Zitate von Émile Durkheim

„When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.“

—  Émile Durkheim

Attributed from postum publications
Quelle: Jeffrey Eisenach et al. (1993), Readings in renewing American civilization, p. 54

„Everybody knows that we like those who resemble us, those who think and feel as we do. But the opposite is no less true. It very often happens that we feel kindly towards those who do not resemble us, precisely because of this lack of resemblance.“

—  Émile Durkheim

Quelle: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), p. 54

„Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.“

—  Émile Durkheim

„The general conclusion of the book which the reader has before him is that religion is something eminently social.“

—  Émile Durkheim, buch The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

Quelle: The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, 1912, p. 10

„It is not human nature which can assign the variable limits necessary to our needs. They are thus unlimited so far as they depend on the individual alone. Irrespective of any external regulatory force, our capacity for feeling is in itself an insatiable and bottomless abyss.“

—  Émile Durkheim, buch Suicide

Suicide (1897)

„Melancholy suicide. —This is connected with a general state of extreme depression and exaggerated sadness, causing the patient no longer to realize sanely the bonds which connect him with people and things about him. Pleasures no longer attract;“

—  Émile Durkheim

Quelle: On Suicide: A Study in Sociology

„We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because we condemn it.“

—  Émile Durkheim

„Man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him from all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.“

—  Émile Durkheim

Quelle: On Suicide: A Study in Sociology

„Maniacal suicide. —This is due to hallucinations or delirious conceptions. The patient kills himself to escape from an imaginary danger or disgrace, or to obey a mysterious order from on high, etc.“

—  Émile Durkheim

Quelle: On Suicide: A Study in Sociology

„Division of labour produces solidarity only if it is spontaneous and in proportion as it is spontaneous. But by spontaneity we must understand not simply the absence of all express violence, but also of everything that can even indirectly shackle the free unfolding of the social force that each carries in himself. It supposes, not only that individuals are not relegated to determinate functions by force, but also that no obstacle, of whatever nature, prevents than from occupying the place in the social framework which is compatible with their social faculties. In short, labour is divided spontaneously only if society is constituted in such a way that social inequalities exactly express natural inequalities“

—  Émile Durkheim

Quelle: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), p. 376

„Once the generality of the phenomenon has been established, one can, by showing its utility, confirm the results of the first method. We may, therefore, formulate the three following rules:
# A social fact is normal, in relation to a given social type at a given phase of its development, when it is present in the average society of that species at the corresponding phase of its evolution.
# One can verify the results of the preceding method by showing that the generality of the phenomenon is bound up with the general conditions of collective life of the social type considered.
# This verification is necessary when the fact in question occurs in a social species which has not yet reached the full course of its evolution.“

—  Émile Durkheim

Quelle: Rules of Sociological Method, 1895, p. 64

„At the moment when this solidarity exercises its force, our personality vanishes, as our definition permits us to say, for we are no longer ourselves, but the collective life.“

—  Émile Durkheim

Quelle: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), p. 130 (in 1933 edition)

„In the name of the dogma of struggle for existence and natural selection, they paint for us in the saddest colors this primitive humanity whose hunger and thirst, always badly satisfied, were their only passions; those sombre times when men had no other care and no other occupation than to quarrel with one another over their miserable nourishment. To react against those retrospective reveries of the philosophy of the eighteenth century and also against certain religious doctrines, to show with some force that the paradise lost is not behind us and that there is in our past nothing to regret, they believe we ought to make it dreary and belittle it systematically. Nothing is less scientific than this prejudice in the opposite direction. If the hypotheses of Darwin have a moral use, it is with more reserve and measure than in other sciences. They overlook the essential element of moral life, that is, the moderating influence that society exercises over its members, which tempers and neutralizes the brutal action of the struggle for existence and selection. Wherever there are societies, there is altruism, because there is solidarity.“

—  Émile Durkheim

Quelle: The Division of Labor in Society (1893), p. 153

„It is society which, fashioning us in its image, fills us with religious, political, and moral beliefs that control our actions.“

—  Émile Durkheim, buch Suicide

Suicide (1897)

„Space is not the vague and undetermined medium which Kant imagined; if purely and absolutely homogeneous, it would be of no use, and could not be grasped by the mind. Spatial representation consists essentially in a primary coordination of the data of sensuous experience. But this coordination would be impossible if the parts of space were qualitatively equivalent, if they were really interchangeable.“

—  Émile Durkheim, buch The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

Quelle: The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, 1912, p. 10

„At the roots of all our judgments there are a certain number of essential ideas which dominate all our intellectual life; they are what philosophers since Aristotle have called the categories of the understanding: ideas of time, space, class, number, cause, substance, personality, etc. They correspond to the most universal properties of things. They are like the solid frame which encloses all thought: this does not seem to be able to liberate itself from them without destroying itself.“

—  Émile Durkheim, buch The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

Quelle: The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, 1912, p. 9

„For if society lacks the unity that derives from the fact that the relationships between its parts are exactly regulated, that unity resulting from the harmonious articulation of its various functions assured by effective discipline and if, in addition, society lacks the unity based upon the commitment of men's wills to a common objective, then it is no more than a pile of sand that the least jolt or the slightest puff will suffice to scatter.“

—  Émile Durkheim

Émile Durkheim (1903/1961, p. 102); Quoted in: Kenneth Allan (2012). Explorations in Classical Sociological Theory: Seeing the Social World: Seeing the Social World p. 151

„When, then, the sociologist undertakes the investigation of some order of social facts, he must endeavour to consider them from an aspect that is independent of their individual manifestations.“

—  Émile Durkheim

Quelle: Rules of Sociological Method, 1895, p. 45

„Imagine a society of saints, a perfect cloister of exemplary individuals. Crimes, properly so called, will there be unknown; but faults which appear venial to the layman will create there the same scandal that the ordinary offense does in ordinary consciousnesses. If, then, this society has the power to judge and punish, it will define these acts as criminal and will treat them as such.“

—  Émile Durkheim

Quelle: Rules of Sociological Method, 1895, p. 68-69