions of his day. Thirdly, I attempt to develop a critical version of Max Weber's verstehende soziologie to consider the conditions for critical recognition theory in sociology as a necessary precondition of cosmopolitanism. Finally, I consider the limitations of some contemporary versions of global sociology in the example of 'flexible citizenship' to provide an empirical case study of the limitations of globalization processes and 'sociology beyond society'. While many institutions have become global, some cannot make this transition. Hence, we should consider the limitations on as well as the opportunities for cosmopolitan sociology.     

Parsons's Emergent Durkheims

Parsons's training as an economist, his graduate stay at Heidelberg, and his participation in the Henderson seminar at Harvard provide major clues to his familiarity with Marshall, Pareto, and Weber—three of the four figures whose convergence forms the major theoretical achievement in The Structure of Social Action . But what led him to Durkheim, since Parsons did not study or reside in France, yet read Durkheim in the original, remains an enigma. Without resolving the enigma, this paper argues that Parsons had a great deal in common with Durkheim, and, equally important, that in his mature and late periods he found in his 'revisits' of the later writings of Durkheim both inspiration and affinity. I argue that Parsons well deserves recognition as a major authority on Durkheim, and that both combined offer an alternative to the contemporary version of utilitarianism.     

Sorokin as Lifelong Russian Intellectual: The Enactment of an Historically Rooted Sensibility

Prior to his 1922 emigration to Europe and thence to the United States, Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin had an exceptional intellectual and political career in Russia and the Soviet Union (Sorokin 1924, 1963a; Johnston 1995; Krotov 2005). Indeed, he was among the early founders of the science of sociology in his native land, where, according to a relatively recent bibliography (Sorokin 2000), he produced 162 Russian-language publications between the ages of 21 and 33. This listing includes not only book reviews and journal articles, but also substantial monographs and a two-volume theoretical treatise. While still a relatively young man, Sorokin had thus gained widespread recognition as a scholar of the first rank. He was also the initial chairperson (from 1919 to 1922) of a fledgling department of sociology at the University of Petrograd (St. Petersburg), an elected member of the national Constituent Assembly and an appointed staff member of the 1917 Provisional Government, the first democratic regime in Russia. This much would have sufficed for an entry in a sociological encyclopedia, and Sorokin’s political career has few parallels in the history of the field, other than the involvement of Emile Durkheim in French educational policy and the participation of Max Weber in creating the Weimar Republic in Germany. Nevertheless sociologists in the United States and most western historians of the field have not yet appreciated the full influence of the formative period, especially from 1905 to 1922. Lacking familiarity with Russian culture of that era and knowing little about the larger Russian socio-historical milieu, its intellectual discourse and collective memory, they have not been able to comprehend Sorokin’s outlook, behavior and professional output in the United States in relation to these earlier contextual factors. This is arguably a fundamental reason why many U.S. sociologists have tended to see Sorokin, especially since 1937, as a marginal figure and to regard his works largely as deviations from accepted social scientific practice. This paper will argue that a more adequate appreciation of Sorokin’s background and early adult life illumines both stylistic features of his works in America and also places into proper perspective several of his substantive foci that did not accord with contemporary “normal science” (Kuhn 1962). In short, despite his overall assimilation into American society and higher education, including his appointment at Harvard University and his election as president of the American Sociological Association, Sorokin should be understood in large measure as a life-long Russian intellectual. His was a Russian-born sensibility and consciousness—indeed a “Russian soul”—so deeply ingrained that it stamped his entire professional career in the United States, including his published researches, his popular sociology and his university teaching.     

René Maunier (1915), Les idées sociologiques d’un philosophe arabe/The sociological ideas of an Arab philosopher in the 14th century

René Maunier (1887-1951) is usually considered to be the “founder” of “colonial sociology” in France. Much closer to the anthropologist Marcel Mauss than to the latter's uncle, Emile Durkheim, Maunier's academic career was largely connected to Arab countries like Egypt, and Algeria in particular, where he would teach for more than twenty years. Maunier's inclusion of Ibn Khaldûn into the history of sociology needs to be understood in line with the fact that at the time this article was published, the young Egyptian student Taha Hussein was beginning a thesis in France under the joint supervision of Durkheim and of the orientalist Paul Casanova. Defended in January 1918, three months after Durkheim's death, it was entitled Etude analytique et critique de la philosophie sociale d'Ibn Khaldoun (Analytic and critical study of Ibn Khaldoun's social philosophy).     

