Thinker · TH-0144
Émile Durkheim
Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist, born in Épinal, who taught at Bordeaux and the Sorbonne and helped establish sociology as an academic discipline.…
Also known as Emile Durkheim, David Émile Durkheim
1858 – 1917 · Épinal; Bordeaux; Paris
Traditions: Modern European
Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist, born in Épinal, who taught at Bordeaux and the Sorbonne and helped establish sociology as an academic discipline. He argued that social facts, such as laws, customs and rates of suicide, are external to individuals and constrain them, and must be studied as things in their own right. His work on solidarity, suicide and religion shaped social ontology and the philosophy of social science.
Key ideas
- Social facts are external to individuals and exert constraint on them.
- Social facts should be explained by other social facts, not by individual psychology.
- Societies are held together by mechanical or organic solidarity.
- Religion is a system of beliefs and practices relating to the sacred that unites a moral community.
Major works
- De la division du travail social (The Division of Labour in Society, 1893)
- Les Règles de la méthode sociologique (The Rules of Sociological Method, 1895)
- Le Suicide (1897)
- Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 1912)
In the conversation
- Question Is an economy more than the people in it?
- Question A researcher surveyed our village. Why does it matter what we meant by our answers?
- Question Can an institution be at fault when nobody inside it did anything wrong?
- Reading group Reading group: Durkheim’s Rules of Sociological Method, chapters 1 to 3