Abstract
In this chapter we will pursue further our analysis of the four theoretical strategies identified in Chapter 1, through a detailed consideration of the work of Emile Durkheim, who, we will argue, is the major representative of the rationalist tradition in sociology. The content of this chapter is very much affected by the fact that existing sociological texts mistakenly present Durkheim as a founding father of modern positivistic sociology.1 Because our view of Durkheim is unconventional, we have, in what follows, found it necessary to show not only the extent to which Durkheim’s project depended on a rationalist strategy but, at the same time, to establish the credibility of our case by way of a rather more detailed exploration of the original texts than has been the case in earlier chapters.
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Notes and References
See, for example, A. Giddens, The New Rules of Sociological Method (London: Hutchinson, 1976).
T. Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1949) pp. 304–5.
See particularly, S. Lukes, E. Durkheim: His Life and Work (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975);
and P. Hirst, Durkheim, C. Bernard and Epistemology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975).
E. Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1964) p. 32: ‘We do not wish to extract ethics from science, but to establish a science of ethics.’
E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (London: Allen & Unwin, 1971) p. 19: ‘The rationalism which is imminent in the sociological theory of knowledge is thus midway between the classical empiricism and apriorism.’
Parsons, The Structure of Social Action, p. 357.
E. Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1966) pp. 13, 35.
Parsons, The Structure of Social Action.
Durkheim’s recurrent concern with ‘the essence of reality’ (e.g. The Rules of Sociological Method, p. 42), means that Popper would undoubtedly have made this accusation had he paid attention to Durkheim’s work. See, K. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965).
J. Douglas, The Social Meaning of Suicide (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967).
Parsons, The Structure of Social Action, p. 444.
Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, book two, Chs 1 and 2.
Ibid, pp. 276–7.
Ibid, p. 129.
Parsons, The Structure of Social Action.
Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, p. 257.
E. Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952) p. 302.
Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, p. 29.
Ibid, p. 103.
Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, p. 228.
Ibid, p. 231
Ibid, p. 270.
Ibid, p. 365.
See, for example, recent texts such as Keat and Urry, Social Theory as Science, and T. Benton, Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies, which ignore this tradition of theorising.
Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, p. 31.
For a sympathetic statement of Husserl’s methodological position, see especially, M. Merleau-Ponty, ‘Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man’, in M. Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception (Northwestern University Press, 1964).
Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, p. 15.
Ibid, p. 35.
Ibid, p. 125.
Ibid, p. 32.
K. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967).
E. Durkheim and M. Mauss, Primitive Classifications (New York: Harper & Row, 1964).
Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, p. 264.
Douglas, The Social Meanings of Suicide.
Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, p. 76.
Ibid, p. 8.
Ibid, p. 5.
See Parsons, The Structure of Social Action, p. 444.
See particularly, Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, for an elaboration of this position.
Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, p. 204.
For a modern statement of ‘critical theory’, see J. Habermas, Towards a Rational Society (London: Heinemann, 1971).
A. Meinong, ‘The Theory of Objects’, in R. M. Chisholm, Realism and The Background of Phenomenology (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1960).
E. Durkheim, ‘Value Judgements and Judgements of Reality’, in his Sociology and Philosophy (London: Cohen & West, 1968) p. 95.
C. Jung, Psychology and Religion (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958).
A. Hardy, The Living Stream (London: Collins, 1965),
and The Biology of God (London: Cass, 1975).
C. Jung and W. Pauli, ‘Naturerklarung und Psyche’, in Studien aus dem C. G. Jung-Institut, IV (Zurich, 1952).
C. R. Badcock, Lévi-Strauss: Structuralism and Sociological Theory (London: Hutchinson, 1975) p. 28.
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© 1984 Terry Johnson, Christopher Dandeker and Clive Ashworth
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Johnson, T., Dandeker, C., Ashworth, C. (1984). Rationalism. In: The Structure of Social Theory. Contemporary Social Theory. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17679-3_5
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