The Question of Hegelian Influence upon Durkheim's Sociology

Durkheim is commonly viewed as the founder of sociology as an empirical or even a positivist, empiricist discipline. The connection between empirical sociological theory and Marxist, Weberian, symbolic interactionist, phenomenological, hermeneutic, and other tendencies is illuminated by viewing the parallels between Durkheim and Hegel. These parallels should not obscure important contrasts, but they include a large number of the most distinctive doctrines of the two theorists. The comparison illuminates relationships within sociology as well as relationships between sociology and such other disciplines as philosophy, history, literary criticism, jurisprudence, theology, or ethics. The importance within Durkheim's milieu of figures who were deeply influenced by Hegel shows that Hegel's influence on Durkheim should not be obscured by current views of Durkheim as a positivist in the tradition of Comte.     

Mead’s Analysis of Social Conflict: A Radical Interactionist’s Critique

Because Mead entered the pantheon of classic sociological thinkers much later than Durkheim, Marx, and Weber, sociologists have unsurprisingly devoted much more critical attention to their ideas than his. Perhaps, nowhere is the lack of this attention on their part more glaring than in his explanation of social conflict. Mead views the emergence and resolution of conflict as taking place within the social act, in which either individuals or groups may be the acting units, and attitudes, roles, significant symbols, and attitudinal assumption operate as the common, key components. As far as the emergence of conflict is concerned, he accounts for it on the basis of insufficient differentiation of roles, non-meritorious allocation of roles, and adoption of self-centered attitudes on the part of the participants during their construction of a social act. As far as the resolution of conflict is concerned, he predictably explains it on the basis of their expansion of role differentiation, distribution of roles on basis of merit, and the adoption of other-centered attitudes. Despite that Mead’s explanation of the resolution and emergence of conflict is relatively consistent and offers many profound insights, it suffers from several irresolvable problems. All these various problems can be traced back to his decision to rest his explanation on his much cherished principle of “sociality,” rather than domination, and thereby, ultimately, his rejection of a radical interactionist’s perspective. Thus, it is now long overdue for sociologists to consider the merits of a new, more radical interactionism as a replacement for his much older and more conventional counterpart, symbolic interactionism.     

Theorizing the social: Émile Durkheim's theory of force and energy

This paper offers a new interpretation of Émile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) as the basis for reconsidering the Tarde–Durkheim debate of 1903 and the distinctions between a theory of social force and a theory of social assemblage. Resisting traditional interpretations of Durkheim's scientism, this essay traces how concepts of force and energy are centrally developed in Elementary Forms to draw new lines between epistemology to ontology for twentieth-century theory. I argue that Durkheim develops an ‘energetic epistemology’ that conceives of the human capacity for shared meaning as a product of invested energy in the form of continually enacted and evolving material practice, thought, and attention. According to Durkheim, when a member of a collective perceives a god or feels belief, he or she actually perceives the accumulated energy of on-going creation and maintenance of objects and ideas by members of a collective. Sacred objects, images, and ideas bear the trace of collective energy the more they are carefully crafted, maintained in spaces that are specially arranged, and written into behavioural codes. This reading of Durkheim allows us to consider him in a lineage of social constructivists and, particularly, in relation to Ludwik Fleck, who has been largely confined to different theoretical discussions when his contributions to sociology have been acknowledged at all. By reconsidering Durkheim, we have occasion to rethink his sociology and understand how he redrew the lines between thought and action, between epistemology and ontology, through the material framework of energy and force.     

A Critique of Max Horkheimer’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Critique of Instrumental Reason</Emphasis>

I produce a critique of Marx Horkheimer’s book Critique of Instrumental Reason as a way to introduce the concept of pragmatic critical theory. I start by mentioning that C. Wright Mills’s concept of “The Sociological Imagination” has many of the qualities of critical theory while emphasizing its potential for pragmatic solutions to social problems. I discuss some of the qualities of German social theory including its tendency toward over-philosophizing, before going on to discussing this book as well as the work of such scholars as W. I. Thomas and Emile Durkheim who produced morally-relevant social analysis, and especially the work of Max Weber whose exposition on the nature of rationality is used to provide background information that puts the work of Max Horkheimer in broader sociological context. I discuss how fantasies and substitute satisfactions are substitutes for a well-balanced life. I emphasize why Horkheimer and the Frankfurt School in general did not appreciate the American concern for pragmatism, but I nevertheless show the importance of a pragmatic approach to social reform. His critique of nationalism that runs as a theme throughout this book as offering a poor substitute for a sense of community is also pertinent. I end by emphasizing that Horkheimer’s emphasis on authoritarianism as a reaction to modernization, and Christopher Lasch’s emphasis on narcissism as a reaction to modernization, both emphasize negative aspects of their own societies, and learning how to avoid both extremes is a useful lesson to take away from both of their writings.     

