I argue that the French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) decided to constitute sociology, a novel field, as ‘scientific’ early in his career. He adopted evolutionized biology as then practiced as his principal model of science, but at first wavered between alternative repertoires of concepts, models, metaphors and analogies, in particular Spencerian Lamarckism and French neo-Lamarckism. I show how Durkheim came to fashion a particular deployment of the French neo-Lamarckian repertoire. The paper describes and analyzes this repertoire and explicates how it (...) might have been available to a non-biologist. I analyze Durkheim’s very early writings between 1882 and 1892 in this context to substantiate my argument. (shrink)

Was Durkheim an apologist for the authoritarianism? Is the sociology founded upon his work incapable of critical perspective; and must it operate under the presumption that social agents, including sociologists themselves, are incapable of reflexivity? Certainly some have said so, but they may be wrong. In this essay, I address these questions in the light of Durkheim's revisionary sociology of morals. I elaborate on unfinished elements in Durkheim's abruptly concluded (because of his early and unexpected death) scholarship, pointing out Durkheim's (...) recognition that co-present moral spheres always exist in an organically complex society, and explaining how these co-present spheres obligate social agents to untether from any absolute moral affiliations. Ultimately, then, the argument shows how the solidarity/social-order relationship is transcended within Durkheim's sociology, even by Durkheim himself. (shrink)

Within the purview of the sociology of knowledge Durkheim and Scheler appear among its important inaugurators theorizing the social foundations of knowledge, seemingly from mutually exclusive perspectives. Scheler’s phenomenology of values and community is often juxtaposed with Durkheim’s attempt to integrate values in reality, represented by the social configuration of organic solidarity. This essay argues that the affinity between Scheler and Durkheim deserves reexamination. Means employed for pursuing this aim include a reconsideration of how values mediate reality, but, above all, (...) an attempt to show that both thinkers converge on their principal normative goal. This is no other than a global community of solidarity which both Scheler and Durkheim, albeit through different trails, visualize as the culmination of value-ethics. While Durkheim pursues this goal through a systematic exposition of the transition from mechanical to organic solidarity, late Scheler’s view of ‘the age of adjustment’ discloses a normative approach on modernity at odds with the then prevalent Kulturkritik . This ideal helps to rehabilitate Scheler and to approach the notions of sociality, the sociology of knowledge and the configuration of the ‘encompassing person’ through Durkheimian lenses. The essay concludes with a brief appraisal of theoretical gains drawn from this newly lit affinity. (shrink)

Durkheim owes much of his ethical theory to Kant, and wishes to retain a great deal of Kantianism in the theory. However, he does so at great cost to his own theory. Instead of reconciling the competing claims of rationalism and empiricism, which is his ultimate goal in utilizing Kant, Durkheim ends up with an ethical theory which is full of contradictions and which is basically a solely empiricist account of morality. By exploring both Kant's and Durkheim's ethical theories, I (...) will demonstrate both the problems inherent in Durkheim's attempt to reconcile rationalism and empiricism, and his failure in retaining a universalistic account of morality, given the context of his theory. The result is an ethical theory with relativistic implications. (shrink)

This paper examines Jean Floud’s assessment of the work of Karl Mannheim, against the background of the development of British sociology of education in the 1940s and 50s. She compared his approach with that of Durkheim, concluding that both adopted a focus on social statics rather than dynamics, this reflecting their conservative political orientations. Some aspects of Floud’s critique are questionable, but other points she makes are telling. The issues in dispute here are ones that continue to be of importance (...) in the sociology of education, and in social science more generally. (shrink)