CONTEXTUALIZING DEVIANCE WITHIN SOCIAL CHANGE AND STABILITY,MORALITY, AND POWER

The paper analyses the professional and political challenges facing the sociological study of deviance. Drawing on the sociological formulations of Emile Durkheim, and using a number of empirical demonstrations, the paper suggests that the study and interpretation of non-conformist and deviant behavior be repackaged and reframed within social processes of change and stability. To do that, it is recommended to use the constructivist approach, emphasizing the concepts of symbolic-moral universes and power.     

浅析《爱弥儿》中的青年社会交往观

卢梭在《爱弥儿》一书中,通过对青年爱弥儿的道德教育的论述表达了他关于青年社会交往的观点。《爱弥儿》中的青年交往观主要包括青年社会交往的必要性、青年社会交往的基本原则以及青年在社会交往中的具体行为表现等内容。卢梭的青年社会交往观以自然主义教育思想为基础,虽然带有一定的空想性,且主要针对的是18世纪的法国社会现实,有其时代局限性,但对于现代青年社会交往仍具有重要启示意义,特别是青年参与社会交往必须遵循一定的原则,青年社会交往应讲求一定的艺术和方法等观点值得加以借鉴和参考,使其对现代青年社会交往发挥指导作用。     

The canonical limits of Durkheim's first classic

A classic text is not always canonized. Canonical texts are frequently anything but classics. Durkheim's Division of Labor in Societyis an instance of the former; his Rules of Sociological Methodof the latter. Both books are based on errors of fact and method. Division of Laborwas so intentionally the classical theory of modern divided societies that Durkheim, son of generations of rabbis, totally misrepresented the facts of Ancient Israel. In Rules,Durkheim was so intent on writing the canonical text of sociology's methods that he stipulated rules that even he (in Suicide) could not use. Durkheim was thus a giant of the sociological past because,not in spite of, his errors. He erred because he dared to think seriously about the moral issues of his time. Hence, the ironic fate of Durkheim's sociology—it led in two different directions. From Rulesand Suicidecame modern empirical sociology. From Elementary Formscame all the antimodernists—beginning with Levi-Strauss, and from him, Derrida and the others—who became, among other things, the most articulate critics of the sociology Durkheim helped invent. Such is the genius of classic, if not canonical, authors like Durkheim.     

Durkheim and the Homo Duplex: Anthropocentrism in Sociology

Previous analyses of anthropocentrism in sociological theory primarily attribute the origins of anthropocentrism in sociology to George Herbert Mead. This study addresses anthropocentrism in the influential works of David Émile Durkheim. At the core of Durkheim’s theory is his concept of the homo duplex, an inherent but tentative quality separating humans from all other animals. Durkheim uses the homo duplex as an ontological device, defining humanity as having the unique capacity to create and participate in the social. This collective process permits humans to transcend the profane, or what he observes as the immoral, passionate, animalistic individualism of nonhuman animals, into social solidarity: a realm generating morality and, ultimately, the sacred. This key distinction serves as the basis of all Durkheimian theory. This profound anthropocentrism becomes significant considering the degree of Durkheim’s influence on the field of sociology and the extent of anthropocentrism in sociology as a whole.     

The French Tradition of Sociology of International Relations: An Overview

International Relations (IR) is an Anglo-American discipline. It was founded in 1919 at Aberystwyth University. Immediately after the Second World War it found a particularly fertile ground for its development in the United States. Even if the discipline remained marked by its Anglo-American origins, a sociological school of international relations emerged in France in the 1960s, with two main authors Raymond Aron and Marcel Merle. This French sociology of international relations already dated back to the eighteenth century with Montesquieu and Tocqueville. In the context of the First and Second World Wars, Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, produced an embryonic sociology of international relations. After the Second World War, Aron’s sociology of international relations marked a break with the French school. His sociology was influenced by Max Weber and Carl von Clausewitz. He produced a comprehensive and historical tradition of international relations sociology and his analyses had a strong influence in IR specialists during the entire period of the Cold War. Today, his thought continues to exert influence on French and foreign internationalists as an essential reference point of the discipline. Marcel Merle, for his part, influenced by the work of Durkheim and Mauss, created an explanatory, positive school studying transnational relations which exerted influence on French and foreign internationalists as well. This contribution offers an historical overview of the development of this French tradition of sociology of international relations from the eighteenth century to the present time.